Third Philippic (66-70)

A fine return the democrats of Eretria have gained for spurning your embassy and capitulating to Clitarchus! They are slaves, doomed to the whipping-post and the scaffold. A fine clemency he showed to the Olynthians, who voted Lasthenes their master of the horse and banished Apollonides!

It is folly and cowardice to cherish such hopes, to follow ill counsel and refuse to perform any fraction of your duties, to lend an ear to the advocates of your enemies and imagine that your city is so great that no conceivable danger can befall it.

Ay, and a disgrace too it is to have to say, when all is over, Why! who would have thought it? For of course we ought to have done this or that, and not so and so. Many things could be named by the Olynthians today, which would have saved them from destruction if only they had then foreseen them. Many could be named by the Orites, many by the Phocians, many by every ruined city.

But of what use to them is that? While the vessel is safe, whether it be a large or a small one, then is the time for sailor and helmsman arid everyone in his turn to show his zeal and to take care that it is not capsized by anyone’s malice or inadvertence; but when the sea has overwhelmed it, zeal is useless.

So we too, Athenians, as long as we are safe, blessed with a very great city, ample advantages, and the fairest repute—what are we to do? Perhaps some of my hearers have long been eager to ask that question. I solemnly promise that I will answer it and will also move a resolution, for which you can vote if so disposed. To begin with ourselves, we must make provision for our defence, I mean with war-galleys, funds, and men; for even if all other states succumb to slavery, we surely must fight the battle of liberty.