Greeks are jealous and quarreling among themselves, that it was far more
wonderful for him to rise from that insignificance, than it would now
be, after so many acquisitions, to conquer what is left; these and
similar matters, which I might dwell upon, I pass over. But I observe
that all people, beginning with you, have conceded to him a right, which
in former times has been the subject of contest in every Grecian war.
And what is this? The right of doing what he pleases, openly fleecing
and pillaging the Greeks, one after another, attacking and enslaving
their cities. You were at the head of the Greeks for seventy-three
years, [Footnote: This would be from about the end of the Persian war to
the end of the Peloponnesian, B. C. 405. Isocrates speaks of the Athenian
sway as having lasted sixty-five or seventy years. But statements of
this kind are hardly intended to be made with perfect accuracy. In the
third Olynthiac, as we have seen, Demosthenes says, the Athenians had
the leadership by _consent of the Greeks_ for forty-five years.
This would exclude the Peloponnesian war.] the Lacedaemonians for
twenty-nine; [Footnote: From the end of the Peloponnesian war to the
battle of Naxos, B. C. 376.] and the Thebans had some power in these
latter times after the battle of Leuctra. Yet neither you, my
countrymen, nor Thebans nor Lacedaemonians, were ever licensed by the
Greeks to act as you pleased; far otherwise. When you, or rather the
Athenians at that time, appeared to be dealing harshly with certain
people, all the rest, even such as had no complaint against Athens,
thought proper to side with the injured parties in a war against her.
So, when the Lacedaemonians became masters and succeeded to your empire,
on their attempting to encroach and make oppressive innovations,
[Footnote: The Spartans, whose severe military discipline rendered them
far the best soldiers in Greece, were totally unfit to manage the
empire, at the head of which they found themselves after the humiliation
of Athens. Their attempt to force an oligarchy upon every dependent
state was an unwise policy, which made them generally odious. The
decemvirates of Lysander, and the governors ([Greek: _armostai_])
established in various Greek cities to maintain Lacedaemonian influence,
were regarded as instruments of tyranny. It was found that Spartan
governors and generals, when away from home, gave loose to their vicious
inclinations, as if to indemnify themselves for the strictness of
domestic discipline. It became a maxim in their politics, that the end
justified the means. The most flagrant proof was given by the seizure of
the Cadmea at Thebes; a measure, which led to a formidable confederacy
against Sparta, and brought her to the verge of destruction.] a general
war was declared against them, even by such as had no cause of
complaint. But wherefore mention other people? We ourselves and the
Lacedaemonians, although at the outset we could not allege any natural
injuries, thought proper to make war for the injustice that we saw done
to our neighbors. Yet all the faults committed by the Spartans in those
thirty years, and by our ancestors in the seventy, are less, men of
Athens, than the wrongs which, in thirteen incomplete years that Philip
has been uppermost, [Footnote: _I. e._ in power; but, as Smead, an
American editor, truly observes, [Greek: _epipolyxei_] has a
contemptuous signification, Jacobs: _oben schwimmt_. The thirteen
years are reckoned from the time when Philip's interference in Thessaly
began; before which he had not assumed an important character in
southern Greece.] he has inflicted on the Greeks: nay they are scarcely
a fraction of these, as may easily be shown in a few words. Olynthus and
Methone and Apollonia, and thirty-two cities [Footnote: The Chalcidian
cities.] on the borders of Thrace, I pass over; all which he has so
cruelly destroyed, that a visitor could hardly tell if they were ever
inhabited: and of the Phocians, so considerable a people exterminated, I
say nothing. But what is the condition of Thessaly? Has he not taken
away her constitutions and her cities, and established tetrarchies, to
parcel her out, [Footnote: This statement does not disagree with the
mention of the [Greek: _dekadarchia_] in the second Philippic.
Supposing that Thessaly was not only divided into tetrarchics, four
provinces or cantons, but also governed by decemvirates of Philip's