54
For if Philip can be won over, your share of the compact is ready to hand. Again, they should reflect that the irksome thing is not the expense of securing our safety, but the doom that will be ours if we shrink from that expense. As for the plunder of your wealth, they ought to prevent that by proposing some way of checking it and not by abandoning your interests.
55
And yet, men of Athens, it is just this that rouses my indignation, that some of you should be distressed at the prospect of the plunder of your wealth, when you are quite competent to protect it and to punish any offender, but that you are not distressed at the sight of Philip thus plundering every Greek state in turn, the more so as he is plundering them to injure you.
56
What then is the reason, men of Athens, why these speakers never admit that Philip is provoking war, when he is thus openly conducting campaigns, violating rights, and subduing cities, but when others urge you not to give way to Philip nor submit to these losses, they accuse them of trying to provoke war? I will explain.
