42
For nature has not equipped you to seek aggrandizement and secure empire, but you are clever at thwarting another’s designs and wresting from him his gains, and quick to confound the plots of the ambitious and to vindicate the freedom of all mankind. Therefore he does not want to have the Athenian tradition of liberty watching to seize every chance against himself. Far from it! Nor is his reasoning here either faulty or idle.
43
This, then, is the first thing needful, to recognize in Philip the inveterate enemy of constitutional government and democracy, for unless you are heartily persuaded of this, you will not consent to take your politics seriously. Your second need is to convince yourselves that all his activity and all his organization is preparing the way for an attack on our city, and that where any resistance is offered to him, that resistance is our gain.
44
For no man is so simple as to believe that though Philip covets these wretched objects in Thrace—for what else can one call Drongilus and Cabyle and Mastira and the other places that he is now occupying and equipping?—and though he endures toil and winter storms and deadly peril for the privilege of taking them,
