Of this truth I might cite examples without number from the lives of individual men, since these are subject to the most frequent vicissitudes; but instances which are more important and better known to my hearers may be drawn from the experiences of our city and of the Lacedaemonians. As for the Athenians, after our city had been laid waste by the barbarians, we became, because we were anxious about the future and gave attention to our affairs, the foremost of the Hellenes;Athens, then a walled city, was temporarily abandoned by her people before the battle of Salamis, and destroyed by the troops of Xerxes. After the Persian Wars, she became the head of the Confederacy of Delos. See Isoc. 6.42 ff., and Isoc. 4.71-72. whereas, when we imagined that our power was invincible, we barely escaped being enslaved.At the end of the Peloponnesian War, Athens was at the mercy of Sparta and the Spartan allies. The latter proposed that Athens be utterly destroyed and her citizens sold into slavery, but the Spartans refused to allow the city “which had done a great service to Hellas” to be reduced to slavery. Xen. Hell. 2.2.19-20. Cf. Isoc. 8.78, 105; Isoc. 14.32; Isoc. 15.319.

Likewise the Lacedaemonians, after having set out in ancient times from obscure and humble cities, made themselves, because they lived temperately and under military discipline, masters of the Peloponnesus;See Isoc. 4.61; Isoc. 12.253 ff. whereas later, when they grew overweening and seized the empire both of the sea and of the land, they fell into the same dangers as ourselves.The Spartan supremacy began with the triumph over Athens in 404 B.C. and ended with the defeat at Leuctra, 371 B.C. See Vol I. p. 402, footnote. Cf. Isoc. 5.47. After Leuctra, Athens, in her turn, saved Sparta from destruction. See Isoc. 5.44 and note.

Whoever, therefore, knowing that such great vicissitudes have taken place and that such mighty powers have been so quickly brought to naught, yet trusts in our present circumstances, is all too foolish,For the language cf. Isoc. 6.48. especially since Athens is now in a much less favorable condition than she was at that time, while the hatredBy the bitter “Social War.” See General Introduction p. xxxviii. of us among the Hellenes and the enmityIn the course of the “Social War,” the Athenian general Chares had aided the satrap Artabazus in his revolt against Artaxerxes III. See Diodorus xvi. 22. of the great King, which then brought disaster to our arms, have been again revived.

I am in doubt whether to suppose that you care nothing for the public welfare or that you are concerned about it, but have become so obtuse that you fail to see into what utter confusion our city has fallen. For you resemble men in that state of mind—you who have lost all the cities in Thrace,Not all the cities on the northern coast of the Aegean (Thrace), but those on the Chalcidian peninsula, notably Amphipolis Pydna, Potidaea, and Olynthus, which had fallen under the power or under the influence of Philip of Macedon. See Dem. 4.4. squandered to no purpose more than a thousand talents on mercenary troops,Athenian forces were now largely made up of paid foreigners, recruited from everywhere. See Isoc. 8.44-47; Dem. 4.20.

provoked the ill-will of the Hellenes and the hostility of the barbarians, and, as if this were not enough, have been compelled to save the friends of the ThebansProbably the Messenians, who had been made independent of Sparta by the Thebans. See Introduction to Isoc. 6.. Demosthenes, in his speech , criticizes the Athenians for their folly in pledging themselves to aid the Messenians against Spartan aggression. See especially Dem. 16.9. at the cost of losing our own alliesSuch powerful states as Chios, Byzantium, and Rhodes were lost to the Athenian Confederacy by the peace following the “Social War.” Of the seventy-five cities which belonged to the Confederacy the majority remained loyal. See Isoc. 7.2.; and yet to celebrate the good news of such accomplishments we have twice now offered grateful sacrifices to the gods,Diodorus (Dio. Sic. 16.22) records the celebration in Athens of the victory of Chares, supporting the rebellion of the Satrap Artabazus, over Artaxerxes III. See § 8, note. The occasion of the second celebration is not known. and we deliberate about our affairs more complaisantly than men whose actions leave nothing to be desired!