Olympic Oration (1-5)

But he, when he had crushed despotism and arrested outrage, founded a contest of bodily strength, a challenge of wealth, and a display of intelligence in the fairest part of Greece, that we might meet together for all these enjoyments alike of our eyes and of our ears, because he judged that our assembly here would be a beginning of mutual amity amongst the Greeks.

The project of it, then, was his; and so I have not come here to talk trivialities or to wrangle over words: I take that to be the business of utterly futile professors in straits for a livelihood; but I think it behoves a man of principle and civic worth to be giving his counsel on the weightiest questions, when I see Greece in this shameful plight, with many parts of her held subject by the foreigner, and many of her cities ravaged by despots.[*]

Now if these afflictions were due to weakness, it would be necessary to acquiesce in our fate: but since they are due to faction and mutual rivalry, surely we ought to desist from the one and arrest the other, knowing that, if rivalry befits the prosperous, the most prudent views befit people in a position like ours.

For we see both the gravity of our dangers and their imminence on every side: you are aware that empire is for those who command the sea, that the King[*] has control of the money, that the Greeks are in thrall to those who are able to spend it, that our master possesses many ships, and that the despot of Sicily[*] has many also.