Would you but even now, renouncing these practices, perform military
service and act worthily of yourselves; would you employ these domestic
superfluities as a means to gain advantage abroad; perhaps, Athenians,
perhaps you might gain some solid and important advantage, and be rid of
these perquisites, which are like the diet ordered by physicians for the
sick. As that neither imparts strength, nor suffers the patient to die,
so your allowances are not enough to be of substantial benefit, nor yet
permit you to reject them and turn to something else. Thus do they
increase the general apathy. What? I shall be asked: mean you
stipendiary service? Yes, and forthwith the same arrangement for all,
Athenians, that each, taking his dividend from the public, may be what
the state requires. Is peace to be had? You are better at home, under no
compulsion to act dishonorably from indigence. Is there such an
emergency as the present? Better to be a soldier, as you ought, in your
country's cause, maintained by those very allowances. Is any one of you
beyond the military age? What he now irregularly takes without doing
service, let him take by just regulation, superintending and transacting
needful business. Thus, without derogating from or adding to our
political system, only removing some irregularity, I bring it into
order, establishing a uniform rule for receiving money, for serving in
war, for sitting on juries, for doing what each according to his age can
do, and what occasion requires. I never advise we should give to idlers
the wages of the diligent, or sit at leisure, passive and helpless, to
hear that such a one's mercenaries are victorious; as we now do. Not
that I blame any one who does you a service: I only call upon you,
Athenians, to perform on your own account those duties for which you
honor strangers, and not to surrender that post of dignity which, won
through many glorious dangers, your ancestors have bequeathed.