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.

Therefore those should not lack courage who are about to take up arms in a just cause, but far more those who are insolent and do not know how to bear their good fortune with moderation.

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;

But if we make peace and demean ourselves as our common covenants command us to do, then we shall dwell in our city in great security, delivered from wars and perils and the turmoil in which we are now involved amongst ourselves, and we shall advance day by day in prosperity, relieved of paying war-taxes, of fitting out triremes, and of discharging the other burdens which are imposed by war, witho …

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

However, we have no memory for these facts but are always ready, without in the least advancing our own welfare, to man triremes, to levy war-taxes, and to lend aid to the campaigns of others or wage war against them, as chance may determine, as if imperilling the interests, not of our own, but of a foreign state.

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?

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

TRYGAEUS No, by Zeus—but show your whole self to us, your lovers, nobly and becomingly, who have been worn down by longing for you these thirteen years now;

War, like a cloud, was threatening Europe from every quarter, suppressing my right to speak my mind in the assembly and taking away all power of free and noble utterance.

Then too Demosthenes decided upon war, offering to his compatriots counsel which, though seemingly prudent, was in reality fraught with danger.

This letter of Alexander’s broke my purpose.

Why, if you were obliged to take the field yourselves for a bare month, drawing from Attica the necessary supplies—I am assuming that there is no enemy in this country—I suppose your farmers would lose more than the sum spent upon the whole of the previous war.

Seriously, is anyone here so foolish as not to see that our negligence will transfer the war from Chalcidice to Attica?

The eyes of the Olynthians are opened to the fact that they are now fighting not for glory, not for a strip of territory, but to avert the overthrow and enslavement of their fatherland.

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?

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 …

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.

Now therefore, while the danger is in the future and is gathering head, while we can still hear one another speak, I want to remind each one of you, however clearly he knows it, who it is that persuaded you to abandon the Phocians and Thermopylae, the command of which gave Philip the command also of the road to Attica and the Peloponnesus, and who it is that has forced you to take counsel, not for …

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;

This conclusion we may justly draw from the ancient struggles which they carried on against the Amazons and the Thracians and all of the Peloponnesians, and also from the wars which they waged against the Persians, in which, both when they fought alone and when they were aided by the Peloponnesians, whether on land or on the sea, they were victorious over the barbarians and were adjudged the meed of valor;

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;

secondly, that Dionysius, the tyrant, taking charge of Sicily when the rest of it had been devastated by war and when his own country, Syracuse, was in a state of siege, not only delivered it from the dangers which then threatened, but also made it the greatest of Hellenic states;

That cark men's lives with cares and weary with war.

From the far bottom mighty waves of war.

And 'tis desire for better and for more

During the war these men have advanced themselves from poverty to wealth at your expense, while you are in poverty because of them.

During the war, of course, as there were no suits at law, we were unable to make them pay what they owed;

quite the contrary, our estate during the peace amounted to eighty talents, and the whole of it was spent in the war on the deliverance of the city.

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 …

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

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;