The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes Part 4

Your interests are sold on every favorable opportunity: you partake of the idleness and ease, under the charm whereof you resent not your wrongs; while other persons get the reward. [Footnote: Schaefer rightly explains [Greek: _timas_] to mean the price received for treason.

But most of the translators, following Wolf, understand it to mean the honors won by Philip. [Greek: _Tois adikousin_] is rendered by Auger, Leland, and Francis, "the traitors." I think it rather refers to, or at least includes, the enemies who profited by the treason, and made conquests from Athens: of course meaning Philip in particular.] Into all these cases I could not enter now: but when any question about Philip arises, some one starts up directly and says--"We must have no trifling, no proposal of war"--and then goes on to say--"What a blessing it is to be at peace! what a grievance to maintain a large army!"--and again--"Certain persons wish to plunder the treasury"--and other arguments they urge, no doubt, in the full conviction of their truth.

[Footnote: There is no difficulty in this, if we understand it to be ironical; and no need of any amendment.] But surely there is no need of persuading you to observe peace, you that sit here persuaded already. It is Philip (who is making war) that needs persuasion: prevail on him, and all is ready on your part. We should consider as grievous, not what we expend for our deliverance, but what we shall suffer in case of refusal.

Plunder of the treasury should be prevented by devising a plan for its safe custody, not by abandoning our interests. Yet this very thing makes me indignant, that some of you are pained at the thought of your treasury being robbed, though it depends on yourselves to guard it and to punish the criminal, but are not pained to see Philip plundering Greece, plundering as he does one people after another, to forward his designs upon you.

How comes it, ye men of Athens, that of this flagrant aggressor, this capturer of cities, no one has ever declared that he commits hostility or injustice, while those who counsel against submission and sacrifice are charged as the authors of war? The reason is, that people wish to cast upon your faithful counselors the blame of any untoward events in the war; for war must necessarily be attended with many misfortunes.

They believe that, if you resist Philip with one heart and mind, you will prevail against him, and they can be hirelings no longer; but that if on the first outcry [Footnote: Leland: "the first unhappy accident."

Francis gives the right meaning, but with too many words; "the first tumults occasioned by any unfortunate success." Spillau: "the first alarm."] you arraign certain persons and bring them to trial, they by accusing such persons will gain a double advantage, repute among the Athenians and recompense from Philip; and that you will punish your friendly advisers for a cause for which you ought to punish the traitors. Such are the hopes, such the contrivance of these charges, "that certain persons wish to kindle a war." I am sure, however, that, without any Athenian moving a declaration of war, Philip has taken many of our possessions, and has recently sent succor to Cardia. If we choose to a.s.sume that he is not making war against us, he would be the simplest of mankind to convince us of our mistake: for when the sufferers disclaim the injury, what should the offenders do? But when he marches to attack us, what shall we say then? He will a.s.sure us that he is not making war, as he a.s.sured the Orites, when his troops were in their country, as he a.s.sured the Pheraeans before he a.s.saulted their walls, and the Olynthians in the first instance, until he was in their territories with his army. Shall we then say, that persons who bid us defend ourselves kindle a war? If so, we must be slaves; for nothing else remains.

But remember: you have more at stake than some other people. Philip desires not to subjugate your city, but to destroy it utterly. He is convinced, you will not submit to be slaves; if you were inclined, you would not know how, having been accustomed to command: you will be able, should occasion offer, to give him more trouble than any people in the world. For this reason he will show us no mercy, if he get us into his power: and therefore you must make up your minds, that the struggle will be one for life and death. These persons, who have openly sold themselves to Philip, you must execrate, you must beat their brains out: for it is impossible, I say impossible, to vanquish your foreign enemies, until you have punished your enemies within the city: these are the stumbling-blocks that must cripple your efforts against the foreigner.

