{34} No one resists even the aggressions which are committed against
himself. Ambracia and Leucas belong to the Corinthians--he has attacked
them: Naupactus to the Achaeans--he has sworn to hand it over to the
Aetolians: Echinus[n] to the Thebans--he has taken it from them, and is
now marching against their allies the Byzantines--is it not so? {35} And
of our own possessions, to pass by all the rest, is not Cardia, the
greatest city in the Chersonese, in his hands? Thus are we treated; and we
are all hesitating and torpid, with our eyes upon our neighbours,
distrusting one another, rather than the man whose victims we all are. But
if he treats us collectively in this outrageous fashion, what do you think
he will do, when he has become master of each of us separately?

{36} What then is the cause of these things? For as it was not without
reason and just cause that the Hellenes in old days were so prompt for
freedom, so it is not without reason or cause that they are now so prompt
to be slaves. There was a spirit, men of Athens, a spirit in the minds of
the people in those days, which is absent to-day--the spirit which
vanquished the wealth of Persia, which led Hellas in the path of freedom,
and never gave way in face of battle by sea or by land; a spirit whose
extinction to-day has brought universal ruin and turned Hellas upside
down. What was this spirit? [It was nothing subtle nor clever.] {37} It
meant that men who took money from those who aimed at dominion or at the
ruin of Hellas were execrated by all; that it was then a very grave thing
to be convicted of bribery; that the punishment for the guilty man was the
heaviest that could be inflicted; that for him there could be no plea for
mercy, nor hope of pardon. {38} No orator, no general, would then sell the
critical opportunity whenever it arose--the opportunity so often offered
to men by fortune, even when they are careless and their foes are on their
guard. They did not barter away the harmony between people and people, nor
their own mistrust of the tyrant and the foreigner, nor any of these high