Only it is my opinion that we must provide soldiers and that there must be one uniform system of pay in return for service. Your opinion, however, is that you should, without any trouble, just appropriate the money for your festivals.The Theoric Fund had been instituted by Pericles, nominally to enable the poorer citizens to attend the public festivals. It would seem that definite sums were alloted to the various departments of State expenditure, and the surplus was at the disposal of the democracy for special military or other objects. Somewhere about 354 Eubulus, who was one of the board which controlled the Theoric Fund, carried a law appropriating to it the whole of the surplus revenue. He does not seem to have starved the defensive services, but he left no provision for a war, except by means of an extraordinary levy or ἐσφορά. Either in 360, or perhaps in 349 before the delivery of the third Olynthiac, an attempt to revert to the earlier arrangement was followed by the usual γραφὴ παρανόμων, and Eubulus is alleged to have confirmed the bad system by making it a capital offence even to propose a diversion of the fund. Demosthenes approaches the subject with a studied show of embarrassment. Then the only alternative is a war-tax, heavy or light, as circumstances demand. Only money we must have, and without money nothing can be done that ought to be done. There are other proposals before you for raising supplies; choose whichever of them you think expedient, and, while there is yet time, grapple with the problem.

It is worth while, however, to observe and consider how Philip stands today. His present prospects are not so bright or satisfactory as they seem and as a superficial observer might pronounce them; nor would he ever have provoked this war had he thought that he would be bound to fight himself. He hoped that on his first entry he would carry all before him, and he finds himself completely mistaken. This unforeseen result confounds and discourages him; and besides there is the question of Thessaly.

The Thessalians were always, of course, born traitors, and Philip finds them today just what everyone has found them in the past. They have formally resolved to demand the restitution of Pagasae and have hindered him from fortifying Magnesia. I have also been informed that they will no longer hand over to him the profits of their harbors and markets, on the ground that this sum ought to be applied to the government of Thessaly and not find its way into Philip’s coffers. Now if he is deprived of this source of revenue, he will be hard put to it to pay for the maintenance of his mercenaries.