quarter; but let your deliberations be for the safety of all Greece, as
being in the utmost peril. I must tell you why I am so alarmed at the
state of our affairs: that, if my reasonings are correct, you may share
them, and make some provision at least for yourselves, however
disinclined to do so for others: but if, in your judgment, I talk
nonsense and absurdity, you may treat me as crazed, and not listen to
me, either now or in future.

That Philip from a mean and humble origin has grown mighty, that the
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