Unjust Misfortune Distinguished from Self-Inflicted Loss
Accordingly after a short time they obtained assistance,
and once more inhabited their country in security. For
the compassion of foreigners is no small benefit to those
who are unjustly dispossessed; since we often see that,
with the change of feeling among the many, Fortune also
changes; and even the conquerors themselves repent, and make
good the disasters of those who have fallen under undeserved
misfortunes.
The tyranny of the later kings of Macedonia. |
Once more, at certain periods the Chalcidians
and Corinthians and some other cities, owing to
the advantages of their situation, were attacked
by the kings of Macedonia, and had garrisons
imposed on them: but when they were thus enslaved all
the world were eager to do their best to liberate them, and
loathed their enslavers and regarded them continually as
their enemies. But above all, up to this time it was generally
single states that were depopulated, and in single states
that reverses were met with, in some cases while disputing for
supremacy and empire, and in others from the treacherous
attacks of despots and kings: so that, so far from their losses
bringing them any reproach, they escaped even the name of
misfortune.
But the last fall of Greece was embittered by the fact that it came from the folly of the Greeks themselves |
For we must look on all those who meet with
incalculable disasters whether private or public
as the victims of losses, and those only to be
"unfortunate," to whom events through their
own folly bring dishonour. Instances of this
last are the Peloponnesians, Boeotians,
Phocians, . . . and Locrians, some of the
dwellers on the Ionian gulf, and next to these the Macedonians, . . . who all as a rule did not merely suffer loss,
but were "unfortunate," with a misfortune of the gravest kind
and for which they were themselves open to
reproach: for they displayed at once want of
good faith and want of courage, brought upon
themselves a series of disgraces, lost all that could bring them
honour, . . . and voluntarily admitted into their towns the
Roman fasces and axes.
rather than of their leaders. |
They were in the utmost panic, in fact,
owing to the extravagance of their own wrongful acts, if one
ought to call them their own; for I should rather say that the
peoples as such were entirely ignorant, and were beguiled from
the path of right: but that the men who
acted wrongly were
the authors of this delusion.
