To Philip (71-75)

If all this should come to pass, would you not have good reason to be proud? Would you not rejoice throughout your life in the knowledge that you had been a leader in such great affairs? And what man that is even moderately endowed with reason would not exhort you to fix your choice above all upon that course of action which is capable of bearing at one and the same time the twofold fruits, if I may so speak, of surpassing joys and of imperishable honors?

Now I should content myself with what I have already said on this topic, had I not passed over a certain matter—not that it slipped my memory, but because I hesitated to speak of it—which I am now resolved to disclose to you. For I think that it is profitable for you to hear about it, and that it is becoming in me to speak, as I am wont to do, without reserve.

I observe that you are being painted in false colors by men who are jealous of you,[*] for one thing, and are, besides, in the habit of stirring up trouble in their own cities—men who look upon a state of peace which is for the good of all as a state of war upon their selfish interests. Heedless of all other considerations, they keep talking about your power, representing that it is being built up, not in behalf of Hellas, but against her, that you have for a long time been plotting against us all,

and that, while you are giving it out that you intend to go to the rescue of the Messenians,[*] if you can settle the Phocian question, you really design to subdue the Peloponnesus to your rule. The Thessalians,[*] they say, and the Thebans, and all those who belong to the Amphictyony,[*] stand ready to follow your lead while the Argives, the Messenians, the Megalopolitans,[*] and many of the others are prepared to join forces with you and wipe out the Lacedaemonians; and if you succeed in doing this, you will easily be master of the rest of Hellas.

By speaking this rubbish, by pretending to have exact knowledge and by speedily effecting in words the overthrow of the whole world, they are convincing many people. They convince, most of all, those who hunger for the same calamities as do the speech-makers; next, those who exercise no judgement about their common welfare, but, utterly obtuse in their own perceptions, are very grateful to men who pretend to feel alarm and fear in their behalf; and lastly, those who do not deny that you appear to be plotting against the Hellenes, but are of the opinion that the purpose with which you are charged is a worthy ambition.