The Public Record
A variety of circumstances may have brought us to this state; our affairs have not declined from one or two causes only; but, if you rightly examine, you will find it chiefly owing to the orators, who study to please you rather than advise…
The result has been, that in the assembly you give yourselves airs and are flattered at hearing nothing but compliments, in your measures and proceedings you are brought to the utmost peril.
If such be your disposition now, I must be silent: if you will listen to good advice without flattery, I am ready to speak.
For though our affairs are in a deplorable condition, though many sacrifices have been made, still, if you will choose to perform your duty, it is possible to repair it all.
The general commands wretched unpaid hirelings; here are persons easily found, who tell you lies of his conduct; you vote at random from what you hear: what then can be expected?
People who would never have harmed him, though they might have adopted measures of defense, he chose to deceive rather than warn them of his attack; and think ye he would declare war against you before he began it, and that while you are…
O heavens! would any rational being judge by words rather than by actions, who is at peace with him and who at war?
Don't say--what does it signify? how is the state concerned?--Whether it be a trifling matter, or of no concernment to you, is a different question: religion and justice have the same obligation, be the subject of the offense great or…
But that you will not say: for whoever contrives and prepares the means for my conquest, is at war with me, before he darts or draws the bow.
Defend yourselves instantly, and I say you will be wise: delay it, and you may wish in vain to do so hereafter.
Yet neither you, my countrymen, nor Thebans nor Lacedaemonians, were ever licensed by the Greeks to act as you pleased; far otherwise.
Their attempt to force an oligarchy upon every dependent state was an unwise policy, which made them generally odious.
We ourselves and the Lacedaemonians, although at the outset we could not allege any natural injuries, thought proper to make war for the injustice that we saw done to our neighbors.
From the same persuasion he befriended lately the Messenians and Argives, which is the highest panegyric upon you, Athenians; for you are adjudged by these proceedings to be the only people incapable of betraying for lucre the national…
But the forefathers of the Argives and Thebans, they either joined the barbarian's army, or did not oppose it; and therefore he knows that both will selfishly embrace their advantage, without considering the common interest of the Greeks.
He thought then, if he chose your friendship, it must be on just principles; if he attached himself to them he should find auxiliaries of his ambition.
He that bids the Lacedaemonians resign Messene, how can he pretend, when he delivered Orchomenos and Coronea to the Thebans, to have acted on a conviction of justice?
The Lacedaemonians, who are enemies of Thebes, he overthrows; the Phocians, whom he himself before destroyed, will he now preserve?
I can not think that Philip, either if he was forced into his former measures, or if he were now giving up the Thebans, would pertinaciously oppose their enemies; his present conduct rather shows that he adopted those measures by choice.
In truth, these too close connections with despots are not safe for republics.
You behold Philip, I said, a dispenser of gifts and promises: pray, if you are wise, that you may never know him for a cheat and a deceiver.
Will ye not beware, I said, lest, seeking deliverance from war, you find a master?
But I imagine that what Philip is doing will grieve you hereafter more than it does now.
Politicians like Demosthenes
