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Since the Athenians viewed with alarm the rising power of Philip, they came to the assistance of any people1 who were attacked by the king, by sending envoys to the cities and urging them to watch over their independence and punish with death those citizens who were bent on treason, and they promised them all that they would fight as their allies, and, after publicly declaring themselves the king's enemies, engaged in an out-and-out war against Philip. [2] The man who more than any other spurred them on to take up the cause of Hellas was the orator Demosthenes, the most eloquent of the Greeks of those times. Even his city was, however, unable to restrain its citizens from their urge toward treason, such was the crop,2 as it were, of traitors that had sprung up at that time throughout Hellas. [3] Hence the anecdote that when Philip wished to take a certain city with unusually strong fortifications and one of the inhabitants remarked that it was impregnable, he asked if even gold could not scale its walls.3 [4] For he had learned from experience that what could not be subdued by force of arms could easily be vanquished by gold. So, organizing bands of traitors in the several cities by means of bribes and calling those who accepted his gold "guests" and "friends," by his evil communications he corrupted the morals of the people.4

1 For instances see Philochorus, l.c.

2 See Dem. 18.61: "In all the Greek states—not in some of them but in every one of them—it chanced that there had sprung up the most abundant crop of traitorous, venal, and profligate politicians ever known within the memory of mankind." (Vince & Vince, L.C.L.).

3 See Horace on the power of gold: "diffidit urbium Portas vir Macedo et subruit aemulos Reges muneribus" ( Horace Odes 3.16.13 ff.).

4 Cp. φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρήσθ᾽ ὁμιλίαι κακαί (Eur. fr. 1013, Menander Thais fr. 218 Kock and 1 Corinthians 15.33).

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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  • Cross-references to this page (1):
    • Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), MECYBERNA
  • Cross-references in notes from this page (1):
    • Demosthenes, On the Crown, 61
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