Expediency

You would, I expect, men of Athens, accept it as the equivalent of a large amount of money, if it could be made clear to you what will prove our best policy in the matters now under discussion.

of the statesmen, that they may give a ready account of their stewardship, for as is the issue of these events, so will be your judgement of their policy.

Now someone may tell me that to find fault is easy and in any one’s power, but that it needs a statesman to expound the policy demanded by our circumstances.

Personally, I never thought it a difficult task to point out to you the best policy—for, to speak plainly, you all seem to me to have discerned it already—but rather to induce you to put it into operation;

Perhaps it does not suit the present occasion to deal with every side of the question, but if you can by some fitting action give effect to the policy you have adopted, then there might possibly be, step by step, a general improvement.

Now, as you have already made up your minds to do right, you must take care that it is in your power to carry out your purpose;

I do not mean that the peace is a glorious one or even creditable to you, but, whatever we may think of it, it would better suit our purpose never to have made it than to violate it when made, because we have now sacrificed many advantages which would have made war safer and easier for us then than now.

Hence I always see accurately the advantageous course as suggested by actual circumstances.

Led on by these false hopes and cajoleries, you abandoned the Phocians against your own interests and against justice and honor.

Therefore, those who talk about “security” are blind to the fact that they are providing us with peace for a few days only, while contriving a state of war which will never end.

Those who advise us to make peace declare that prudent men ought not to take the same view of things in fortunate as in unfortunate circumstances, but rather that they should always consult their immediate situation and accommodate themselves to their fortunes, and should never entertain ambitions beyond their power, but should at such times seek, not their just rights but their best interests.

At present we are all agreed as to what is just, while we differ as to what is expedient.

Now I might have spoken passably about even these matters, since I knew, in the first place, that it is easier to treat copiously in cursory fashion occurrences of the past than intelligently to discuss the future and, in the second place, that all men are more grateful to those who praise them than to those who advise them —for the former they approve as being well—disposed, but the latter, if th …

nay, I know perfectly well that to discover actions which are noble, great, and advantageous is difficult and given to few men, whereas to praise your virtues I should have found an easy task.

That these things are practicable and expedient for you, for your city, and for all the Hellenes at large, it is now my task to explain.

So then, seeing that such great reversals are wont to occur, and that our states care nothing about their former enmities or about their oaths or about anything else save what they conceive to be expedient for themselves, and that expediency is the sole object to which they give their affections and devote all their zeal, no man, unless obsessed by utter folly, could fail to believe that now also …

For I know that they have all been brought down to the same level by their misfortunes, and so I think that they would much prefer the mutual advantages which would come from a unity of purpose to the selfish gains which accrued from their policy in those days.

For I think that I shall propose something which is in line with both your duty and your advantage.

I regard law-making as by no means an easy task when based on expediency.

And although I think that this can best be overcome by an appeal to expediency, I must not be understood as contending that each particular case must be decided on its merits.

I must fall back on expediency.