On The Crown   

alliance as you just now described, did you once raise a protest or come
forward to give information and to set forth the crimes with which you now
charge me? {23} If I had covenanted with Philip for money that I would
prevent the coalition of the Hellenes, your only course was to refuse to
keep silence--to cry aloud, to protest, to reveal the fact to your fellow
countrymen. On no occasion did you do this: no such utterance of yours was
ever heard by any one. In fact there was no embassy away at the time on a
mission to any Hellenic state; the Hellenes had all long ago been tried
and found wanting;[n] and in all that he has said upon this matter there
is not a single sound word. {24} And, apart from that, his falsehoods
involve the greatest calumnies upon this city. For if you were at one and
the same time convoking the Hellenes with a view to war, and sending
ambassadors yourselves to Philip to discuss peace, it was a deed for a
Eurybatus,[n] not a task for a state or for honest men, that you were
carrying out. But that is not the case; indeed it is not. For what could
possibly have been your object in summoning them at that moment? Was it
with a view to peace? But they all had peace already. Or with a view to
war? But you were yourselves discussing peace. It is therefore evident
that neither was it I that introduced or was responsible for the Peace in
its original shape, nor is one of all the other falsehoods which he told
of me shown to be true.

{25} Again, consider the course of action which, when the city had
concluded the Peace, each of us now chose to adopt. For from this you will
know who it was that co-operated with Philip throughout, and who it was
that acted in your interest and sought the good of the city. As for me, I
proposed, as a member of the Council, that the ambassadors should sail as
quickly as possible to any district in which they should ascertain Philip
to be, and receive his oath from him. {26} But even when I had carried
this resolution, they would not act upon it. What did this mean, men of
Athens? I will inform you. Philip's interest required that the interval
before he took the oath should be as long as possible; yours, that it
should be as short as possible. And why? Because you broke off all your
preparations for the war, not merely from the day when he took the oath,
but from the day when you first hoped that Peace would be made; and for
his part, this was what he was all along working for; for he thought (and
with truth) that whatever places he could snatch from Athens before he
took the oath, would remain securely his, since no one would break the
Peace for their sake. {27} Foreseeing and calculating upon this, men of
Athens, I proposed this decree--that we should sail to any district in
which Philip might be, and receive his oath as soon as possible, in order
that the oaths might be taken while the Thracians, your allies, were still
in possession of those strongholds[n] of which Aeschines just now spoke
with contempt--Serrhium, Myrtenum, and Ergiske; and that Philip might not
snatch from us the keys of the country and make himself master of Thrace,
nor obtain an abundant supply of money and of soldiers, and so proceed
without difficulty to the prosecution of his further designs. {28} And
now, instead of citing or reading this decree he slanders me on the ground
that I thought fit, as a member of the Council, to introduce the envoys.
But what should I have done? Was I to propose _not_ to introduce those who
had come for the express purpose of speaking with you? or to order the
lessee of the theatre not to assign them seats? But they would have
watched the play from the threepenny seats,[n] if this decree had not been
proposed. Should I have guarded the interests of the city in petty
details, and sold them wholesale, as my opponents did? Surely not. (_To
the clerk_.) Now take this decree, which the prosecutor passed over,
though he knew it well, and read it.

{29} [_The decree of Demosthenes is read_.]

{30} Though I had carried this decree, and was seeking the good not of
Philip, but of the city, these worthy ambassadors paid little heed to it,
but sat idle in Macedonia for three whole months,[n] until Philip arrived
from Thrace, after subduing the whole country; when they might, within ten