| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 19.146 | Dem. 19.155 (Greek) | >>Dem. 19.164 |
19.152or, if he refused, we could promptly report his refusal. In that case you, observing his grasping spirit and perfidy in those distant and comparatively unimportant places, would no longer be negligent of the more important concerns that lay nearer home—I mean the Phocians and Thermopylae . If he had not seized the positions, and if there had been no deception of you, all your interests were safe enough, and you would get fair treatment from him without compulsion.
19.153This was a reasonable expectation; for so long as the Phocians were safe, as they were at the time, and in possession of Thermopylae , there was no menace which Philip could have brandished in your face to make you disregard any of your just claims. He could not reach Attica either by a march across country or by getting command of the seas. If he refused justice, you could forthwith close his ports, stop his supply of money, and otherwise reduce him to a state of blockade; and so he, and not you, would be wholly dependent on the contingent benefits of the peace.
19.154I will now prove to you that I am not making up a story or claiming merit after the event, but that I formed my judgement, kept my eye on your interests, and told the envoys, without any delay. Finding that you had got to the end of the regular Assemblies, and that there was no meeting left, and observing that the envoys were still wasting time at Athens instead of starting at once, I proposed a decree as a member of the Council, to which the Assembly had given authority, directing the envoys to sail immediately, and the general Proxenus to convey them to any place in which he should ascertain that Philip was to be found. I drafted it, as I now read it, in those express terms. Please take and read the decree.Athens , but quite against their will, as you will easily learn from their subsequent behavior. When we had arrived at Oreus and joined Proxenus, instead of obeying their instructions and proceeding by sea, they started on a roundabout tour. We had wasted three-and-twenty days before we reached Macedonia ; and all the rest of the time, making, with the time consumed by the journey, fifty days in all, until the arrival of Philip, we were dawdling at Pella .
19.156Throughout that period Philip was occupying and disposing of Doriscus, Thrace , the Thracian fortresses, the Sacred Mount, and so forth, in spite of the peace and armistice. note All this time I did not spare words; I talked to them first as one communicating his opinion, then as instructing the ignorant, and finally in uncompromising language, as dealing with corrupt and profligate persons.
19.157The man who openly contradicted me, and set himself in opposition to my advice and your formal resolutions, was Aeschines. You will learn presently whether his conduct was agreeable to his colleagues. For the moment, I have nothing to say of them by way of fault-finding. They may all show themselves honest men today, not by compulsion but of their own free will, and as having no share in those iniquities. note That the deeds done were disgraceful, monstrous, and venal, you have already discovered; let facts disclose who were the participators.
Athens with his army, and in a manner, men of Athens , that was thoroughly discreditable to the city.
19.159Yet Philip would have paid any sum to have matters managed in this way. For when these men had failed to draw the treaty, as they first tried to do, with a clause excepting the Halians and the Phocians, and Philocrates had been compelled by you to erase those words and write expressly, “the Athenians and the Allies of the Athenians,” to the treaty so drawn Philip did not wish any of his allies to have sworn; for then they would have refused to join in his forcible occupation of those possessions of yours which he now holds, and the oath would have been their excuse.
19.160Nor did he desire witnesses of the promises on the strength of which he was obtaining the peace, nor any public disclosure of the fact that after all Athens had not been beaten in the war, and that it was Philip who was really eager for the peace, and was ready to make large promises to the Athenians if he could get it. Therefore he disapproved of these men going anywhere, lest the facts that I am stating should become generally known; and they were ready to gratify him with ostentatious deference and extravagant adulation.
Decree
19.155So I got them away from
19.158But it may be urged that they spent all this time swearing in the allies, or discharging some other part of their duty. Not at all; though they were on their travels for three whole months, and received from you a thousand drachmas for journey-money, they did not get the oaths from any single city either on their outward journey or on their way home. The oaths were administered at the hostelry in front of the Temple of the Twins,—any of you who have been to Pherae will know the place I mean,—at the time when Philip was already on his march towards
| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 19.146 | Dem. 19.155 (Greek) | >>Dem. 19.164 |
