On the Chersonese (21-25)

I want therefore to examine frankly the present state of our affairs, and to find out what we are doing ourselves now and how we are dealing with the situation. We refuse to pay war-taxes or to serve in person; we cannot keep our hands off the public funds; we will not pay Diopithes the allowances agreed upon, nor sanction the sums that he raises for himself;

but we grumble and criticize his methods, and ask what he intends to do, and all that sort of thing; and yet, while maintaining that attitude, we refuse to perform our own tasks; with our lips we praise those whose speeches are worthy of our city, but our actions serve only to encourage their opponents.

Now, you have a habit of asking a speaker on every occasion, What then must be done?; but I prefer to ask you, What then must be said? Because, if you are not going to pay your contributions, nor serve in person, nor keep your hands off the public funds, nor grant Diopithes his allowances, nor sanction the sums that he raises for himself, nor consent to perform your own tasks, I have nothing to say. You who have gone so far in granting license to those whose object is fault-finding and calumny, that even about what they say he is going to do, even on that ground they accuse him in advance and you listen to them—what can anyone say?

Now, some of you ought to be told the possible result of all this. I shall speak freely, for indeed I could not speak otherwise. All the generals that have ever set sail from your land—if I am wrong, I submit myself to any penalty—raise money from the Chians, from the Erythraeans, from whatever people they can, I mean of the Greeks of Asia Minor.

Generals with only one or two ships raise less; those with a larger fleet raise more. Also those who pay do not pay the sum, be it large or small, for nothing; they are not such madmen. No, they purchase for the merchants sailing from their own harbors immunity from injury or robbery, or a safe conduct for their own ships, or something of that sort. They say that they are granting benevolences. That is the name for these exactions.