3
After some time had elapsed Apollodorus was chosen by lot as a member of the senate; and when he had passed the scrutiny and had sworn the customary oath, there came upon the city a warDue to Philip’s aggressive actions in the Chersonese in 343-340 B.C. and a crisis so grave that, if victors, you would be supreme among the Greek peoples, and would beyond possibility of dispute have recovered your own possessions and have crushed Philip in war; but, if your help arrived too late and you abandoned your allies,That is, especially Byzantium and the states in the Chersonese and in Thrace. allowing your army to be disbanded for want of money, you would lose these allies, forfeit the confidence of the rest of the Greeks, and risk the loss of your other possessions, Lemnos and Imbros, and Scyros and the Chersonese.Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, all islands in the Aegean. The Chersonese was the peninsula of Gallipoli.
4
You were at that time on the point of sending your entire force to Euboea and Olynthus,Olynthus, an important city in Chalcidicê. and Apollodorus, being one of its members, brought forward in the senate a bill, and carried it as a preliminary decreeThe senate could not legislate of itself. Decrees passed by it had to be submitted to the popular assembly. to the assembly, proposing that the people should decide whether the funds remaining over from the state’s expenditure should be used for military purposes or for public spectacles. For the laws prescribed that, when there was war, the funds remaining over from state expenditures should be devoted to military purposes, and Apollodorus believed that the people ought to have power to do what they pleased with their own; and he had sworn that, as member of the senate, he would act for the best interests of the Athenian people, as you all bore witness at that crisis.
