Persian King

Well then, does not the city which made the nobler and prouder covenants with the Persian king, which brought to pass the most and the greatest injuries to the barbarians and benefits to the Hellenes, which, furthermore, seized from her foes the sea-coast of Asia and much other territory besides and appropriated it to her allies, which put an end to the insolence of the barbarians and the poverty …

nor at the present time are the greatest of the states of Hellas ashamed to vie with each other in fawning upon the wealth of the King;

and they were not ashamed of entering into such covenants regarding men by whose help as allies they prevailed over us, became masters of the Hellenes, and expected to subdue the whole of Asia;

while this King is so far from exercising dominion over others that he is not in control even of the cities which were surrendered to him;

I assert that it is incumbent upon you to work for the good of the Hellenes, to reign as king over the Macedonians, and to extend your power over the greatest possible number of the barbarians.

In the first place, the father of the present King once defeated our city and later the city of the Lacedaemonians, while this King has never overcome anyone of the armies which have been violating his territory.

Furthermore, the Persian King himself concluded that Tissaphernes was responsible for the bad turn his affairs were taking, and accordingly sent down Tithraustes and cut off his head.

Take the King of Asia also —although his contributions helped them most to win the victory over you, what better treatment is he now receiving than if he had joined with you and subdued them?

After this a Syracusan named Herodas, being in Phoenicia with a certain shipowner, and seeing Phoenician war-ships—some of them sailing in from other places, others lying there fully manned, and yet others still making ready for sea—and hearing, besides, that there were to be three hundred of them, embarked on the first boat that sailed to Greece and reported to the Lacedaemonians that the King an …

I observe that some of you are wont to dismiss Philip as a person of no account, but to speak with awe of the King as formidable to those whom he marks as his enemies.

I am surprised to see the same men urging the city, in the interests of the Egyptians, to oppose the King of Persia, but dreading him where the Rhodian democracy is concerned.

Indeed, the Argives might have pleaded that they had often been defeated by the Lacedaemonians, but you have beaten the King again and again, and have never been beaten either by his slaves or by their master himself;

For first, the men whom the king of Persia trusts and has accepted as his benefactors, hate Philip and are at war with him.

The king of Persia, in himself, was equally distrusted by all, but by taking up the cause of the losing side in the struggle, he retained their confidence until he could put them on an equality with the others;

For my part, whenever I see a man afraid of one who dwells at Susa and Ecbatana and insisting that he is ill-disposed to Athens, though he helped to restore our fortunes in the past and was even now making overtures to us (and if you did not accept them but voted their rejection, the fault is not his);

Aeschines, on the other hand, gave away and sold Amphipolis, a city which the King of Persia and all Greece recognized as yours, speaking in support of the resolution moved by Philocrates.

I am sure you have all heard the story of their treatment of Callias, son of Hipponicus, who negotiated the celebrated peace under which the King of Persia was not to approach within a day’s ride of the coast, nor sail with a ship of war between the Chelidonian islands and the Blue Rocks.

To me it seems very strange, if a man wearing fetters or branded or grinding in a mill shall be more free than the Great King.

You, then, have not even heard of that nation among whom the king is guarded in a very lofty tower, and it is not permitted him to come down from the tower?

And by this argument nothing would prevent the Great King, wearing a very great tiara upon his head, from being a slave and from being permitted to do nothing of what he does;

your financial resources were exhausted, while the Persian king was supplying them with funds;

But instead of that, they assigned no honor whatsoever to our city or to Lacedaemon, while they set up the barbarian as lord of all Asia;

Yes, and he has compelled us to engrave this Treaty on pillars of stone and place it in our public temples — a trophy far more glorious for him than those which are set up on fields of battle;

All the world which lies beneath the firmament being divided into two parts, the one called Asia, the other Europe, he has taken half of it by the Treaty, as if he were apportioning the earth with Zeus, and not making compacts with men.

And that the Persian king was not responsible for this outcome recent years have clearly shown;

I like the answer that is attributed to the Persian.

For while those laws only penalise the wrongdoer, the king’s code not only punishes the guilty, but also benefits the upright.

By applying some of these clauses and other enactments found in the Persian king’s code, I try to make my servants upright in the matters that pass through their hands.