5
Now, it is not only by the words of the oracles coming from the gods that you will find the fortune you have enjoyed to be good but also by viewing it in the light of the facts themselves, if you will scan them rightly. For if as human beings you are willing to regard our affairs, you will find that our city, as a result of the policy I advised, has been very fortunate, but if you shall demand to receive those blessings which are reserved for the gods alone, you aim at the impossible.
6
What, then, is reserved for gods but for men is impossible? To be in absolute control of all the blessings there are, both to possess them themselves and to bestow them upon others, and never in all eternity either to suffer anything bad or to look forward to suffering it. Next, these propositions having been laid down, as is proper, scan your blessings in comparison with those of the rest of mankind.
7
No one, for instance, is so foolish as to assert that what has befallen either the Spartans, whom I never advised, or the Persians, whom I never even visited, is preferable to your present lot. I pass over the Cappadocians, the Syrians, and the beings who inhabit the land of India toward the ends of the earth, all of whom have had the misfortune to suffer many terrible and grievous afflictions.
8
O yes, by Zeus, all will agree that you are faring better than these, but worse, they declare, than the Thessalians, Argives and Arcadians, or certain others, who had the luck to be in alliance with Philip. But you have come off far better than these, not only because you have not been reduced to slavery—and yet what blessing equals that?—but also because, while all those are thought to be responsible for the evils that have befallen the Greeks through Philip and their enslavement, in consequence of which they are hated with good reason,
