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 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 mutual 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
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 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, not only by cities, but also
by provinces, for subjection? Are not the Euboean States governed now
by despots, and that in an island near to Thebes and Athens? Does he not
expressly write in his epistles, "I am at peace with those who are
willing to obey me?" Nor does he write so and not act accordingly. He is
gone to the Hellespont; he marched formerly against Ambracia; Elis, such
an important city in Peloponnesus, he possesses; he plotted lately to
get Megara: neither Hellenic nor barbaric land contains the man's
ambition.

And we the Greek community, seeing and hearing this, instead of sending
embassies to one another about it and expressing indignation, are in
such a miserable state, so intrenched in our separate towns, that to
this day we can attempt nothing that interest or necessity requires; we
cannot combine, or form any association for succor and alliance; we look
unconcernedly on the man's growing power, each resolving, methinks, to
enjoy the interval that another is destroyed in, not caring or striving
for the salvation of Greece: for none can be ignorant that Philip, like
some course or attack of fever or other disease, is coming even on those
that yet