Hellenes to betray their countrymen; in no other way has he ever succeeded. {24}
Indeed, even such success has done him no good. You will find that no sooner had
he rendered Athens weak,[n] by the help of the Spartans, than he had to fight
for his own kingdom against Clearchus and Cyrus. His successes, therefore, have
not been won in the open field, nor have his plots brought him any good. Now
some of you, I notice, are in the habit of speaking contemptuously of Philip, as
though he were not worth reckoning with; while you dread the king, as a powerful
enemy to any whom he chooses to oppose. But if we are not to defend ourselves
against Philip, because he is so mean a foe, and are to give way in everything
to the king, because he is so formidable, who is there, men of Athens, against
whom we shall ever take the field?

{25} Men of Athens, you have among you those who are particularly skilful in
pleading with you the rights of the rest of the world; and I should be glad to
give them this single piece of advice--that they should seek to plead your
rights with the rest of the world,[n] and so set an example of duty. It is
monstrous to instruct you about rights, without doing right oneself; and it is
not right that a fellow citizen of yours should have studied all the arguments
against you and none of those in your favour. {26} Ask yourselves, in God's
name, why it is that there is no one in Byzantium to tell the Byzantines that
they must not occupy Chalcedon,[n] which belongs to the king and formerly
belonged to you, but upon which they had no sort of claim; or that they must not
make Selymbria, once your ally, a contributory portion of the Byzantine state;
or include the territory of Selymbria[n] within the Byzantine frontier, in
defiance of the sworn treaty which ordains the independence of the cities? {27}
Why was there no one to tell Mausolus, while he lived, and Artemisia after his
death, that they must not occupy Cos and Rhodes and other Hellenic cities as
well, which the king their master ceded to the Hellenes by the treaty,[n] and
for the sake of which the Hellenes of those days faced many a peril and fought
many a gallant fight? Even if there actually are such advisers[n] in both cases,