Demosthenes, Philippic 2, James Herbert Vince (Translator), 22

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[22] And what of the Thessalians? Do you imagine, I said, that when he was expelling their despots, or again when he was presenting them with Nicaea and Magnesia , they ever dreamed that a Council of Ten¹ would be established among them, as it is today, or that the same man who restored to them the Amphictyonic meeting at Thermopylae would also appropriate their own peculiar revenues? Impossible! But so it came to pass, as all men may know.

Philippic 2. Demosthenes. James Herbert Vince (Translator). London. 1930.

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Current edition Perseus

Second Philippic (English) (Demosthenes, Vol. I: Olynthiacs, Philippics, Minor Public Speeches, Speech Against Leptines, I-XVII, XX. Vince, J. H., translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930 (printing).)

Editions (1)

κατὰ Φιλίππου β΄ Perseus (Demosthenes. Orationes, Vol. I. Butcher, S. H., editor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903.) — 22 focus

[22] τί δʼ οἱ Θετταλοί; ἆρʼ οἴεσθʼ, ἔφην, ὅτʼ αὐτοῖς τοὺς τυράννους ἐξέβαλλε καὶ πάλιν Νίκαιαν καὶ Μαγνησίαν ἐδίδου, προσδοκᾶν τὴν καθεστῶσαν νῦν δεκαδαρχίαν ἔσεσθαι παρʼ αὐτοῖς; ἢ τὸν τὴν πυλαίαν ἀποδόντα, τοῦτον τὰς ἰδίας αὐτῶν προσόδους παραιρήσεσθαι; οὐκ ἔστι ταῦτα. ἀλλὰ μὴν γέγονεν ταῦτα καὶ πᾶσιν ἔστιν εἰδέναι·

Notes on the current edition

Philippic 2

1. According to Dem. 9.26 Philip set up tetrarchies in Thessaly . The two accounts may be reconciled by assuming that he retained the old fourfold division of the country, but set up an oligarchy of ten in each division. Philip, whose policy was to divide and conquer, would be unlikely to centralize the government. It is just possible that δεκαδαρχίαν may be a mistaken amplification of Δ᾽αρχίαν= τετραρχίαν, but in that case the singular would be strange. Owing to the decarchies which Lysander imposed on so many free cities at the end of the Peloponnesian war, the number ten would have the same sinister associations in Greece as it had at Rome and at Venice .

Demosthenes Philippic 2 22

James Herbert Vince (Translator)

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