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114 Propontis, and clearly had designs on Perinthus and Byzantium. Demosthenes repeats in substance the arguments he had recently urged. Greece, he says, is in the utmost peril from its miserable divisions and apathy, and from the unique position which it has allowed Philip to attain. As for Athens, "her affairs have been brought so low by carelessness and negligence, I fear it is a hard truth to say that if all the orators had sought to suggest, and you to pass, resolutions for the utter ruining of the commonwealth, we could not, methinks, be worse off than we are." It had been said at Athens in the speeches of some of the orators, "Wait till Philip declares war, and then it will be time to discuss how we shall resist him." Demosthenes' reply is,—

"If we wait till Philip avows that he is at war with us, we are the simplest of mortals; for he would not declare war, though he marched even against Athens and Piræus—at least, if we may judge from his conduct to others. When he sends his mercenaries into the Chersonese, which the king of Persia and all the Greeks acknowledge to be yours, what can be the meaning of such proceedings? He says he is not at war. But I cannot admit such conduct to be an observance of the peace. Far otherwise. I say that by his present advance into Thrace, by his intrigues in the Peloponnese, by the whole course of his operations with his army, he has been breaking the peace and making war upon you,—unless, indeed, you will say that those who establish military engines are not at war until they apply them