As for the fact, then, that Philip rose to greatness from small and humble beginnings, that the Greek states are mutually disloyal and factious, and that the increase of Philip’s power in the past was a far greater miracle than the completion of his conquests now that he has already gained so much, these and all such topics on which I might expatiate, I will pass over in silence.

[22] I observe, however, that all men, and you first of all, have conceded to him something which has been the occasion of every war that the Greeks have ever waged. And what is that? The power of doing what he likes, of calmly plundering and stripping the Greeks one by one, and of attacking their cities and reducing them to slavery.

[23] Yet your hegemony in Greece lasted seventy-five years, that of Sparta twenty-nine, and in these later times Thebes too gained some sort of authority after the battle of Leuctra. But neither to you nor to the Thebans nor to the Lacedaemonians did the Greeks ever yet, men of Athens, concede the right of unrestricted action, or anything like it.

[24] On the contrary, when you, or rather the Athenians of that day, were thought to be showing a want of consideration in dealing with others, all felt it their duty, even those who had no grievance against them, to go to war in support of those who had been injured; and again, when the Lacedaemonians had risen to power and succeeded to your position of supremacy, and when they set to work to encroach on others and interfered unduly with the established order of things, all the Greeks were up in arms, even those who had no grievance of their own.

[25] Why need I refer to the other states? Nay, we ourselves and the Lacedaemonians, though at the outset we could not have specified any wrong at each other’s hands, thought it our duty to fight on account of wrongs which we saw the other states suffering. Yet all the faults committed by the Lacedaemonians in those thirty years, and by our ancestors in their seventy years of supremacy, are fewer, men of Athens, than the wrongs which Philip has done to the Greeks in the thirteen incomplete years in which he has been coming to the top—or rather, they are not a fraction of them.

[26] [And this is easily proved by a short calculation.] I pass over Olynthus and Methone and Apollonia and the two and thirty cities in or near Thrace, all of which Philip has destroyed so ruthlessly that a traveler would find it hard to say whether they had ever been inhabited. I say nothing of the destruction of the important nation of the Phocians. But how stands the case of the Thessalians? Has he not robbed them of their free constitutions and of their very cities, setting up tetrarchies in order to enslave them, not city by city, but tribe by tribe?

[27] Are not tyrannies already established in Euboea, an island, remember, not far from Thebes and Athens? Does he not write explicitly in his letters, “I am at peace with those who are willing to obey me”? And he does not merely write this without putting it into practice; but he is off to the Hellespont, just as before he hurried to Ambracia; in the Peloponnese he occupies the important city of Elis; only the other day he intrigued against the Megarians. Neither the Greek nor the barbarian world is big enough for the fellow’s ambition.

[28] And we Greeks see and hear all this, and yet we do not send embassies to one another and express our indignation. We are in such a miserable position, we have so entrenched ourselves in our different cities, that to this very day we can do nothing that our interest or our duty demands; we cannot combine, we cannot take any common pledge of help or friendship;

[29] but we idly watch the growing power of this man, each bent （or so it seems to me） on profiting by the interval afforded by another’s ruin, taking not a thought, making not an effort for the salvation of Greece. For that Philip, like the recurrence or attack of a fever or some other disease, is threatening even those who think themselves out of reach, of that not one of you is ignorant.

[30] Ay, and you know this also, that the wrongs which the Greeks suffered from the Lacedaemonians or from us, they suffered at all events at the hands of true-born sons of Greece, and they might have been regarded as the acts of a legitimate son, born to great possessions, who should be guilty of some fault or error in the management of his estate: so far he would deserve blame and reproach, yet it could not be said that it was not one of the blood, not the lawful heir who was acting thus.

[31] But if some slave or superstitious bastard had wasted and squandered what he had no right to, heavens! how much more monstrous and exasperating all would have called it! Yet they have no such qualms about Philip and his present conduct, though he is not only no Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but not even a barbarian from any place that can be named with honor, but a pestilent knave from Macedonia, whence it was never yet possible to buy a decent slave.

[32]
Yet what is wanting to crown his insolence? Not content with the destruction of cities, is he not organizing the Pythian games, the common festival of the Greeks, and if he cannot be present in person, sending his menials to act as stewards? [Is he not master of Thermopylae and the passes into Greece, holding those places with his garrisons and his mercenaries? Has he not the right of precedence at the Oracle, ousting us and the Thessalians and the Dorians and the rest of the Amphictyons from a privilege which not even all Greek states can claim?]

[33] Does he not dictate to the Thessalians their form of government? Does he not send mercenaries, some to Porthmus to expel the Eretrian democracy, others to Oreus to set up the tyranny of Philistides? Yet the Greeks see all this and suffer it. They seem to watch him just as they would watch a hailstorm, each praying that it may not come their way, but none making any effort to stay its course.

[58] For of course Philip, whom they fancied their ally, sent Hipponicus with a thousand mercenaries, razed the walls of Porthmus, and set up three tyrants, Hipparchus, Automedon, and Clitarchus. Twice since then they have tried to deliver themselves, and twice he has driven them from their homes [on the first occasion sending Eurylochus with his mercenaries, on the second Parmenio].

[59]
And what need is there to mention most of the cases? But at Oreus Philistides, Menippus, Socrates, Thoas, and Agapaeus, the very men who now control the city, were, as everyone knew, Philip’s agents, but Euphraeus, a man who once resided here at Athens, was working for the freedom and emancipation of his countrymen.

