Olynthians

For even though you had no other basis of calculation, even though you were unable of yourselves to grasp the state of affairs, you had before your eyes the example of those people at Olynthus.

they have made friendship, and promise to make alliance, with you,—you who of all men in the world would be most delighted to kill Philip’s friends or even Philip himself.

Nevertheless, although so long as they saw that he was not too powerful to be trusted, they were his allies and fought us on his account, when they found that his strength had grown too great for their confidence, they did not make a decree that whosoever should kill any man who had helped to consolidate Philip’s power should be liable to seizure in the country of their allies.

At this time also Polybiades compelled the Olynthians, who were in an exceedingly wretched state from famine, inasmuch as they got no food from their own land and none was brought in to them by sea, to send to Lacedaemon to treat for peace;

the Olynthians, however, on their side made frequent raids into the territory of the cities allied with the Lacedaemonians, and carried off booty and killed men.

Now as the cavalry fled, the infantry next them also gave way, and the whole army, indeed, would have been in danger of being defeated had not Derdas with his troop dashed straight for the gates of the Olynthians.

Please call Aristophanes the Olynthian, and read his testimony, and call those who heard his story and reported it to me—Dercylus, of the deme Hagnus, the son of Autocles, and Aristeides of Cephisia, the son of Euphiletus.

For think what a combination of folly and ignorance there must be in the man who could invent such a lie against me as that about the Olynthian woman, such a lie that you shut him up in the midst of his speech.

For there is a certain Olynthian living here, Aristophanes by name.

The Perinthians and Byzantines with their allies realize that his aim is to deal with them even as he dealt with the Olynthians before.

one military force must be dispatched to rescue their cities for the Olynthians, and a second force, both naval and military, to ravage Philip’s territory.

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.

It was long the common talk that the Olynthians must be made to fight Philip;

no words can describe how he formerly deceived the miserable Olynthians by his gift of Potidaea and many other places;

It would not have been safe in Olynthus to plead Philip’s cause, unless the Olynthian democracy had shared in the enjoyment of the revenues of Potidaea.

For of course he will deny that he is attacking us, just as he denied that he was attacking the men of Oreus, when his troops were already in their territory, or the Pheraeans before that, when he was actually assaulting their walls, or the Olynthians at the start, until he was inside their frontier with his army.

no words can describe how he formerly deceived the miserable Olynthians by his gift of Potidaea and many other places;

It would not have been safe in Olynthus to plead Philip’s cause, unless the Olynthian democracy had shared in the enjoyment of the revenues of Potidaea.

For of course he will deny that he is attacking us, just as he denied that he was attacking the men of Oreus, when his troops were already in their territory, or the Pheraeans before that, when he was actually assaulting their walls, or the Olynthians at the start, until he was inside their frontiers with his army.

Do you not see, men of Athens, what a conspicuous and striking example is offered by those miserable Olynthians, who owe their rain, unhappy men, to nothing so much as to such conduct as I have described?

For indeed it would be monstrous if, after passing so stern a decree of censure upon the men who betrayed the Olynthians, you should have no chastisement for those who repeat their iniquity in your own midst.

But when some of them began to accept bribes, when the populace was so stupid, or, let us say, so unlucky, as to give more credence to those persons than to patriotic speakers, when Lasthenes had roofed his house with timber sent as a present from Macedonia, and Euthycrates was keeping a large herd of cattle for which he had paid nothing to anybody, when one man returned home with a flock of sheep …

I find that next he won the friendship of the Olynthians by capturing Potidaea, which was yours, and thus wronging you, his former allies, in presenting it to them.

On another occasion, in dealing with Potidaea, the Olynthians found its cooperation of some value;

That Philip has found men willing to fight him, situated on his frontiers and possessed of considerable power, above all so determined that they regard any accommodation with him as both delusive and fatal to their own country—this has all the appearance of a super-human, a divine beneficence.

Can you not imagine, I said, addressing the Messenians, how annoyed the Olynthians would have been to hear a word said against Philip in the days when he was handing over to them Anthemus, to which all the former kings of Macedonia laid claim, when he was making them a present of Potidaea, expelling the Athenian settlers, and when he had taken upon himself the responsibility of a quarrel with us a …

Nevertheless, said I, after a brief enjoyment of other men’s territory, they have long been robbed by Philip of their own, expelled with contumely, not merely vanquished but betrayed, bought and sold by their own country-men.

What remains then, men of Athens, but to help them with all your power and energy?

But surely if anyone of you would postpone the necessary action till then, he must prefer to see danger at his very doors, rather than hear of it far away, and to beg help for himself, when he might be lending help to others now;

We could count on the Olynthians with their considerable resources;

the Olynthians by Philip, the Thebans by Alexander, and the Brutians, made public slaves by the Romans:

In the course of this same summer, the Olynthians assaulted and took Mecyberna, which was garrisoned by Athenians.