On The Crown   

as they defeated me--and this frequently happened, whatever the reason on
each occasion--so often you went away leaving a resolution recorded in
favour of the enemy. {237} But in spite of all these disadvantages, I won
for you the alliance of the Euboeans, Achaeans, Corinthians, Thebans,
Megareans, Leucadians, and Corcyreans, from whom were collected--apart
from their citizen-troops--15,000 mercenaries and 2,000 cavalry. {238} And
I instituted a money-contribution, on as large a scale as I could. But if
you refer,[n] Aeschines, to what was fair as between ourselves and the
Thebans or the Byzantines or the Euboeans--if at this time you talk to us
of equal shares--you must be ignorant, in the first place, of the fact
that in former days also, out of those ships of war, three hundred [n] in
all, which fought for the Hellenes, Athens provided two hundred, and did
not think herself unfairly used, or let herself be seen arraigning those
who had counselled her action, or taking offence at the arrangement. It
would have been shameful. No! men saw her rendering thanks to Heaven,
because when a common peril beset the Hellenes, she had provided double as
much as all the rest to secure the deliverance of all. {239} Moreover, it
is but a hollow benefit that you are conferring upon your countrymen by
your dishonest charges against me. Why do you tell them _now_, what course
they ought to have taken? Why did you not propose such a course at the
time (for you were in Athens, and were present) if it was possible in the
midst of those critical times, when we had to accept, not what we chose,
but what circumstances allowed; since there was one at hand, bidding
against us, and ready to welcome those whom we rejected, and to pay them
into the bargain.

{240} But if I am accused to-day, for what I have actually done, what if
at the time I had haggled over these details, and the other states had
gone off and joined Philip, and he had become master at once of Euboea and
Thebes and Byzantium? What do you think these impious men would then have
done? {241} What would they have said? Would they not have declared that
the states had been surrendered? that they had been driven away, when they
wished to be on your side? 'See,' they would have said (would they not?),
'he has obtained through the Byzantines the command of the Hellespont and
the control of the corn trade of Hellas; and through the Thebans a trying
border war has been brought into Attica; and owing to the pirates who sail
from Euboea, the sea has become unnavigable,' and much more in addition.
{242} A villainous thing, men of Athens, is the dishonest accuser always--
villainous, and in every way malignant and fault-finding! Aye, and this
miserable creature is a fox by nature, that has never done anything honest
or gentlemanly--a very tragical ape, a clodhopping Oenomaus, a counterfeit
orator! {243} Where is the profit to your country from your cleverness? Do
you instruct us now about things that are past? It is as though a doctor,
when he was paying his visits to the sick, were to give them no advice or
instructions to enable them to become free from their illness, but, when
one of his patients died and the customary offerings[n] were being paid
him, were to explain, as he followed to the tomb, 'if this man had done
such and such things, he would not have died.' Crazy fool! Do you tell us
this _now_?

{244} Nor again will you find that the defeat--if you exult at it, when
you ought to groan, accursed man!--was determined by anything that was
within my control. Consider the question thus. In no place to which I was
sent by you as ambassador, did I ever come away defeated by the
ambassadors of Philip--not from Thessaly nor from Ambracia, not from the
Illyrians nor from the Thracian princes, not from Byzantium nor from any
other place, nor yet, on the last occasion, from Thebes. But every place
in which his ambassadors were defeated in argument, he proceeded to attack
and subdue by force of arms. {245} Do you then require those places at
_my_ hands? Are you not ashamed to jeer at a man as a coward, and in the
same breath to require him to prove superior, by his own unaided efforts,
to the army of Philip--and that with no weapons to use but words? For what
else was at my disposal? I could not control the spirit of each soldier,
or the fortune of the combatants, or the generalship displayed, of which,