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PHILIP AND OLYNTHUS.
81

worthies of our time? Is there any likeness or resemblance? I pass over other topics on which I could expatiate. But observe. In the utter absence of competitors (Lacedæmonians depressed, Thebans employed, none of the rest capable of disputing the supremacy with us), when we might hold our own securely and arbitrate the claims of others, we have been deprived of our rightful territory, and spent above 1500 talents to no purpose. The allies whom we gained in war we have lost in peace, and we have trained up against ourselves an enemy thus formidable. For by whose contrivance but our own has Philip grown strong? This looks bad, you will say, but things at home are better. What proof is there of this? The parapets that are whitewashed, the roads that are repaired, the fountains, and such trumpery things? Look at the men of whose statesmanship these are the fruits. They have risen from beggary to opulence, from obscurity to honour. Some have made their private homes more splendid than the public buildings, and as the State has declined, their fortunes have been exalted."

At last Athens roused herself to a real effort, and sent to the relief of her ally a force of more than 2000 native Athenian citzens. Olynthus might yet have been saved had the Olynthians been on their guard against traitors within, and the history of Greece, perhaps of the world, might have been different. Philip, meanwhile, was on the frontier of its territory, after having captured most of the towns in the peninsula. At the siege of one of them, an arrow from an Olynthian

A.C.S.S. vol. iv.
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