8
If indeed Athens can remain at peace and if the choice rests with us— to take that point first—I personally feel that we are bound to do so; and if anyone says that we can, I call upon him to move a resolution and to do something and to play us no tricks; but if there is another person concerned, with sword in hand and a mighty force at his back, who imposes on you with the name of peace but himself indulges in acts of war, what is left but to defend ourselves? If you choose to follow his example and profess that you are at peace, I raise no objection.
9
But if anyone mistakes for peace an arrangement which will enable Philip, when he has seized everything else, to march upon us, he has taken leave of his senses, and the peace that he talks of is one that you observe towards Philip, but not Philip towards you. That is the advantage which he is purchasing by all his expenditure of money—that he should be at war with you, but that you should not be at war with him.
10
If we are going to wait for him to acknowledge a state of war with us, we are indeed the simplest of mortals; for even if he marches straight against Attica and the Piraeus, he will not admit it, if we may judge from his treatment of the other states.
