On the Chersonese (26-30)

And so too in this case, while Diopithes has a force with him, it is perfectly plain that all these people will pay up. For where else do you suppose that he looks for the maintenance of his troops, if he gets nothing from you and has no private fortune to furnish their pay? To the sky? No, indeed; it is from what he can collect or beg or borrow that he keeps things going.

So those who denounce him to you are simply warning everybody not to grant him a penny, because he will be punished for what he intends to do, apart from what he has done or what he has acquired for himself. That is what they mean when they cry, He intends to besiege the towns! He is betraying the Greeks! Do any of these gentlemen really care about the Asiatic Greeks?—and yet they would, I expect, be better champions of other countries than of their own.

That, too, is the meaning of the dispatch of a second general to the Hellespont. For if Diopithes is acting outrageously in detaining the merchantmen, a note, men of Athens, a brief note, could put a stop to all this at once; and there are the laws, which direct us to impeach such offenders, but not, of course, to mount guard over ourselves,[*] at such a cost and with so large a fleet; for that would be the height of madness.

No, against our enemies, who are not amenable to the laws, it is right and necessary to maintain troops, to send out fleets, and to raise funds; but against ourselves we have these resources, a decree, an impeachment, and a dispatch-boat. Those are what right-minded citizens would employ; malignants, bent on the ruin of the State, would do as these men are doing.

And that there are some men of this type among you, though bad enough, is not the real evil; but you who sit here are by now in such a mood that if anyone comes forward and asserts that the cause of all our evil is Diopithes or Chares or Aristophon, or any other citizen that he happens to name, you at once agree and applaud the truth of the remark.