re the national
rights of Greece, or bartering your attachment to her for any obligation
or benefit. And this opinion of you he has naturally formed, not only
from a view of present times, but by reflection on the past. For
assuredly he finds and hears that your ancestors, who might have
governed the rest of Greece on terms of submitting to Persia, not only
spurned the proposal when Alexander, this man's ancestor, came as herald
to negotiate, but preferred to abandon their country and endure any
suffering, and thereafter achieved such exploits as all the world loves
to remember,--though none could ever speak them worthily, and therefore
I must be silent, for their deeds are too mighty to be uttered in words.
But the forefathers of the Thebans either joined the barbarian's army or
did not oppose it; and therefore he knows that they will selfishly
embrace their advantage, without considering the common interest of the
Greeks. He thought then if he chose your friendship, it must be on just
principles; if he attached himself to them, he should find auxiliaries
of his ambition. This is the reason of his preferring them to you both
then and now. For certainly he does not see them with a larger navy than
you, nor has he acquired an inland empire and renounced that of the sea
and the ports, nor does he forget the professions and promises on which
he obtained the peace.

I cannot think that Philip, either if he was forced into his former
measures, or if he were now giving up the Thebans, would pertinaciously
oppose their enemies; his present conduct rather shows that he adopted
those measures by choice. All things prove to a correct observer that
his whole plan of action is against our state. And this has now become
to him a sort of necessity. Consider. He desires empire; he conceives
you to be his only opponents. He has been for some time wronging you, as
his own conscience best informs him, since, by retaining what belongs to
you, he secures the rest of his dominion. He knows that he is plotting
against you, and that you are aware of it; and supposing you to have
intelligence, he thinks you must hate him; he is alarmed, expecting some
disaster, unless he hastens to prevent you. Therefore he is awake and on
the watch against us; he courts certain people, who from cupidity, he
thinks, will be satisfied with the present, and from dullness of
understanding will foresee none of the consequences.

I imagine that what Philip is doin