misfortunes of the Hellenes, that he might win glory from them for
himself, deserved to perish rather than to stand as the accuser of
another; and one who has profited by the very same crisis as the enemies
of the city cannot possibly be loyal to his country. You prove it,
moreover, by the life you live, the actions you do, the measures you take
--and the measures, too, that you do not take. Is anything being done
which seems advantageous to the city? Aeschines is speechless. Has any
obstruction, any untoward event occurred? There you find Aeschines, like a
rupture or a sprain, which wakes into life, so soon as any trouble
overtakes the body.

{199} But since he bears so hardly upon the results, I desire to say what
may even be a paradox; and let no one, in the name of Heaven, be amazed at
the length to which I go, but give a kindly consideration to what I say.
Even if what was to come was plain to all beforehand; even if all foreknew
it; even if you, Aeschines, had been crying with a loud voice in warning
and protestation--you who uttered not so much as a sound; even then, I
say, it was not right for the city to abandon her course, if she had any
regard for her fame, or for our forefathers, or for the ages to come.
{200} As it is, she is thought, no doubt, to have failed to secure her
object--as happens to all alike, whenever God wills it: but then, by
abandoning in favour of Philip her claim to take the lead of others, she
must have incurred the blame of having betrayed them all. Had she
surrendered without a struggle those claims in defence of which our
forefathers faced every imaginable peril, who would not have cast scorn
upon you, Aeschines--upon you, I say; not, I trust, upon Athens nor upon
me? {201} In God's name, with what faces should we have looked upon those
who came to visit the city, if events had come round to the same
conclusion as they now have--if Philip had been chosen as commander and
lord of all, and we had stood apart, while others carried on the struggle
to prevent these things; and that, although the city had never yet in time
past preferred an inglorious security to the hazardous vindication of a
noble cause? {202} What Hellene, what foreigner, does not know, that the
Thebans, and the Spartans, who were powerful still earlier, and the
Persian king would all gratefully and gladly have allowed Athens to take
what she liked and keep all that was her own, if she would do the bidding
of another, and let another take the first place in Hellas? {203} But this
was not, it appears, the tradition of the Athenians; it was not tolerable;
it was not in their nature. From the beginning of time no one had ever yet
succeeded in persuading the city to throw in her lot with those who were
strong, but unrighteous in their dealings, and to enjoy the security of
servitude. Throughout all time she has maintained her perilous struggle
for pre-eminence, honour, and glory. {204} And this policy you look upon
as so lofty, so proper to your own national character, that, of your
forefathers also, it is those who have acted thus that you praise most
highly. And naturally. For who would not admire the courage of those men,
who did not fear to leave their land[n] and their city, and to embark upon
their ships, that they might not do the bidding of another; who chose for
their general Themistocles (who had counselled them thus), and stoned
Cyrsilus to death, when he gave his voice for submission to a master's
orders--and not him alone, for your wives stoned his wife also to death.
{205} For the Athenians of that day did not look for an orator or a
general who would enable them to live in happy servitude; they cared not
to live at all, unless they might live in freedom. For every one of them
felt that he had come into being, not for his father and his mother alone,
but also for his country. And wherein lies the difference? He who thinks
he was born for his parents alone awaits the death which destiny assigns
him in the course of nature: but he who thinks he was born for his country
also will be willing to die, that he may not see her in bondage, and will
look upon the outrages and the indignities that he must needs bear in a
city that is in bondage as more to be dreaded than death.

{206} Now were I attempting to argue that _I_ had induced you to show a
spirit worthy of your forefathers, there is not a man who might not rebuke