Olympic Oration (6-9)

We ought therefore to relinquish our mutual warfare, and with a single purpose in our hearts to secure our salvation; to feel shame for past events and fear for those that lie in the future, and to compete with our ancestors, by whom the foreigner, in grasping at the land of others, was deprived of his own, and who expelled the despots and established freedom for all in common.

But I wonder at the Lacedaemonians most of all: what can be their policy in tolerating the devastation of Greece, when they are leaders of the Greeks by the just claims alike of their inborn valor and their martial science, and when they alone have their dwelling-places unravaged though unwalled and, strangers to faction and defeat, observe always the same rules of life? Wherefore it may be expected that the liberty they possess will never die, and that having achieved the salvation of Greece in her past dangers they are providing against those that are to come.

Now the future will bring no better opportunity than the present. We ought to view the disasters of those who have been crushed, not as the concern of others, but as our own: let us not wait for the forces of both our foes to advance upon ourselves, but while there is yet time let us arrest their outrage.

For who would not be mortified to see how they have grown strong through our mutual warfare? Those incidents, no less awful than disgraceful, have empowered our dire oppressors to do what they have done, and have hindered the Greeks from taking vengeance for their wrongs.⋯