Fourth Philippic (31-35)

The one thing that remains and that ought to have been done long ago, though even now the chance is not lost, I will tell you. There is nothing that the State needs so much for the coming struggle as money. Some strokes of good fortune we have enjoyed without our design, and if we make the right use of them, the desired results may perhaps follow. For first, the men whom the king of Persia trusts and has accepted as his benefactors,[*] hate Philip and are at war with him.

Secondly, the agent[*] who was privy to all Philip’s schemes against the king of Persia has been kidnapped, and the king will hear of all these plots, not as the complaint of Athenians, whom he might suspect of speaking for our own private advantage, but from the lips of the very man who planned and carried them out, so that their credit is established, and the only suggestion for our ambassadors to make is one which the king would be delighted to hear,

that the man who is wronging both parties should be punished by both in common, and that Philip is much more dangerous to the king if he has attacked us first, for if we are left to our own resources and anything happens to us, he will soon be marching confidently against the king. I think you ought to send an embassy to put all these matters before the king, and you ought to drop the foolish prejudice that has so often brought about your discomfiture—the barbarian, the common foe of us all, and all such phrases.

For my part, whenever I see a man afraid of one who dwells at Susa and Ecbatana and insisting that he is ill-disposed to Athens, though he helped to restore our fortunes in the past and was even now making overtures to us[*](and if you did not accept them but voted their rejection, the fault is not his); and when I find the same man using very different language about this plunderer of the Greeks, who is extending his power, as you see, at our very doors and in the heart of Greece, I am astonished, and, whoever he may be, it is I that fear him, just because he does not fear Philip.

Now there is also another matter, the misrepresentation of which by unfair obloquy and in intemperate language is injuring the State, and furthermore is affording a pretext for those who are unwilling to perform any of their duties as citizens; indeed, you will find that in every case where a man has failed to do his duty, this has been given as the excuse. I am really afraid to speak on this subject, but I will do so nevertheless;