From what cause, do ye think, Philip insults you now; (for his conduct, in my judgment, amounts to nothing less;) and while he deceives other people by doing them services--this at least is something--you he threatens already? For example, the Thessalians by many benefits he seduced into their present servitude: no man can tell how he cheated the poor Olynthians, giving them first Potidaea and many other places: now he is luring the Thebans, having delivered up Boeotia to them, and freed them from a tedious and hara.s.sing war. Of these people, who each got a certain advantage, some have suffered what is notorious to all, others have yet to suffer what may befall them. As to yourselves; the amount of your losses I do not mention: but in the very making of the peace how have you been deceived! how plundered! Lost you not the Phocians, Thermopylae, country toward Thrace, Doriscus, Serrium, Cersobleptes himself? Holds he not Cardia now, and avows it? Why then does he behave thus to other people, and in a different way to you? Because our city is the only one where liberty is allowed to speak for the enemy, where a man taking a bribe may safely address the people, though they have been deprived of their possessions. It was not safe at Olynthus to advocate Philip's cause, without the Olynthian people sharing the benefit by possession of Potidaea. It was not safe to advocate Philip's cause in Thessaly, without the people of Thessaly sharing the benefit, by Philip's expelling their tyrants and restoring the Pylaean Synod. It was not safe at Thebes, until he restored Boeotia to them, and destroyed the Phocians. But at Athens, though Philip has taken from you Amphipolis and the Cardian territory, and is even turning Euboea into a hostile post, and advancing to attack Byzantium, it is safe to speak on Philip's behalf. Yea, among these men, some have risen rapidly from poverty to wealth, from meanness and obscurity to repute and honor, while you, on the contrary, have fallen from honor to obscurity, from wealth to indigence. For the riches of a state I consider to be allies, confidence, good-will; of all which you are dest.i.tute. And by your neglecting these things and suffering your interests thus to be swept away, Philip has grown prosperous and mighty, formidable to all the Greeks and barbarians, while you are forlorn and abject, in the abundance of your market magnificent, but in your national defenses ridiculous. [Footnote: The whole of the foregoing pa.s.sage is taken, with some little variation, from the speech on the Chersonese. It certainly would seem strange, if this Oration had been forged by any grammarian, that he should have borrowed thus by wholesale from Demosthenes. There is perhaps less difficulty in the supposition that Demosthenes repeated his own words.]

Some of our orators, I observe, take not the same thought for you as for themselves. They say that you should keep quiet, though you are injured; but they can not themselves keep quiet among you, though no one injures them. Come, raillery apart, suppose you were thus questioned, Aristodemus, [Footnote: This man was a tragic actor, and charged by Demosthenes with being a partisan of Philip. He was the first person who proposed peace with Macedonia, shortly before the emba.s.sy of ten. See the Argument to the Oration on the Peace.]--"Tell me, as you know perfectly well, what every one else knows, that the life of private men is secure and free from trouble and danger, while that of statesmen is exposed to scandal [Footnote: I have taken [Greek: _philaition_] in the pa.s.sive sense, as it is explained by Reiske and Schaefer, though it scarcely suits the character of the word. Compare Shakspeare, Henry V.

Act IV. Sc. 1.

O hard condition, twin-born with greatness, Subjected to the breath of every fool!

What infinite heart's ease must kings neglect That private men enjoy!]

and misfortune, full of trials and hardships every day, how comes it that you prefer, not the quiet and easy life, but the one surrounded with peril?"--what should you say? If we admitted the truth of what would be your best possible answer, namely, that all you do is for honor and renown, I wonder what puts it into your head, that you ought from such motives to exert yourself and undergo toil and danger, while you advise the state to give up exertion and remain idle. You can not surely allege, that Aristodemus ought to be of importance at Athens, and Athens to be of no account among the Greeks. Nor again do I see, that for the commonwealth it is safe to mind her own affairs only, and hazardous for you, not to be a superlative busy-body. [Footnote: All the translators have mistaken [Greek: _ton allon pleon_], which is simply "more than others," as Wolf explains it.] On the contrary, to you I see the utmost peril from your meddling and over-meddling, to the commonwealth peril from her inactivity. But I suppose, you inherit a reputation from your father and grandfather, which it were disgraceful in your own person to extinguish, whereas the ancestry of the state was ign.o.ble and mean. This again is not so. Your father was a thief, [Footnote: This seems to shock Leland, who spoils the pungency of the expression, by rendering it: "Your father was like you, and therefore base and infamous." Auger remarks: "L'invective de Demosthene est fort eloquente, mais bien violente. L'amour de la patrie, contre laquelle sans doute agissait Aristodeme, peut seul en excuser la vivacite."] if he resembled you, whereas by the ancestors of the commonwealth, as all men know, the Greeks have twice been rescued from the brink of destruction. Truly the behaviour of some persons, in private and in public, is neither equitable nor const.i.tutional. How is it equitable, that certain of these men, returned from prison, should not know themselves, while the state, that once protected all Greece and held the foremost place, is sunk in ignominy and humiliation?

Much could I add on many points, but I will forbear. It is not, I believe, to lack of words that our distresses have been owing either now or heretofore. The mischief is when you, after listening to sound arguments, and all agreeing in their justice, sit to hear with equal favor those who try to defeat and pervert them; not that you are ignorant of the men; (you are certain at the first glance, who speak for hire and are Philip's political agents, and who speak sincerely for your good;) your object is to find fault with these, turn the thing into laughter and raillery, and escape the performance of your duty.

Such is the truth, spoken with perfect freedom, purely from good-will and for the best: not a speech fraught with flattery and mischief and deceit, to earn money for the speaker, and to put the commonwealth into the hands of our enemies. I say, you must either desist from these practices, or blame none but yourselves for the wretched condition of your affairs.