home to you. {33} For your politicians, men of Athens, should have treated
you in exactly the opposite way to this; they should train you to be kind
and sympathetic in your assemblies; for there it is with the members of
your own body and your own allies that your case is argued: but your
terrors and your severity should be displayed in your preparations for
war, where the struggle is with your enemies and your rivals. {34} As it
is, by their popular speeches, and by courting your favour to excess, they
have brought you into such a condition that, while in your assemblies you
give yourselves airs and enjoy their flattery, listening to nothing but
what is meant to please you, in the world of facts and events you are in
the last extremity of peril. Imagine, in God's name, what would happen, if
the Hellenes were to call you to account for the opportunities which, in
your indolence, you have now let pass, and were to put to you the
question, {35} 'Is it true, men of Athens, that you send envoys to us on
every possible occasion, to tell us of Philip's designs against ourselves
and all the Hellenes, and of the duty of keeping guard against the man,
and to warn us in every way?' We should have to confess that it was true.
We do act thus. 'Then,' they would proceed, 'is it true, you most
contemptible of all men, that though the man has been away for ten months,
{36} and has been cut off from every possibility of returning home, by
illness and by winter and by wars, you have neither liberated Euboea nor
recovered any of your own possessions? Is it true that you have remained
at home, unoccupied and healthy--if such a word can be used of men who
behave thus--and have seen him set up two tyrants in Euboea, one to serve
as a fortress directly menacing Attica, the other to watch Sciathus; {37}
and that you have not even rid yourselves of these dangers--granted that
you did not want to do anything more--but have let them be? Obviously you
have retired in his favour, and have made it evident that if he dies ten
times over, you will not make any move the more. Why trouble us then with
your embassies and your accusations?' If they speak thus to us, what will