Isocrates 20, To Philip

ToposText · Isocrates · 152 sections

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§ 102 Furthermore, Cyprus and Phoenicia and Cilicia, and that region from which the barbarians used to recruit their fleet, belonged at that time to the King, but now they have either revolted from him or are so involved in war and its attendant ills that none of these peoples is of any use to him; while to you, if you desire to make war upon him, they will be serviceable.
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§ 103 And mark also that Idrieus, who is the most prosperous of the present rulers of the mainland, must in the nature of things be more hostile to the interests of the King than are those who are making open war against him; verily he would be of all men the most perverse if he did not desire the dissolution of that empire which outrages his brother, which made war upon himself, and which at all times has never ceased to plot against him in its desire to be master of his person and of all his wealth.
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§ 104 It is through fear of these things that he is now constrained to pay court to the King and to send him much tribute every year; but if you should cross over to the mainland with an army, he would greet you with joy, in the belief that you were come to his relief; and you will also induce many of the other satraps to throw off the King's power if you promise them “freedom” and scatter broadcast over Asia that word which, when sown among the Hellenes, has broken up both our empire and that of the Lacedemonians.
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§ 105 I might go on and endeavor to speak at greater length on how you could carry on the war so as to triumph most quickly over the power of the King; but as things are, I fear that I might lay myself open to criticism if, having had no part in a soldier's life, I should now venture to advise you, whose achievements in war are without parallel in number and magnitude. Therefore on this subject I think I need say nothing more. But to proceed with the rest of my discourse, I believe that both your own father and the founder of your kingdom, and also the progenitor of your race — were it lawful for Heracles and possible for the others to appear as your counsellors — would advise the very things which I have urged.
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§ 106 I draw my inference from their actions while they lived. For your father, in dealing with those states which I am urging you to cultivate, kept on friendly terms with them all. And the founder of your empire, although he aspired higher than did his fellow citizens and set his heart on a king's power, was not minded to take the same road as others who set out to attain a like ambition.
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§ 107 For they endeavored to win this honor by engendering factions, disorder, and bloodshed in their own cities; he, on the other hand, held entirely aloof from Hellenic territory, and set his heart upon occupying the throne of Macedon. For he knew full well that the Hellenes were not accustomed to submit to the rule of one man, while the other races were incapable of ordering their lives without the control of some such power.
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§ 108 And so it came about, owing to his unique insight in this regard, that his kingship has proved to be quite set apart from that of the generality of kings: for, because he alone among the Hellenes did not claim the right to rule over a people of kindred race, he alone was able to escape the perils incident to one-man power. For history discovers to us the fact that those among the Hellenes who have managed to acquire such authority have not only been destroyed themselves but have been blotted, root and branch, from the face of the earth; while he, on the contrary, lived a long and happy life and left his seed in possession of the same honors which he himself had enjoyed.
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§ 109 Coming now to Heracles, all others who praise him harp endlessly on his valor or recount his labors; and not one, either of the poets or of the historians, will be found to have commemorated his other excellences — I mean those which pertain to the spirit. I, on the other hand, see here a field set apart and entirely unworked — a field not small nor barren, but teeming with many a theme for praise and with glorious deeds, yet demanding a speaker with ability to do them justice.
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§ 110 If this subject had claimed my attention when I was younger, I should have found it easy to prove that it was more by his wisdom, his lofty ambition, and his justice than by his strength of body that your ancestor surpassed all who lived before his day. But approaching the subject at my present age, and seeing what a wealth of material there is in it to discuss, I have felt that my present powers were unequal to the task, and I have also realized that my discourse would run on to twice the length of that which is now before you to be read. For these reasons, then, I have refrained from touching upon his other exploits and have singled out one only — a story which is pertinent and in keeping with what I have said before, while being of a length best proportioned to the subject now in hand.