[60] It would be a long story to tell you how this man was repeatedly outraged and insulted by the people; but a year before the capture of Eretria, detecting the machinations of Philistides and his party, he denounced him as a traitor. Then a number of fellows banded together, with Philip for their paymaster and managing director, and dragged Euphraeus off to prison for setting the city in an uproar.

[61] When the democrats of Oreus saw this, instead of rescuing him and knocking the others on the head, they showed no resentment against them and gloated over Euphraeus, saying that he deserved all he had got. Then having all the liberty of action they desired, they intrigued for the capture of the city and prepared to carry out their plot, while any of the common folk who saw what they were at were terrorized into silence, having the fate of Euphraeus before their eyes. And so abject was their condition that, with this danger looming ahead, no one dared to breathe a syllable until the enemy, having completed their preparations, were approaching the gates; and then some were for defence, the others for surrender.

[62] But since that base and shameful capture of the city, the latter have been its rulers and tyrants; those who sheltered them before, and had been ready to take any measures against Euphraeus, were rewarded with banishment or death; and the noble Euphraeus slew himself, giving thus a practical proof of the honesty and disinterested patriotism of his opposition to Philip.

[63]
Perhaps you wonder why the people of Olynthus and Eretria and Oreus were more favorably inclined to Philip’s advocates than to their own. The explanation is the same as at Athens, that the patriots, however much they desire it, cannot sometimes say anything agreeable, for they are obliged to consider the safety of the state; but the others by their very efforts to be agreeable are playing into Philip’s hands. The patriots demanded a war-subsidy, the others denied its necessity; the patriots bade them fight on and mistrust Philip, the others bade them keep the peace, until they fell into the snare.

[64] Not to go into particulars, it is the same tale everywhere, one party speaking to please their audience, the other giving advice that would have ensured their safety. But at the last there were many things that the people were induced to concede, not as before for their own gratification nor through ignorance, but gradually yielding because they thought that their discomfiture was inevitable and complete.

[65] And, by Heaven, that is what I certainly fear will be your experience, when you count your chances and discover that there is nothing left for you to do. And yet I pray, Athenians, that such may not be the issue of events. Better to die a thousand times than pay court to Philip [and abandon any of your loyal counsellors.] A fine return the people of Oreus have gained for handing themselves over to Philip’s friends and rejecting Euphraeus!

[66] A fine return the democrats of Eretria have gained for spurning your embassy and capitulating to Clitarchus! They are slaves, doomed to the whipping-post and the scaffold. A fine clemency he showed to the Olynthians, who voted Lasthenes their master of the horse and banished Apollonides!

[67] It is folly and cowardice to cherish such hopes, to follow ill counsel and refuse to perform any fraction of your duties, to lend an ear to the advocates of your enemies and imagine that your city is so great that no conceivable danger can befall it.

[68] Ay, and a disgrace too it is to have to say, when all is over, “Why! who would have thought it? For of course we ought to have done this or that, and not so and so.” Many things could be named by the Olynthians today, which would have saved them from destruction if only they had then foreseen them. Many could be named by the Orites, many by the Phocians, many by every ruined city.

[69] But of what use to them is that? While the vessel is safe, whether it be a large or a small one, then is the time for sailor and helmsman arid everyone in his turn to show his zeal and to take care that it is not capsized by anyone’s malice or inadvertence; but when the sea has overwhelmed it, zeal is useless.

[70] So we too, Athenians, as long as we are safe, blessed with a very great city, ample advantages, and the fairest repute—what are we to do? Perhaps some of my hearers have long been eager to ask that question. I solemnly promise that I will answer it and will also move a resolution, for which you can vote if so disposed. To begin with ourselves, we must make provision for our defence, I mean with war-galleys, funds, and men; for even if all other states succumb to slavery, we surely must fight the battle of liberty.

[71] Then having completed all these preparations and made our purpose clear, we must lose no time in calling upon the other Greeks, and we must inform them by sending ambassadors [in every direction, to the Peloponnese, to Rhodes, to Chios, to the Great King—for even his interests are not unaffected if we prevent Philip from subduing the whole country—] so that if you win them over, you may have someone to share your dangers and your expenses when the time comes, or if not, that you may at least delay the course of events.

[72] For since the war is against an individual and not against the might of an organized community, even delay is not without its use; nor were those embassies useless which you sent round the Peloponnese last year to denounce Philip, when I and our good friend Polyeuctus here and Hegesippus and the rest went from city to city and succeeded in checking him, so that he never invaded Ambracia nor even started against the Peloponnese.

[73] I do not, however, suggest that you should invite the rest, unless you are ready to do for yourselves what is necessary; for it would be futile to abandon our own interests and pretend that we are protecting those of others, or to overlook the present dangers and alarm our neighbors with dangers to come. That is not my meaning. But I do contend that we must send supplies to the forces in the Chersonese and satisfy all their demands, and while we make preparation ourselves, we must summon, collect, instruct, and exhort the rest of the Greeks. That is the duty of a city with a reputation such as yours enjoys.

[74] But if you imagine that Greece will be saved by Chalcidians or Megarians, while you run away from the task, you are wrong. For they may think themselves lucky if they can save themselves separately. But this is a task for you; it was for you that your ancestors won this proud privilege and bequeathed it to you at great and manifold risk.

[75] But if every man sits idle, consulting his own pleasure and careful to avoid his own duty, not only will he find no one to do it for him, but I fear that those duties that we wish to shirk may all be forced upon us at once.

[76]
These are my views and these are my proposals, and if they are carried out, I believe that even now we may retrieve our fortunes. If anyone has anything better to propose, let him speak and advise. But whatever you decide, I pray heaven it may be to your advantage.