you had better consider what the ultimate condition of the army is
like to be. As a body you will not have it in your power to undertake
war against whom you like, or to conclude peace. But in private any
one who chooses will conduct the army on any quest which takes his
fancy. And when ambassadors come to you to demand peace, or whatever
it may be, officious people will put them to death and prevent your
hearing the proposals which brought them to you. The next step will be
that those whom you as a body may choose as generals will be of no
account; but any one who likes to elect himself general, and will
adopt the formula 'Shoot him! shoot him!' will be competent to cut
down whomsoever he pleases untried, be it general or private soldier,
if only he have sufficient followers, as was the case just now. But
just consider what these self-appointed generals have achieved for
you. Zelarchus, the clerk of the market, may possibly have done you a
wrong; if so, he has sailed off and is gone without paying you any
penalty; or he may be guiltless, in which case we have driven him from
the army in terror of perishing unjustly without a trial. While those
who stoned the ambassadors have contrived so cleverly that we alone of
all Hellenes cannot approach Cerasus safely without a strong force,
and the corpses which the very men who slew them themselves invited us
to bury, we cannot now pick up with safety even under a flag of truce.
Who indeed would care to carry a flag of truce, or go as a herald with 30
the blood of heralds upon his hands? All we could do was to implore
the Cerasuntines to bury them.

"If then you approve of such doings, have a resolution passed to that
effect, so that, with a prospect of like occurrences in the future, a
man may privately set up a guard and do his best to fix his tent where
he can find a strong position with a commanding site. If, however,
these seem to you to be the deeds rather of wild beasts than of human