On the Chersonese (41-45)

And it is in a way natural that he should act thus. For he knows for certain that even if he masters all else, his power will be precarious as long as you remain a democracy; but if ever he meets with one of the many mischances to which mankind is liable, all the forces that are now under restraint will be attracted to your side.

For nature has not equipped you to seek aggrandizement and secure empire, but you are clever at thwarting another’s designs and wresting from him his gains, and quick to confound the plots of the ambitious and to vindicate the freedom of all mankind. Therefore he does not want to have the Athenian tradition of liberty watching to seize every chance against himself. Far from it! Nor is his reasoning here either faulty or idle.

This, then, is the first thing needful, to recognize in Philip the inveterate enemy of constitutional government and democracy, for unless you are heartily persuaded of this, you will not consent to take your politics seriously. Your second need is to convince yourselves that all his activity and all his organization is preparing the way for an attack on our city, and that where any resistance is offered to him, that resistance is our gain.

For no man is so simple as to believe that though Philip covets these wretched objects in Thrace—for what else can one call Drongilus and Cabyle and Mastira and the other places that he is now occupying and equipping?—and though he endures toil and winter storms and deadly peril for the privilege of taking them,

yet he does not covet the Athenian harbors and dockyards and war-galleys and silver mines and the like sources of wealth, but will allow you to retain them, while he winters in that purgatory for the sake of the rye and millet of the Thracian store-pits. It is not so, but it is to win these prizes that he devotes his activities to all those other objects.