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§ 111 When Heracles saw that Hellas was rife with wars and factions and many other afflictions, he first brought these troubles to an end and reconciled the cities with each other, and then showed by his example to coming generations with whom and against whom it was their duty to go to war. For he made an expedition against Troy, which was in those days the strongest power in Asia, and so far did he excel in generalship those who at a later time waged war against this same city, that, 112while they with the combined strength of Hellas found it difficult to take Troy after a siege which lasted ten years, he, on the other hand, in less than as many days, and with a small expedition, easily took the city by storm. After this, he put to death to a man all the princes of the tribes who dwelt along the shores of both continents; and these he could never have destroyed had he not first conquered their armies. When he had done these things, he set up the Pillars of Heracles, as they are called, to be a trophy of victory over the barbarians, a monument to his own valor and the perils he had surmounted, and to mark the bounds of the territory of the Hellenes.
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§ 113 My purpose in relating all this is that you may see that by my words I am exhorting you to a course of action which, in the light of their deeds, it is manifest that your ancestors chose as the noblest of all. Now, while all who are blessed with understanding ought to set before themselves the greatest of men as their model, and strive to become like him, it behoves you above all to do so. For since you have no need to follow alien examples but have before you one from your own house, have we not then the right to expect that you will be spurred on by this and inspired by the ambition to make yourself like the ancestor of your race?
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§ 114 I do not mean that you will be able to imitate Heracles in all his exploits; for even among the gods there are some who could not do that; but in the qualities of the spirit, in devotion to humanity, and in the good will which he cherished toward the Hellenes, you can come close to his purposes. And it lies in your power, if you will heed my words, to attain whatever glory you yourself desire;
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§ 115 for it is easier for you to rise from your present station and win the noblest fame than it has been to advance from the station which you inherited to the fame which is now yours. And mark that I am summoning you to an undertaking in which you will make expeditions, not with the barbarians against men who have given you no just cause, but with the Hellenes against those upon whom it is fitting that the descendants of Heracles should wage war.
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§ 116 And do not be surprised if throughout my speech I am trying to incline you to a policy of kindness to the Hellenes and of gentleness and humanity. For harshness is, I observe, grievous both to those who exercise it and to those upon whom it falls, while gentleness, whether in man or in the other animals, bears a good name;
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§ 117 nay, in the case of the gods also we invoke as the “Heavenly Ones” those who bless us with good things, while to those who are agents of calamities and punishments we apply more hateful epithets; in honor of the former, both private persons and states erect temples and altars, whereas we honor the latter neither in our prayers nor in our sacrifices, but practice rites to drive away their evil presence.
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§ 118 Bearing ever in mind these truths, you should habitually act and strive to the end that all men shall cherish even more than they do now such an opinion of your character. Indeed, those who crave a greater fame than that of other men must map out in their thoughts a course of action which, while practicable, is at the same time close to the ideal, and seek to carry it into effect as opportunity presents a way.
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§ 119 From many considerations you may realize that you ought to act in this way, but especially from the experiences of Jason. For he, without having achieved anything comparable to what you have done, won the highest renown, not from what he did, but from what he said; for he kept talking as if he intended to cross over to the continent and make war upon the King.
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§ 120 Now since Jason by use of words alone advanced himself so far, what opinion must we expect the world will have of you if you actually do this thing; above all, if you undertake to conquer the whole empire of the King, or, at any rate, to wrest from it a vast extent of territory and sever from it — to use a current phrase — “Asia from Cilicia to Sinope;” and if, furthermore, you undertake to establish cities in this region, and to settle in permanent abodes those who now, for lack of the daily necessities of life, are wandering from place to place and committing outrages upon whomsoever they encounter? 121If we do not stop these men from banding together, by providing sufficient livelihood for them, they will grow before we know it into so great a multitude as to be a terror no less to the Hellenes than to the barbarians. But we pay no heed to them; nay, we shut our eyes to the fact that a terrible menace which threatens us all alike is waxing day by day.
