Phocians

During the whole of that time the Phocians were safe.

(The Convention between Philip and the Phocians is read)

Again, it was Philip, of course, who really destroyed the Phocians;

Since the Thessalians were trying to subdue them, the Phocians made this their protection, and in their search for every means to keep the Thessalians from invading their country, they then turned the stream from the hot springs into the pass, so that it might be a watercourse.

In addition, the Opuntian Locrians in full force and one thousand Phocians came at the summons.

they had ascended without the Phocians ' notice because the mountain was entirely covered with oak trees.

and from the immediate neighbourhood there came to him hoplites of the Orchomenians and Phocians.

but Gylis, the polemarch, withdrew with the army to Phocis and from there made an invasion of Locris.

And when the Phocians, on their side, sent ambassadors to Lacedaemon and said that unless the Lacedaemonians came to their assistance they would not be able to escape yielding to the Thebans, thereupon the Lacedaemonians sent Cleombrotus, the king, across to Phocis by sea, and with him four regiments of their own and the corresponding contingents of the allies.

and the Athenians again afterwards, on their retiring, marched and took possession of it, and restored it to the Phocians.

and taking with them the Boeotians and Phocians, who were their allies, the Athenians marched against Pharsalus in Thessaly.

And the Phocians having marched against the Dorians, the mother-country of the Lacedaemonians, [whose towns were] Boeum, and Citinium, and Erineum, and having taken one of these places, the Lacedaemonians under the command of Nicomedes, the son of Cleombrotus, in the stead of Pleistoanax, son of Pausanias, who was yet a minor, went to the aid of the Dorians with fifteen hundred heavy-armed of thei …

(Philip’s Letter is read)

Now read the letter sent to Athens afterwards by Philip.

That the Phocians perished and their cities were demolished;

I carried the jurors off bodily from the charges brought against Timarchus, and set them on the accuser, and Philip, and the Phocians, and I suspended such terrors before the eyes of the hearers that the defendant began to be the accuser, and the accuser to be on trial;

It was fortune, first of all, that ruined the Phocians, and she is mistress of all things;

Now it remains for me to speak of Cersobleptes and the Phocians, as well as the other matters in which I have been slandered.

You have a practice which in my judgment is most excellent and most useful to those in your midst who are the victims of slander:

that the Thebans should be counterbalanced by the Phocians, and the Lacedaemonians by other communities;

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

It would not have been safe at Thebes, until he gave them back Boeotia and wiped out the Phocians.

Were you not deceived about Phocis, Thermopylae, the Thrace-ward districts, Doriscus, Serrium, Cersobleptes himself?

for there is a prize, honorable, great, and glorious, a prize for which the greatest of our states once spent all their time in contending, but since misfortune has dogged the Lacedaemonians, and the Phocian War has left the Thebans no leisure, and we are heedless, he has grasped it without a struggle.

then I am afraid that these separate powers, having each a private grudge, may make common cause against us on the strength of the Amphictyonic decrees, and may then be tempted to go beyond what their several interests require, as they were in the case of the Phocians.

Thirdly, men of Athens—and when I have given just this one further instance, I will at once pass on to some topics that I have omitted—when we ambassadors returned from administering the oaths for the peace, at that time there were some who assured us that Thespiae and Plataea would be rebuilt, that Philip, if he gained the mastery, would protect the Phocians and break up Thebes into villages, and …

For, quite apart from the disgrace that we should incur if we shirk our responsibilities, I see not a little danger, men of Athens, for the future, if the Thebans maintain their present attitude towards us, and the Phocians have come to the end of their money, and there is nothing to hinder Philip, when he has crushed his present foe, from turning his arms against Attica.

I say nothing of the destruction of the important nation of the Phocians.

Many could be named by the Orites, many by the Phocians, many by every ruined city.

So far from saying that, I date his hostility from the very day when he wiped out the Phocians.

And the difference is just this, that the orators consider in this case or in that—for instance, whether it is expedient for the Athenians to make war upon the Peloponnesians, or to help the Corcyraeans against the Corinthians, or for the Thebans to ally with Philip against the Phocians, or for Alexander to cross over into Asia.

With him went the horse-driving Boeotians, breathing above their shields, and the Locrians who fight hand to hand, and the gallant Phocians eager for war and battle.

The Thessalians, Phocians, Aetolians, and all the other peoples of the region, he made his allies, bringing under his control, by their own consent, the men whom Philip and Alexander gloried in controlling against their wish.

and, finally, they began war upon the Phocians, expecting that in a short time they would conquer their cities, occupy all the surrounding territory, and prevail over all the treasures at Delphi by the outlay of their own funds.

But the worst of their afflictions is that they live in continual fear that the Thebans may patch up their quarrel with the Phocians and, returning again, ring them about with still greater calamities than have befallen them in the past.

for while they are in Phocian territory they succeed in killing a few hireling soldiers who are better off dead than alive, but when they retreat they lose of their own citizens those who are most esteemed and most ready to die for their fatherland.