War

nay, on the contrary, you would have good hope that taking up arms in a just cause you would fight better than your foes.

But I know of many who through war have acquired great prosperity, and many who have been robbed of all they possessed through keeping the peace;

when they see their own cities reduced to a state of siege, while we shall have taken such measures that our own city cannot henceforth experience a like calamity;

Now it is the war which has robbed us of all the good things which I have mentioned;

For some of us appear to me to be over zealously bent on war, as though having heard, not from haphazard counsellors, but from the gods, that we are destined to succeed in all our campaigns and to prevail easily over our foes.

For we are so dependent on our hopes and so insatiate in seizing what seems to be our advantage that not even those who possess the greatest fortunes are willing to rest satisfied with them but are always grasping after more and so risking the loss of what they have.

Why, many, thanks to their bad condition, lose their life in the perils of war or save it disgracefully:

and many, as a consequence, save themselves decorously on the battle-field and escape all the dangers of war;

Or do you count the life and death struggle with their enemies, upon which, it may be, the Athenians will enter, but a small thing?

Take the field in person.

One point more, men of Athens.

the men who cannot protect their own country without your help?

You may also observe, Athenians, that you have been engaged in many wars both with democracies and with oligarchies.

For we were charged by the Chians, Byzantines and Rhodians with plotting against them, and that was why they concerted the last war against us;

If we are not to stand up to the one because he is contemptible, and if we yield to the other because he is formidable, against whom, Athenians, shall we ever marshal our forces?

Then do you not see that Philip’s very titles are utterly irreconcilable with that?

It would indeed have been fair, men of Athens, to call upon those who conveyed to you Philip’s promises, on the strength of which you were induced to conclude the Peace.

For if you had not been hoodwinked then, there would be no anxiety in Athens, because Philip could never, of course, have gained command of the sea and reached Attica with his fleet, nor could he have marched past Thermopylae and Phocis, but either he would have acted fairly and observed the Peace by keeping quiet, or he would have been instantly engaged in a war similar to that which made him so …

For while this Council maintained its authority, Athens was not rife with law-suits, or accusations, or tax-levies, or poverty, or war;

Furthermore, under the discipline of the old days the citizens were so schooled in virtue as not to injure each other, but to fight and conquer all who attempted to invade their territory.

If we continue to govern Athens as we are now doing, then we are doomed to go on deliberating and waging war and living and faring and acting in almost every respect just as we do at the present moment and have done in the past;

and again, we know that while the Carthaginians and the Lacedaemonians, who are the best governed peoples of the world, are ruled by oligarchies at home, yet, when they take the field, they are ruled by kings.

that those who live in well- conducted oligarchies, when it comes to matters about which they are most concerned, appoint one man, in some cases a general, in others a king, to have full powers over their armies in the field;

for in raising troops, and handling them so as to mislead and forestall the enemy, and in winning people over, now by persuasion, now by force, now by bribery, now by other means of conciliation, one-man rule is more efficient than the other forms of government.

Hath carried by degrees mortality

Out onward to the deep, and roused up

And 'tis desire for better and for more

And the territory, I presume, that was then sufficient to feed the then population, from being adequate will become too small.

Can we suppose, then, that while we were at pains to prevent the cobbler from attempting to be at the same time a farmer, a weaver, or a builder instead of just a cobbler, to the end that we might have the cobbler’s business well done, and similarly assigned to each and every one man one occupation, for which he was fit and naturally adapted and at which he was to work all his days, at leisure fro …

promising to make us feared by our enemies and esteemed by our friends, and how they turned the necessities grown by that war to enforce us to yield to conditions incompatible with monarchy.

for many, and men, too, who seemed most wise, have ere now persuaded states to take up arms against others, and the states thus persuaded to attack have been destroyed.

Now if in music that which is new and fresh wins applause, new stratagems in warfare also win far greater applause, for such can deceive the enemy even more successfully.

But if it is ever necessary—as it may well be—to join battle in the open field, in plain sight, with both armies in full array, why, in such a case, my son, the advantages that have been long since secured are of much avail;