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§ 122 It is therefore the duty of a man who is high-minded, who is a lover of Hellas, who has a broader vision than the rest of the world, to employ these bands in a war against the barbarians, to strip from that empire all the territory which I defined a moment ago, to deliver these homeless wanderers from the ills by which they are afflicted and which they inflict upon others, to collect them into cities, and with these cities to fix the boundary of Hellas, making of them buffer states to shield us all.
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§ 123 For by doing this, you will not only make them prosperous, but you will put us all on a footing of security. If, however, you do not succeed in these objects, this much you will at any rate easily accomplish, — the liberation of the cities which are on the coast of Asia.
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§ But no matter what part of this undertaking you are able to carry out, or only attempt to carry out, you cannot fail to attain distinguished glory; and it will be well deserved if only you will make this the goal of your own efforts and urge on the Hellenes in the same course.
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§ 124 For as things now are, who would not have reason to be amazed at the turn events have taken and to feel contempt for us, when among the barbarians, whom we have come to look upon as effeminate and unversed in war and utterly degenerate from luxurious living, men have arisen who thought themselves worthy to rule over Hellas, while among the Hellenes no one has aspired so high as to attempt to make us masters of Asia?
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§ 125 Nay, we have dropped so far behind the barbarians that, while they did not hesitate even to begin hostilities against the Hellenes, we do not even have the spirit to pay them back for the injuries we have suffered at their hands. On the contrary, although they admit that in all their wars they have no soldiers of their own nor generals nor any of the things which are serviceable in times of danger,
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§ 126 but have to send and get all these from us, we have gone so far in our passion to injure ourselves that, whereas it lies in our power to possess the wealth of the barbarians in security and peace, we continue to wage war upon each other over trifles, and we actually help to reduce to subjection those who revolt from the authority of the King, and sometimes, unwittingly, we ally ourselves with our hereditary foes and seek to destroy those who are of our own race.
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§ 127 Therefore, since the others are so lacking in spirit, I think it is opportune for you to head the war against the King; and, while it is only natural for the other descendants of Heracles, and for men who are under the bonds of their polities and laws, to cleave fondly to that state in which they happen to dwell, it is your privilege, as one who has been blessed with untrammeled freedom, to consider all Hellas your fatherland, as did the founder of your race, and to be as ready to brave perils for her sake as for the things about which you are personally most concerned.
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§ 128 Perhaps there are those — men capable of nothing else but criticism — who will venture to rebuke me because I have chosen to challenge you to the task of leading the expedition against the barbarians and of taking Hellas under your care, while I have passed over my own city.
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§ 129 Well, if I were trying to present this matter to any others before having broached it to my own country, which has thrice freed Hellas — twice from the barbarians and once from the Lacedemonian yoke — I should confess my error. In truth, however, it will be found that I turned to Athens first of all and endeavored to win her over to this cause with all the earnestness of which my nature is capable, but when I perceived that she cared less for what I said than for the ravings of the platform orators, I gave her up, although I did not abandon my efforts.
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§ 130 Wherefore I might justly be praised on every hand, because throughout my whole life I have constantly employed such powers as I possess in warring on the barbarians, in condemning those who opposed my plan, and in striving to arouse to action whoever I think will best be able to benefit the Hellenes in any way or to rob the barbarians of their present prosperity.
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§ 131 Consequently, I am now addressing myself to you, although I am not unaware that when I am proposing this course many will look at it askance, but that when you are actually carrying it out all will rejoice in it; for no one has had any part in what I have proposed, but when the benefits from it shall have been realized in fact, everyone without fail will look to have his portion.
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§ 132 Consider also what a disgrace it is to sit idly by and see Asia flourishing more than Europe and the barbarians enjoying a greater prosperity than the Hellenes; and, what is more, to see those who derive their power from Cyrus, who as a child was cast out by his mother on the public highway, addressed by the title of “The Great King,” while the descendants of Heracles, who because of his virtue was exalted by his father to the rank of a god, are addressed by meaner titles than they. We must not allow this state of affairs to go on; no, we must change and reverse it entirely.
