Demosthenes

“ You are no better than men modelling puppets of clay. Your captains and your cavalry-officers are elected to be displayed in the streets, not to be sent to the war. 27 Surely, men of Athens, your captains should be elected from among yourselves, and your master-of-the-horse from among yourselves; your officers should be your own countrymen, if the force is to be really the army of Athens. As it is, the master-of-the-horse who is one of yourselves has to sail to Lemnos; while the master-of-the-horse with the army that is fighting to defend the possessions of Athens is Menelaus. ”

“ Surely the strongest necessity that a free people can experience is the shame which they must feel at their position! What? Do you want to go round asking one another, 'Is there any news?' Could there be any stranger news than that a man of Macedonia is defeating Athenians in war, and ordering the affairs of the Hellenes? 11 'Is Philip dead?' 'No, but he is sick.' And what difference does it make to you? For if anything should happen to him, you will soon raise up for yourselves a second Philip, if it is thus that you attend to your interests. ”

“ I am told that Athens once maintained a mercenary force in Corinth, [7] under the command of Polystratus, Iphicrates, Chabrias and others, and that you yourselves joined in the campaign with them; and I remember hearing that these mercenaries, when they took the field with you, and you with them, were victorious over the Spartans. But even since your mercenary forces have gone to war alone, it is your friends and allies that they conquer, while your enemies have grown more powerful than they should be. ”

“ But if attractive words, spoken out of season, bring their punishment in actual reality, then it is disgraceful to blind our eyes to the truth, to put off everything that is unpleasant, 39 to refuse to understand even so much as this, that those who conduct war rightly must not follow in the wake of events, but must be beforehand with them: for just as a general may be expected to lead his army, so those who debate must lead the course of affairs, in order that what they resolve upon may be done, and that they may not be forced to follow at the heels of events. ”

“ If, men of Athens, you first supply the sum I have mentioned, and then, after making ready the rest of the armament—soldiers, ships, cavalry—bind the whole force in its entirety, [13] by law, to remain at the seat of war; if you become your own paymasters, your own commissioners of supply, but require your general to account for the actual operations; 34 then there will be an end of these perpetual discussions of one and the same theme, which end in nothing but discussion: and in addition to this, men of Athens, you will, in the first place, deprive him of his chief source of supply. ”

“ But whenever you dispatch anywhere a general with an empty resolution and some platform-hopes to support him, then you achieve nothing that you ought to achieve, your enemies laugh at you, and your allies are in deadly fear of all such armaments. 46 It is impossible, utterly impossible, that any one man should be able to effect all that you wish for you. ”

“ So shameful is the pass which matters have now reached, that each of your generals is tried for his life before you two or three times, but does not dare to fight in mortal combat with the enemy even once. They prefer the death of kidnappers and brigands to that of a general. 48 For it is a felon's death, to die by sentence of the court: the death of a general is to fall in battle with the enemy. Some of us go about saying that Philip is negotiating with Sparta [22] for the overthrow of the Thebans and the breaking up of the free states ”

“ This also I will state and demonstrate, as soon as I have given you my reasons for thinking that a force of this size is sufficient, and for insisting that those who serve in it shall be citizens.
23 The size of the force, men of Athens, is determined by the fact that we cannot at present provide an army capable of meeting Philip in the open field; we must make plundering forays, and our warfare must at first be of a predatory nature. Consequently the force must not be over-big—we could then neither pay nor feed it—any more than it must be wholly insignificant. ”

“ If he were content to remain at peace, in possession of all that he has won by conquest or by forestalling us—if he had no further plans—even then, the record against us as a people, a record of shame and cowardice and all that is most dishonourable, would, I think, seem complete enough to some of you. ”

“ I am quite certain that, given so much, the army will provide everything else for itself from the proceeds of war, without injury to a single Hellene or ally of ours, and that the full pay will be made up by these means. ”

“ Now, however, all such feelings are cowed before him: your slothful apathy has taken away their only rallying point; and it is this apathy that I bid you put off to-day. 9 Mark the situation, men of Athens: mark the pitch which the man's outrageous insolence has reached, when he does not even give you a choice between action and inaction, but threatens you, and utters (as we are told) haughty language: for he is not the man to rest content in possession of his conquests: he is always casting his net wider ”

“ We must have a permanent force and armament. As our winter-stations for the army we have Lemnos, Thasos, Sciathos, and the islands in that region, which have harbours and corn, and are well supplied with all that an army needs. And as to the time of year, whenever it is easy to approach the shore and the winds are not dangerous, our force can without difficulty lie close to the Macedonian coast itself, and block the mouths of the ports. ”

“ It is not those whose cry is 'At once', 'To-day', whose proposals will meet our need; for what has already happened cannot be prevented by any expedition now. 15 It is rather he who can show the nature, the magnitude, and the financial possibility of a force which when provided will be able to continue in existence either until we are persuaded to break off the war, or until we have overcome the enemy ”

“ The Olynthians in consequence made a treaty with Philip, who gave them Anthemus and promised to help them against their old rival Poteidaea, a town in alliance with Athens. The Olynthians on their part agreed not to make peace with Athens except in conjunction with him. But Philip, when he had captured Amphipolis by a combination of siege and intrigue, did not give it up to Athens, and instead of waiting to receive Pydna from Athens, besieged and took it, aided once more by treachery from within. ”

“ He also has those who hate him and fear him, men of Athens, and envy him too, even among those who now seem to be his closest friends. All the feelings that exist in any other body of men must be supposed to exist in Philip's supporters. ”

“ Philip acknowledged the title of Athens to Amphipolis, and sent home the Athenian prisoners, whom he had captured among the supporters of Argaeus, without ransom. The Athenians, however, neglected to garrison Amphipolis. In 358 (the year in which Athens temporarily recovered her hold over Euboea, by compelling the Thebans to evacuate the island) , Philip carried on a successful campaign against the Paeonian and Illyrian tribes, who were standing enemies of Macedonia. For the next three years Athens was kept occupied by the war with her allies, and Philip saw his opportunity. ”

“ The number of mercenaries—but you must not repeat the mistake which has so often injured you, the mistake of, first, thinking any measures inadequate, and so voting for the largest proposal, and then, when the time for action comes, not even executing the smaller one ”

“ In the latter part of 356 and in 355 he was occupied with the conquest of the Paeonians and Illyrians, with whom Athens had made an alliance in 356. At the end of 355 he laid siege to Methone, the last Athenian port on the Thermaic gulf, and captured it in 354. (Some place the siege and capture of Methone in 354-3, but an inscription, C.I.G. II. 70, makes it at least probable that the siege had begun by the last month of 355.) In 353 Philip made his way to the Thracian coast, and conquered Abdera and Maroneia. ”

“ The offices were imposed by law upon men who possessed a certain estate, but any one who felt that another could bear the burden better might challenge him either to perform the duty or to exchange property with him. (See Appendix to Goodwin's edition of Demosthenes' Speech against Meidias.) ”

“ The Paeonian and Illyrian chieftains also made alliance with Athens in 356.↑ "to Euboea". See Speech for Megalopolitans, Sec. 14 n.↑ "to Haliartus". in 395, when Athens sent a force to aid the Thebans against the Spartans under Lysander. (For other allusions see Introd. to the Speech.) ↑ "paper-armies" ( [Greek: epistolimaious ... dynameis] ) : lit. 'armies existing in dispatches.'↑ "Athens once maintained", &c. The reference is to the Corinthian war of 394-387 B.C. The Athenian general Iphicrates organized a mercenary force of peltasts in support of Corinth, and did great damage to Sparta ”