fore. Less do I say? {26} They are not a fraction of them. [A few words
will easily prove this.] I say nothing of Olynthus, and Methone, and
Apollonia, and thirty-two cities in the Thracian region,[n] all
annihilated by him with such savagery, that a visitor to the spot would
find it difficult to tell that they had ever been inhabited. I remain
silent in regard to the extirpation of the great Phocian race. But what is
the condition of Thessaly? Has he not robbed their very cities of their
governments,[n] and set up tetrarchies, that they may be enslaved, not
merely by whole cities, but by whole tribes at a time? {27} Are not the
cities of Euboea even now ruled by tyrants, and that in an island that is
neighbour to Thebes and Athens? Does he not write expressly in his
letters, 'I am at peace with those who choose to obey me'? And what he
thus writes he does not fail to act upon; for he is gone to invade the
Hellespont; he previously went to attack Ambracia;[n] the great city of
Elis[n] in the Peloponnese is his; he has recently intrigued against
Megara;[n] and neither Hellas nor the world beyond it is large enough to
contain the man's ambition. {28} But though all of us, the Hellenes, see
and hear these things, we send no representatives to one another to
discuss the matter; we show no indignation; we are in so evil a mood, so
deep have the lines been dug which sever city from city, that up to this
very day we are unable to act as either our interest or our duty require.
{29} We cannot unite; we can form no combination for mutual support or
friendship; but we look on while the man grows greater, because every one
has made up his mind (as it seems to me) to profit by the time during
which his neighbour is being ruined, and no one cares or acts for the
safety of the Hellenes. For we all know that Philip is like the recurrence
or the attack of a fever or other illness, in his descent upon those who
fancy themselves for the present well out of his reach. {30} And further,
you must surely realize that all the wrongs that the Hellenes suffered
from the Spartans or ourselves they at least suffered at the hands of