On The Peace   

theatre, instead of discussing the vital interests of a whole State, you could
not have listened with more partiality towards him, or more prejudice against
me.

{8} And yet, I believe, you have all now realized that though, according to
his own assertion, this visit to the enemy's country was paid in order that he
might get in the debts owing to him there, and return with funds to perform his
public service[n] here; though he was always repeating the statement that it was
monstrous to accuse those who were transferring their means from Macedonia to
Athens; yet, when the Peace had removed all danger, he converted his real estate
here into money, and took himself off with it to Philip.

{9} These then are two
events which I have foretold--events which, because their real character was
exactly and faithfully disclosed by me, are a testimony to the speeches which I
have delivered. A third, men of Athens, was the following; and when I have given
you this one instance, I will immediately proceed to the subject on which I have
come forward to speak. When we returned from the Embassy, after receiving from
Philip his oath to maintain the Peace,

{10} there were some[n] who promised that
Thespiae and Plataeae[n] would be repeopled, and said that if Philip became
master of the situation, he would save the Phocians, and would break up the city
of Thebes into villages; that Oropus would be yours, and that Euboea would be
restored to you in place of Amphipolis--with other hopes and deceptions of the
same kind, by which you were seduced into sacrificing the Phocians in a manner
that was contrary to your interest and perhaps to your honour also. But as for
me, you will find that neither had I any share in this deception, nor yet did I
hold my peace. On the contrary, I warned you plainly, as, I know you remember,
that _I_ had no knowledge and no expectations of this kind, and that I regarded
such statements as nonsense.

{11} All these plain instances of superior foresight on my part, men of Athens,
I shall not ascribe to any cleverness, any boasted merits, of my own. I will not
pretend that my foreknowledge and discernment are due to any causes but such as
I will name; and they are two. The first, men of Athens, is that good fortune,
which, I observe, is more powerful than all the cleverness and wisdom on earth.

{12} The second is the fact that my judgement and reasoning are disinterested.
No one can point to any personal gain in connexion with my public acts and
words: and therefore I see what is to our interest undistorted, in the light in
which the actual facts reveal it. But when you throw money into one scale of the
balance, its weight carries everything with it; your judgement is instantly
dragged down with it, and one who has acted so can no longer think soundly or
healthily about anything.

{13} Now there is one primary condition which must be observed by any one who
would furnish the city with allies or contributions or anything else--he must do
it without breaking the existing Peace: not because the Peace is at all
admirable or creditable to you, but because, whatever its character, it would
have been better, in the actual circumstances, that it should never have been
made, than that having been made, it should now be broken through our action.
For we have sacrificed many advantages which we possessed when we made it, and
which would have rendered the war safer and easier for us then than it is now.

{14} The second condition, men of Athens, is that we shall not draw on these
self-styled Amphictyons,[n] who are now assembled, until they have an
irresistible or a plausible reason for making a united war against us. My own
belief is that if war broke out again between ourselves and Philip about
Amphipolis or any such claim of our own, in which the Thessalians and Argives
and Thebans had no interest, none of these peoples would go to war against us,
least of all--

{15} and let no one raise a clamour before he hears what I have to