[59] Lysias, Fragm. Orat. 33. ap. Dionys. Hal. p. 521. ὁρῶν οὕτως
αἰσχρῶς διακειμένην τὴν Ἑλλάδα, καὶ πολλὰ μὲν αὐτῆς ὄντα ὑπὸ τῷ
βαρβάρῳ, πολλὰς δὲ πόλεις ὑπὸ τυράννων ἀναστάτους γεγενημένας.
[60] Lysias, Fr. Or. 33. _l. c._ Ἐπίστασθε δὲ, ὅτι ἡ μὲν ἀρχὴ τῶν
κρατούντων τῆς θαλάττης, τῶν δὲ χρημάτων βασιλεὺς ταμίας· τὰ δὲ
τῶν Ἑλλήνων σώματα τῶν δαπανᾶσθαι δυναμένων· ναῦς δὲ πολλὰς αὐτὸς
κέκτηται, πολλὰς δ᾽ ὁ τύραννος τῆς Σικελίας.
[61] Lysias, Orat. Frag. _l. c._ Θαυμάζω δὲ Λακεδαιμονίους
πάντων μάλιστα, τίνι ποτε γνώμῃ χρώμενοι, καιομένην τὴν Ἑλλάδα
περιορῶσιν, ἡγεμόνες ὄντες τῶν Ἑλλήνων, οὐκ ἀδίκως, etc.
Οὐ γὰρ ἀλλοτρίας δεῖ τὰς τῶν ἀπολωλότων συμφορὰς νομίζειν ἀλλ᾽
οἰκείας· ~οὐδ᾽ ἀναμεῖναι, ἕως ἂν ἐπ᾽ αὐτοὺς ἡμᾶς αἱ δυνάμεις
ἀμφοτέρων ἔλθωσιν, ἀλλ᾽ ἕως ἔτι ἔξεστι, τὴν τούτων ὕβριν κωλῦσαι~.
I give in the text the principal points of what remains out of
this discourse of Lysias, without confining myself to the words.
Unfortunately we possess but a scanty fragment of this emphatic
harangue (a panegyrical harangue, in the ancient sense of the word)
delivered at Olympia by Lysias. But we see the alarming picture
of the time which he labored to impress: Hellas already enslaved,
both in the east and in the west, by the two greatest potentates
of the age,[62] Artaxerxes and Dionysius—and now threatened in her
centre by their combined efforts. To feel the full probability of so
gloomy an anticipation, we must recollect that only in the preceding
year Dionysius, already master of Sicily and of a considerable
fraction of Italian Greece, had stretched his naval force across
to Illyria, armed a host of Illyrian barbarians, and sent them
southward under Alketas against the Molossians, with the view of
ultimately proceeding farther and pillaging the Delphian temple.
The Lacedæmonians had been obliged to send a force to arrest their
progress.[63] No wonder then that Lysias should depict the despot of
Syracuse as meditating ulterior projects against Central Greece; and
as an object not only of hatred for what he had done, but of terror
for what he was about to do, in conjunction with the other great
enemy from the east.[64]
[62] Diodor. xv. 23. οἱ μέγιστοι τῶν τότε δυναστῶν, etc.
[63] Diodor. xv. 13.
[64] Isokrates holds similar language, both about the
destructive conquests of Dionysius, and the past sufferings
and present danger of Hellas, in his Orat. IV. (Panegyric.)
composed about 380 B. C., and (probably enough) read at the
Olympic festival of that year (s. 197). ἴσως δ᾽ ἂν καὶ τῆς ἐμῆς
εὐηθείας πολλοὶ καταγελάσειαν, εἰ δυστυχίας ἀνδρῶν ὀδυροίμην ἐν
τοιούτοις καιροῖς, ἐν οἷς Ἰταλία μὲν ἀνάστατος γέγονε, Σικελία
δὲ καταδεδούλωται (compare s. 145), τοσαῦται δὲ πόλεις τοῖς
βαρβάροις ἐκδέδονται, τὰ δὲ λοιπὰ μέρη τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐν τοῖς
μεγίστοις κινδύνοις ἐστίν.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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