Third Olynthiac (31-35)

Now, on the contrary, the politicians hold the purse-strings and manage everything, while you, the people, robbed of nerve and sinew, stripped of wealth and of allies, have sunk to the level of lackeys and hangers-on, content if the politicians gratify you with a dole from the Theoric Fund or a procession at the Boëdromia, and your manliness reaches its climax when you add your thanks for what is your own. They have mewed you up in the city and entice you with these baits, that they may keep you tame and subservient to the whip.

You cannot, I suppose, have a proud and chivalrous spirit, if your conduct is mean and paltry; for whatever a man’s actions are, such must be his spirit. By our Lady, I should not wonder if I got rougher treatment from you for pointing out these faults than the men who are responsible for them. For you do not allow liberty of speech on every subject, and indeed I am surprised that you have allowed it now.

If, therefore, even at the eleventh hour, you can shake off these habits, and consent to fight and act as becomes Athenians and to devote the abundant resources that you have at home to the attainment of success abroad, perhaps, men of Athens, perhaps you may gain some important and unqualified advantage and may be quit of these paltry perquisites. Like the diet prescribed by doctors, which neither restores the strength of the patient nor allows him to succumb, so these doles that you are now distributing neither suffice to ensure your safety nor allow you to renounce them and try something else; they only confirm each citizen in his apathy.

You will ask me if I mean pay for military service. Not only that, men of Athens, but also the immediate adoption of a uniform system, so that each citizen, receiving his quota from the public funds, may fill his proper place in the service of the state. If peace can be preserved, he is better off at home, safe from temptations into which want might lead him. If some such contingency as the present arises, then it is better for him to serve his country in person, as indeed he ought, supported by these same contributions. If anyone is too old to fight, then as overseer or manager of some indispensable work, let him be paid on an equitable system the wages that he now receives without benefit to the state.

In a word, without increasing or lessening our expenditure by more than a trifle, I claim to have removed anomalies and introduced order into the state, establishing a uniform system of pay and of service, whether in the field or in the law-courts or wherever each man finds a task suited to his own age and to the needs of the occasion. Never have I suggested that we should give the worker’s wages to the drone, or that we should ourselves remain inactive, idle, and helpless, and only learn by report that So-and-so’s mercenaries have won a victory. For that is what happens now.