| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 19.313 | Dem. 19.322 (Greek) | >>Dem. 19.331 |
19.318For if he should accept the Phocians as allies, and with your help take the oath of friendship to them, he must at once violate the oaths he had already sworn to the Thessalians and the Thebans, with the latter of whom he had covenanted to help them in the subjugation of Boeotia , and with the former to restore their rights at the Amphictyonic Council. If, on the other hand, he was loth to accept them—and in fact the prospect did not please him—he expected that you would send troops to Thermopylae to stop his passage, as indeed you would have done if you had not been outwitted. In that event, he calculated that he would be unable to get through.
19.319He did not need any information from others to reach that conclusion. He was himself a sufficient witness, for, after his first defeat of the Phocians and the overthrow of their leader and commander Onomarchus, although no one in the whole world, Greek or barbarian, sent aid to them save you alone, so far from getting through Thermopylae , or accomplishing any of the purposes of the passage, he had been unable even to approach the pass.
19.320I take it he was perfectly well aware that now, with Thessaly at variance with him—the Pheraeans, for example, refusing to join his following—with the Thebans getting the worst of the war, defeated in an engagement, and a trophy erected at their expense, he would be unable to force the passage if you sent troops to Thermopylae , and that he could not even make the attempt without serious loss unless he should also resort to some trickery. “How, then,” he thought, “shall I escape open falsehood, and attain all my objects without incurring the charge of perjury? Only if I can find Athenians to hood-wink the Athenian people, for then I shall have no share in the ensuing dishonor.”
19.321Accordingly his envoys warned you that he would not accept the Phocian alliance, but then Aeschines and his friends, taking up the tale, assured the people that, although for the sake of the Thebans and the Thessalians Philip could not with decency accept the alliance, yet if he should become master of the situation, and get his peace, he would thereafter do exactly what we should now ask him to agree to.
19.322So on the strength of these expectations and inducements he obtained his peace, with the Phocians excluded; but it was still necessary to stop the reinforcement of Thermopylae , for which fifty war-galleys were lying at anchor to enable you to check Philip's advance.
19.323How could it be done? What new artifice could he invent for that purpose? Someone must filch your opportunities of action, and surprise you with an unexpected crisis, so that you might lose the power, if not the will, of sending the expedition. That, then, was clearly what these men undertook. As you have often heard, I was unable to get away in time; I had chartered a ship, but was prevented from sailing.
19.324But it was further necessary that the Phocians should acquire confidence in Philip and make a voluntary surrender, so that no delay should intervene, and no unfriendly resolution come to hand from you. “Very well,” thought Philip, “a report shall be made by the Athenian ambassadors that the Phocians are to be protected; and so, though they persist in mistrusting me, they will deliver themselves into my hands through confidence in the Athenians. We will enlist the sympathy of the Athenian people in the hope that, supposing themselves to have got everything they want, they will pass no obstructive resolution. These men shall carry from us such flattering reports and assurances that, whatsoever may befall, they will make no movement.”
Thespiae and Plataea , you heard of the enslavement of Orchomenus and Coronea . Instead of the humiliation of Thebes and the abasement of her pride and insolence, the walls of your own allies the Phocians were demolished, and demolished by those very Thebans whom Aeschines in his speech had sent to live in scattered villages.
19.326Instead of the surrender to you of Euboea in exchange for Amphipolis , Philip is establishing positions in Euboea as a base of attack upon you, and is constantly plotting against Geraestus and Megara . Instead of recovering Oropus, we are making an armed expedition to secure Drymus note and the district of Panactus, note an operation in which we never engaged so long as the Phocians were safe.
19.325In this manner and by the aid of this artifice our ruin was accomplished by men themselves doomed to perdition. For at once, instead of witnessing the restoration of
| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 19.313 | Dem. 19.322 (Greek) | >>Dem. 19.331 |
