Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 1.djvu/192

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS , where the rights of citizens and allies come before you; in military affairs they should inspire you with fierceness and intrepidity; for here you are engaged with enemies, with armed troops. But now, by leading you gently on to their purposes, by the most abject compliance with your humors, they have so formed and molded you that in your assemblies you are delicate, and attend but to flattery and entertainment, in your affairs you find yourselves threatened with extremity of danger.

And now, in the name of Heaven! suppose that the states of Greece should thus demand an account of those opportunities which your indolence has lost: "Men of Athens! you are ever sending embassies to us; you assure us that Philip is projecting our ruin, and that, of all the Greeks, you warn us to guard against this man's designs." (And it is too true we have done thus.) "But, O most wretched of mankind! when this man has been ten months detained abroad; when sickness, and the severity of winter, and the armies of his enemies rendered it impossible for him to return home, you neither restored the liberty of Eubœa nor recovered any of your own dominions. But while you sit at home in perfect ease and health (if such a state may be called health), Eubœa is commanded by his two tyrants; the one, just opposite to Attica, to keep you perpetually in awe; the other to Scyathus. Yet you have not attempted to oppose even this. No; you have submitted; you