On The Crown   

Thrace. First, he requested the Byzantines, his own allies, to join him in
the war against you; and when they refused and said (with truth) that they
had not made their alliance with him for such a purpose, he erected a
stockade against the city, brought up his engines, and proceeded to
besiege it. {88} I will not ask again what you ought to have done when
this was happening; it is manifest to all. But who was it that went to the
rescue of the Byzantines, and saved them? Who was it that prevented the
Hellespont from falling into other hands at that time? It was you, men of
Athens--and when I say 'you', I mean this city. And who was it that spoke
and moved resolutions and acted for the city, and gave himself up
unsparingly to the business of the State? It was I. {89} But of the
immense benefit thus conferred upon all, you no longer need words of mine
to tell you, since you have had actual experience of it. For the war which
then ensued, apart from the glorious reputation that it brought you, kept
you supplied with the necessaries of life in greater plenty and at lower
prices than the present Peace, which these worthy men are guarding to
their country's detriment, in their hopes of something yet to be realized.
May those hopes be disappointed! May they share the fortune which you, who
wish for the best, ask of the gods, rather than cause you to share that
upon which their own choice is fixed! (_To the clerk_.) Read out to the
jury the crowns awarded to the city in consequence of her action by the
Byzantines and by the Perinthians.

{90, 91} [_The decree of the Byzantines is read_.]

{92} Read out also the crowns awarded by the peoples of the Chersonese.

[_The decree of the peoples of the Chersonese is read_.]

{93} Thus the policy which I had adopted was not only successful in saving
the Chersonese and Byzantium, in preventing the Hellespont from falling at
that time into the power of Philip, and in bringing honours to the city in
consequence, but it revealed to the whole world the noble gallantry of
Athens and the baseness of Philip. For all saw that he, the ally of the
Byzantines, was besieging them--what could be more shameful or revolting?
{94} and on the other hand, it was seen that you, who might fairly have
urged many well-founded complaints against them for their inconsiderate
conduct[n] towards you at an earlier period, not only refused to remember
your grudge and to abandon the victims of aggression, but actually
delivered them; and in consequence of this, you won glory and goodwill on
all hands. And further, though every one knows that you have crowned many
public men before now, no one can name any but myself--that is to say, any
public counsellor and orator--for whose merits the city has received a
crown.

{95} In order to prove to you, also, that the slanders which he uttered
against the Euboeans and Byzantines, as he recalled to you any ill-natured
action that they had taken towards you in the past, are disingenuous
calumnies, not only because they are false (for this, I think, you may all
be assumed to know), but also because, however true they might be, it was
still to your advantage to deal with the political situation as I have
done, I desire to describe, and that briefly, one or two of the noble
deeds which this city has done in your own time. For an individual and a
State should strive always, in their respective spheres, to fashion their
future conduct after the highest examples that their past affords. {96}
Thus, men of Athens, at a time when the Spartans were masters of land and
sea,[n] and were retaining their hold, by means of governors and
garrisons, upon the country all round Attica--Euboea, Tanagra, all
Boeotia, Megara, Aegina, Ceos, and the other islands--and when Athens
possessed neither ships nor walls, you marched forth to Haliartus, and
again, not many days later, to Corinth, though the Athenians of that day
might have borne a heavy grudge against both the Corinthians and the
Thebans for the part they had played in reference to the Deceleian War.[n]
{97} But they bore no such grudge. Far from it! And neither of these