11
But we ourselves are parties to the peace, which instructs us to treat as enemies those who are guilty of such acts. Now in view of this, are we to obey these joint instructions and treat them as enemies, or will anyone be blackguardThis is one of the words which Libanius thought more the style of Hyperides than of Demosthenes. enough to say no—one of the hirelings in the pay of the Macedonian king, one of those who have grown rich at your expense.
12
For you may be sure they are not ignorant of these facts; but they have grown so insolent, with the tyrant’s troops for their bodyguard, that they insist on your observing the already violated oaths, as if Alexander’s absolute sovereignty extended over perjury also; and they compel you to rescind your own laws, releasing men who have been condemned in your courts and forcing you to sanction numberless other illegalities.
13
And their conduct is natural; for men who have sold themselves to a policy antagonistic to the interests of their country cannot trouble themselves about laws and oaths; they are to them mere terms which they employ to lead astray the citizens who come to the Assembly for diversion and not for careful inquiry, and who forget that present inaction will some day result in wild confusion.
14
My own advice, as I said at the start, is to believe them when they say that we ought to abide by the joint agreement, unless, when they insist on our abiding by the oaths, they interpret them as not forbidding any act of injustice, or imagine that no one will be sensible of the change from democracy to tyranny or of the overthrow of a free constitution.
