Philip’s Letter (19-20)

Such a course was indeed in the interests of your people, but it would not have paid your talkers. For those who have any experience of your constitution say that to the orators peace means war and war means peace; because they always manage to make something out of the generals either by backing them up or by blackmailing them, and also, by abusing from the Public platform your most prominent citizens and the most esteemed of your foreign residents, they win a reputation with the mob for democratic zeal.

Now it would be easy for me, at a trifling expense, to stop their abuse and set them singing my praises. But I should be ashamed if I were known to purchase your goodwill from men who, besides their other faults, have reached such a height of impudence that they even venture to dispute with me about Amphipolis, to which I think I can advance a far better claim than my rivals.