Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 1.djvu/216

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS , the preventing Philip's conquest of the Hellespont, and the honors therefore bestowed on this country, were the effects of my policy and administration: and more than this—they proved to all mankind the generosity of Athens and the baseness of Philip. He, the ally and friend of the Byzantines, was before all eyes besieging them—what could be more shameful or outrageous?—You, who might justly on many grounds have reproached them for wrongs done you in former times, instead of bearing malice and abandoning the oppressed, appeared as their deliverers; conduct which procured you glory, good-will, honors from all men. That you have crowned many of your statesmen, every one knows; but through what other person (I mean what minister or orator), besides myself, the commonwealth has been crowned, no one can say.

Well then, men of Athens—when the Lacedæmonians had the empire of land and sea, and held the country round Attica by governors and garrisons, Eubœa. Tanagra, all Bœotia, Megara, Ægina, Cleonæ, the other islands; when our state possessed neither ships nor walls; you marched out to Haliartus, and again not many days after to Corinth; albeit the Athenians of that time had many causes of resentment against both Corinthians and Thebans for their acts in the Decelean war; but they showed no resentment, none. And yet neither of these steps took they, Æschines, for benefactors, nor were they blind to the danger; but they would not for such 154