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 …

Who does not know that the Spartans, notwithstanding that they and we harbor in common a feeling of hatred towards the barbarians and their kings, and notwithstanding that the Athenians, although beset by many wars and involved at times in great disasters, their territory being often ravaged and cut off by the enemy, never once turned their eyes towards friendship and alliance with the barbarians, …

For they contended with the utmost possible bravery against the power of that King, but, having done this, although they ought then to have adopted sound measures also for the tasks which followed upon that achievement, they fell into such a degree, not of folly, but of madness, that they made peace with the man who had led an army against them and who had purposed to annihilate both these cities …

You will best resolve upon this question if you feel that you are summoned to this task, not by my words only, but by your forefathers, by the cowardice of the Persians, and by all who have won great fame and attained the rank of demigods because of their campaigns against the barbarians, and, most of all, by the present opportunity, which finds you in the possession of greater power than has any …

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.

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;

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 think that if the King’s designs in Egypt were meeting with any success, Artemisia would make a big effort to secure Rhodes for him, not from any goodwill towards him, but because, while he is in her neighborhood, she would like to put him under a great obligation, so that he may give her as cordial a recognition as possible.

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;

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.

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);

Secondly, the agent who was privy to all Philip’s schemes against the king of Persia has been kidnapped, and the king will hear of all these plots, not as the complaint of Athenians, whom he might suspect of speaking for our own private advantage, but from the lips of the very man who planned and carried them out, so that their credit is established, and the only suggestion for our ambassadors to …

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

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.

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.

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;

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.

And so the king of the Persians took thought how he alone should wear the tiara upright, and if any other man did this, he straightway bade him be put to death, as though it were not seemly nor advantageous, among so many tens of thousands of men, that two should be wearing their tiaras upright;

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

But is it not well, you may perhaps ask, on account of the Treaty, to curb ourselves and not be over-hasty or make the expedition too soon, seeing that the states which have gained their freedom through the Treaty feel grateful toward the King, because they believe that it was through him that they gained their independence, while those states which have been delivered over to the barbarians compl …

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.

but we, if we are wise, shall guard against it from the beginning, and endeavor to be the first to quarter an army in the region of Lydia and Ionia, knowing that the King holds sway over the people of the continent, not because they are his willing subjects, but because he has surrounded himself with a force which is greater than any of those which they severally possess.

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

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.

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

I like the answer that is attributed to the Persian.