purpose come to execrate those who address you in his interest,
remembering that it is impossible to master the enemies of the city, until
you punish those who are serving them in the city itself. {54} And this,
before God and every Heavenly Power--this you will not be able to do; for
you have reached such a pitch of folly or distraction or--I know not what
to call it; for often has the fear actually entered my mind, that some
more than mortal power may be driving our fortunes to ruin--that to enjoy
their abuse, or their malice, or their jests, or whatever your motive may
chance to be, you call upon men to speak who are hirelings, and some of
whom would not even deny it; and you laugh to hear their abuse of others.
{55} And terrible as this is, there is yet worse to be told. For you have
actually made political life safer for these men, than for those who
uphold your own cause. And yet observe what calamities the willingness to
listen to such men lays up in store. I will mention facts known to you
all.

{56} In Olynthus, among those who were engaged in public affairs, there
was one party who were on the side of Philip, and served his interests in
everything; and another whose aim was their city's real good, and the
preservation of their fellow citizens from bondage. Which were the
destroyers of their country? which betrayed the cavalry, through whose
betrayal Olynthus perished? Those whose sympathies were with Philip's
cause; those who, while the city still existed brought such dishonest and
slanderous charges against the speakers whose advice was for the best,
that, in the case of Apollonides at least, the people of Olynthus was even
induced to banish the accused.

{57} Nor is this instance of the unmixed evil wrought by these practices
in the case of the Olynthians an exceptional one, or without parallel
elsewhere. For in Eretria,[n] when Plutarchus and the mercenaries had been