To Philip (16-20)

For I am going to advise you to champion the cause of concord among the Hellenes and of a campaign against the barbarian; and as persuasion will be helpful in dealing with the Hellenes, so compulsion will be useful in dealing with the barbarians. This, then, is the general scope of my discourse.

But I must not shrink from telling you plainly of the discouragements I met with from some of my associates; for I think the tale will be somewhat to my purpose. When I disclosed to them my intention of sending you an address whose aim was, not to make a display, nor to extol the wars which you have carried on—for others will do this—but to attempt to urge you to a course of action which is more in keeping with your nature, and more noble and more profitable than any which you have hitherto elected to follow,

they were so dismayed, fearing that because of my old age I had parted with my wits, that they ventured to take me to task—a thing which up to that time they had not been wont to do—insisting that I was applying myself to an absurd and exceedingly senseless undertaking. “Think of it!” they said. “You are about to send an address which is intended to offer advice to Philip, a man who, even if in the past he regarded himself as second to anyone in prudence, cannot now fail, because of the magnitude of his fortunes, to think that he is better able than all others to advise himself!

More than that, he has about him the ablest men in Macedonia, who, however inexperienced they may be in other matters, are likely to know better than you do what is expedient for him. Furthermore, you will find that there are many Hellenes living in his country, who are not unknown to fame or lacking in intelligence, but men by sharing whose counsel he has not diminished his kingdom but has, on the contrary, accomplished deeds which match his dreams.

For what is lacking to complete his success? Has he not converted the Thessalians, whose power formerly extended over Macedonia, into an attitude so friendly to him that every Thessalian has more confidence in him than in his own fellow countrymen? And as to the cities which are in that region, has he not drawn some of them by his benefactions into an alliance with him; and others, which sorely tried him, has he not razed to the ground?