“But you will say, I ought to have taken security of him at the time, so that had he fostered the wish, he might have lacked the ability to deceive.  To meet that retort, I must beg you to listen to certain things, which I should never have said in his presence, except for your utter want of feeling towards me, or your extraordinary ingratitude.  Try and recall the posture of your affairs, when I 24 extricated you and brought you to Seuthes.  Do you not recollect how at Perinthus Aristarchus shut the gates in your faces each time you offered to approach the town, and how you were driven to camp outside under the canopy of heaven?  It was midwinter; you were thrown upon the resources of a market wherein few were the articles offered for sale, and scanty the wherewithal to purchase them.  Yet stay in Thrace you must, for there were ships of war riding at anchor in the bay, ready to hinder your passage across; and what did that stay imply?  It meant being in a hostile country, confronted by countless cavalry, legions of light infantry.  And what had we?  A heavy infantry force certainly, with which we could have dashed at villages in a body possibly, and seized a modicum of food at most; but as to pursuing the enemy with such a force as ours, or capturing men or cattle, the thing was out of the question; for when I rejoined you your original cavalry and light infantry divisions had disappeared.  In such sore straits you lay!

“Supposing that, without making any demands for pay whatever, I had merely won for you the alliance of Seuthes—­whose cavalry and light infantry were just what you needed—­would you not have thought that I had planned very well for you?  I presume, it was through your partnership with him and his that you were able to find such complete stores of corn in the villages, when the Thracians were driven to take to their heels in such hot haste, and you had so large a share of captives and cattle.  Why! from the day on which his cavalry force was attached to us, we never set eyes on a single foeman in the field, though up to that date the enemy with his cavalry and his light infantry used undauntedly to hang on our heels, and effectually prevented us from scattering in small bodies and reaping a rich harvest of provisions.  But if he who partly gave you this security has failed to pay in full the wages due to you therefrom, is not that a terrible misfortune?  So monstrous indeed that you think I ought not to go forth alive[1].

[1] I.e. the fate of a scape-goat is too good for me.

“But let me ask you, in what condition do you turn your backs on this 31 land to-day?  Have you not wintered here in the lap of plenty?  Whatever you have got from Seuthes has been surplus gain.  Your enemies have had to meet the bill of your expenses, whilst you led a merry round of existence, in which you have not once set eyes on the dead body of a comrade or lost one living man.  Again, if you have achieved any, (or rather many) noble deeds against the Asiatic barbarian, you have them safe.  And in addition to these to-day you have won for yourselves a second glory.  You undertook a campaign against the European Thracians, and have mastered them.  What I say then is, that these very matters which you make a ground of quarrel against myself, are rather blessings for which you ought to show gratitude to heaven.