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§ 133 Rest assured that I should never have attempted to persuade you to undertake this at all had power and wealth been the only things which I saw would come of it; for I think that you already have more than enough of such things, and that any man is beyond measure insatiable who deliberately chooses the extreme hazard of either winning these prizes or losing his life. 134No, it is not with a view to the acquisition of wealth and power that I urge this course, but in the belief that by means of these you will win a name of surpassing greatness and glory. Bear in mind that while we all possess bodies that are mortal, yet by virtue of good will and praise and good report and memory which keeps pace with the passage of time we partake of immortality — a boon for which we may well strive with all our might and suffer any hardship whatsoever.
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§ 135 You may observe that even common citizens of the best sort, who would exchange their lives for nothing else, are willing for the sake of winning glory to lay them down in battle; and, in general, that those who crave always an honor greater than they already possess are praised by all men, while those who are insatiable with regard to any other thing under the sun are looked upon as intemperate and mean.
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§ 136 But more important than all that I have said is the truth that wealth and positions of power often fall into the hands of our foes, whereas the good will of our fellow countrymen and the other rewards which I have mentioned are possessions to which none can fall heir but our own children, and they alone. I could not, therefore, respect myself if I failed to advance these motives in urging you to make this expedition and wage war and brave its perils.
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§ 137 You will best resolve upon this question if you feel that you are summoned to this task, not by my words only, but by your forefathers, by the cowardice of the Persians, and by all who have won great fame and attained the rank of demigods because of their campaigns against the barbarians, and, most of all, by the present opportunity, which finds you in the possession of greater power than has any of those who dwell in Europe, and finds him against whom you are to make war more cordially hated and despised by the world at large than was ever any king before him.
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§ 138 I should have given much to be able to blend into one all the speeches I have delivered on this question; for the present discourse would then appear more worthy of its theme. But, as things are, it devolves upon you to search out and consider, from all my speeches, the arguments which bear upon and urge you to this war; for so you will best resolve upon the matter.
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§ 139 Now I am not unaware that many of the Hellenes look upon the King's power as invincible. Yet one may well marvel at them if they really believe that the power which was subdued to the will of a mere barbarian — an ill-bred barbarian at that — and collected in the cause of slavery, could not be scattered by a man of the blood of Hellas, of ripe experience in warfare, in the cause of freedom — and that too although they know that while it is in all cases difficult to construct a thing, to destroy it is, comparatively, an easy task.
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§ 140 Bear in mind that the men whom the world most admires and honors are those who unite in themselves the abilities of the statesman and the general. When, therefore, you see the renown which even in a single city is bestowed on men who possess these gifts, what manner of eulogies must you expect to hear spoken of you, when among all the Hellenes you shall stand forth as a statesman who has worked for the good of Hellas, and as a general who has overthrown the barbarians?
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§ 141 I, for my part, think that this will set a limit to human endeavor; for no other man will ever be able to do deeds greater than these, because among the Hellenes there will never be again so great an enterprise as that of leading us forward out of our innumerable wars into a spirit of concord; nor, among the barbarians, is it likely that so great a power will ever be built up again if once you shatter that which they now possess.
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§ 142 Therefore, in generations yet to come, no one, no matter how surpassing his genius, will ever be in a position to do so great a thing. Yes, and speaking of those who lived before your time, I could show that their deeds are excelled by the things which you have even now accomplished, in no specious sense but in very truth; for since you have overthrown more nations than any of the Hellenes has ever taken cities, it would not be hard for me to prove, comparing you with each of them in turn, that you have accomplished greater things than they.
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§ 143 But I have deliberately abstained from this mode of comparison, and for two reasons: because some writers employ it in season and out of season, and also because I am unwilling to represent those whom the world regards as demigods as of less worth than men who are now living.
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§ 144 Ponder well the fact (to touch upon examples from the distant past) that while no man, whether poet or writer of prose, would applaud the wealth of Tantalus, or the rule of Pelops, or the power of Eurystheus, all the world, with one accord, would praise — next to the unrivalled excellence of Heracles and the goodness of Theseus — the men who marched against Troy and all others who have proved to be like them.
