On the Embassy (261-265)

It has not stopped there. It has entered Arcadia, and turned Arcadian politics upside down; and now many of that nation, who ought to pride themselves as highly as you upon their independence—for you and they are the only indigenous peoples in Greece—admire Philip, set up his effigy in bronze, decorate it with garlands, and, to crown all, have enacted a decree that, if he ever visits Peloponnesus, he shall be made welcome within their walls. The Argives have followed their example.

Holy Mother Earth! if I am to speak as a sane man, we stand in need of the utmost vigilance, when this infection, moving in its circuit, has invaded our own city. Therefore take your precautions now, while we are still secure. Let the men who have brought it here be punished with infamy. If not, beware lest you discern the wisdom of my words too late, when you have lost the power of doing what you ought.

Do you not see, men of Athens, what a conspicuous and striking example is offered by those miserable Olynthians, who owe their rain, unhappy men, to nothing so much as to such conduct as I have described? You may easily discover the truth by a review of their experience. At the time when their cavalry was only four hundred strong, and their whole force numbered no more than five thousand, for there was then no coalition of all the Chalcidians,

they were invaded by the Lacedaemonians with a large force, both naval and military; and you will remember that in those days the Lacedaemonians may be said to have held command both of land and of sea. Yet in spite of the strength of the attacking force, they never lost a town or even an outpost, they won many engagements, they slew three of the enemy commanders, and finally brought the war to an end on their own terms.[*]

But when some of them began to accept bribes, when the populace was so stupid, or, let us say, so unlucky, as to give more credence to those persons than to patriotic speakers, when Lasthenes had roofed his house with timber sent as a present from Macedonia, and Euthycrates was keeping a large herd of cattle for which he had paid nothing to anybody, when one man returned home with a flock of sheep and another with a stud of horses, when the masses, whose interests were endangered, instead of being angry and demanding the punishment of the traitors, stared at them, envied them, honored them, and thought them fine fellows,—