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§ 145 And yet we know that the bravest and most famous of them held their sway in little villages and petty islands; nevertheless they left behind them a name which rivals that of the gods and is renowned throughout the world. For all the world loves, not those who have acquired the greatest power for themselves alone, but those who have shown themselves to be the greatest benefactors of Hellas.
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§ 146 And you will observe that this is the opinion which men hold, not of these heroes only, but of all mankind. Thus, no one would praise our city either because she was once mistress of the sea, or because she extorted such huge sums of money from her allies and carried them up into the Acropolis, nor yet, surely, because she obtained power over many cities — power to devastate them, or aggrandize them, or manage them according to her pleasure (for all these things it was possible for her to do);
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§ 147 no, all these things have been the source of many complaints against her, while because of the battle of Marathon, the naval battle at Salamis, and most of all because her citizens abandoned their own homes to insure the deliverance of Hellas, she enjoys the encomiums of all mankind. The same opinion is held regarding the Lacedemonians also;
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§ 148 their defeat at Thermopylae is more admired than their many victories; the trophy which was erected by the barbarians over the Lacedemonians is an object of affectionate regard and of pilgrimages, while the trophies erected by the Lacedemonians over their enemies call forth, not praise, but odium; for the former is regarded as a proof of valor, the latter of selfish greed.
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§ 149 Now if, after examining and reviewing all these admonitions in your own mind, you feel that my discourse is in any part rather weak and inadequate, set it down to my age, which might well claim the indulgence of all; but if it is up to the standard of my former publications, I would have you believe that it was not my old age that conceived it but the divine will that prompted it, not out of solicitude for me, but because of its concern for Hellas, and because of its desire to deliver her out of her present distress and to crown you with a glory far greater than you now possess.
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§ 150 I think that you are not unaware in what manner the gods order the affairs of mortals: for not with their own hands do they deal out the blessings and curses that befall us; rather they inspire in each of us such a state of mind that good or ill, as the case may be,
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§ 151 is visited upon us through one another. For example, it may be that even now the gods have assigned to me the task of speech while to you they allot the task of action, considering that you will be the best master in that province, while in the field of speech I might prove least irksome to my hearers. Indeed, I believe that even your past achievements would never have reached such magnitude had not one of the gods helped you to succeed;
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§ 152 and I believe he did so, not that you might spend your whole life warring upon the barbarians in Europe alone, but that, having been trained and having gained experience and come to know your own powers in these campaigns, you might set your heart upon the course which I have urged upon you. It were therefore shameful, now that fortune nobly leads the way, to lag behind and refuse to follow whither she desires to lead you forward.
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§ 153 It is my belief that, while you ought to honor everyone who has any praise for your past accomplishments, you ought to consider that those laud you in the noblest terms who judge your nature capable of even greater triumphs, and not those whose discourse has gratified you for the moment only, but those who will cause future generations to admire your achievements beyond the deeds of any man of the generations that are past. I would like to say many things in this strain, but I am not able; the reason why, I have stated more often than I ought.
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§ 154 It remains, then, to summarize what I have said in this discourse, in order that you may see in the smallest compass the substance of my counsels. I assert that it is incumbent upon you to work for the good of the Hellenes, to reign as king over the Macedonians, and to extend your power over the greatest possible number of the barbarians. For if you do these things, all men will be grateful to you: the Hellenes for your kindness to them; the Macedonians if you reign over them, not like a tyrant, but like a king; and the rest of the nations, if by your hands they are delivered from barbaric despotism and are brought under the protection of Hellas.
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§ 155 How well this discourse has been composed with respect to appropriateness and finish of style is a question which it is fair to ask my hearers to answer; but that no one could give you better advice than this, or advice more suited to the present situation — of this I believe that I am well assured.

Via ToposText (topostext.org), a project of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation created by Brady Kiesling. Translated by George Norlin (1871-1942). Composed ca. 346 BCE. Licence: public domain. Source.