🇨🇦 Original
But let us be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable.
And there is another truth. If great powers abandon even the pretence of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from transactionalism will become harder to replicate. Hegemons cannot continually monetise their relationships.
Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty.
🏛️ Translation
§24 ἀλλὰ σαφῶς ἴδωμεν, ὦ οἱ συνελθόντες, ποῖ τείνει ταῦτα.
But let us see clearly, O you here gathered, where these things tend.
§25 κόσμος μὲν γὰρ εἰς πύργους καὶ τείχη διῃρημένος πενιχρότερός τε ἔσται καὶ σαθρώτερος καὶ πρὸς τὸ διηνεκὲς ἀσθενέστερος.
For a world divided up into towers and walls will be poorer, more brittle, and weaker for the long term.
§26 καὶ μὴν ἄλλο τι λέξω ὑμῖν ἀληθές. ἐὰν οἱ μέγιστον δυνάμενοι μηδ’ αὐτὸ τὸ σχῆμα τῶν νόμων καὶ τῶν τιμωμένων ἔτι σώζωσιν, ἀλλ’ ἀκωλύτως τὴν ἑαυτῶν δύναμιν καὶ τὰ συμφέροντα διώκωσιν, οὐκέτι ῥᾳδίως αὖθις τὰ ὅμοια ἐκ τῶν συναλλαγμάτων κέρδη ἀναλήψονται.
And further I shall tell you another truth. If those of greatest power no longer preserve even the outward form of laws and values, but pursue their own might and their interests without hindrance, they will not again easily recover from their dealings the same gains as before.
§27 οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τέ ἐστιν τοὺς ἡγεμόνας τὰς πρὸς ἀλλήλους κοινωνίας ἀεὶ χρηματίζεσθαι.
For it is not possible for hegemons to keep on making money out of their relations with others.
§28 οἱ δὲ σύμμαχοι, ὡς ἂν τὸ ἄδηλον τοῦ μέλλοντος προφυλάξωνται, εἰς πλείους πόλεις κοινωνίας ἑαυτοῖς πορίσονται.
Allies, so as to guard themselves against the uncertainty of what is to come, will procure for themselves partnerships with more states than one.
💬 Commentary
🤖 First pass
Introductory. This section gives Greek one of its happiest moments: Carney’s “classic risk management” turns out to map onto the very thing Demosthenes spent his career nagging Athens about — προμηθεῖσθαι, “taking forethought against what is coming.” The deep history quietly cooperates with the surface translation. (The προμηθεῖσθαι windfall itself lands in §30, in Post VII — but the build-up to it is the work of §24–§28.)
Commentary.
- The fortress in §25. πύργοι (towers) and τείχη (walls) for “fortresses” — both are exactly the words Demosthenes uses when arguing about the defense of states against Philip. He spends real time on the question whether Athenian energy should go behind the walls or out into the field; the contrast Carney draws between a “world of fortresses” and one of cooperation would have been intuitively legible to the original audience, possibly more legible to them than to us. A fortressed κόσμος, “world,” was a real historical question, not an abstraction.
- χρηματίζεσθαι in §27. This was the most satisfying single verb in the section. χρηματίζομαι in the middle means literally “to make money for oneself, to do business for one’s own profit.” Demosthenes uses it pejoratively for corrupt politicians who turn public position into private wealth. So “hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships” becomes οὐχ οἷόν τε τοὺς ἡγεμόνας τὰς κοινωνίας ἀεὶ χρηματίζεσθαι — which carries Carney’s economic sense exactly, while also picking up an editorial tone he doesn’t quite state but plainly intends. The Greek will not let you say it innocently.
- The ring composition with ὠνέομαι (forward link). In §7 (Post II) I had “hope that compliance will purchase safety” — ἡ εὐπείθεια τὴν σωτηρίαν ὠνήσεται. In §8: ἀλλ’ οὐκ ὠνήσεται, “but it will not.” The same verb returns in §29 (Post VII) for diversifying allies: ὠνήσονται μὲν τὴν ἐγγύην, “they will buy surety” — but this time for those who diversify rather than comply. The Greek thread (compliance won’t buy safety, but distributed sovereignty will) is tighter and more visible than in Carney’s English, where the lexical repetition is dimmer. This is one of the small advantages of doing this in a language with stronger verbal aspect.
🤖🧐 Second pass
D8 — quotidian kernel at §24. First-pass ὦ ἄνδρες → ὦ οἱ συνελθόντες, per the global policy. §25–§28 in the first pass carried no vocative slot to update, and the second-pass log marks them [carried] — unchanged from first pass.
D50 — πρὸς τὸ διηνεκές back-translation standardized to “for the long term”. First-pass §25 closed with πρὸς τὸ διηνεκὲς ἀσθενέστερος, back-translated as “weaker for the long enduring” — a gerund-like calque that does not read as English. Second-pass leaves the Greek untouched (πρὸς τὸ διηνεκές is the classical substantivized neuter, “for the long run / for perpetuity,” attested in both πρὸς + acc. and εἰς + acc. forms) and refines the English to “weaker for the long term,” which maps the temporal-projection sense exactly and matches Carney’s own “less sustainable” at this slot. The same Greek expression recurs at §65 (κοινωνοὶ οἷοι… τιμᾶν πρὸς τὸ διηνεκές), where the first-pass had rendered it as “looking to the long stretch ahead” — also standardized to “for the long term” so the recurrence is audible to the reader. Greek-side this is purely a back-translation refinement; no Greek change at either site.
σχῆμα / ἔργῳ first surfaces here, at §26. The keyword pair that will land its climactic deployment at §55 (σχῆμα μέν ἐστι τῆς αὐτονομίας, ἔργῳ δὲ ὑποτέλεια, “in outward form it is sovereignty, but in deed it is vassalage” — see Post XIII) makes its first quiet appearance at §26: αὐτὸ τὸ σχῆμα τῶν νόμων καὶ τῶν τιμωμένων, “the outward form of the laws and of the values.” Carney’s “even the pretence of rules and values” hands the Greek the σχῆμα keyword on a plate, and the second-pass apparatus (Appendix II) records this as the inaugural instance of one of the speech’s load-bearing rhetorical pairs.
No other second-pass changes in this batch. Appendix I marks §25–§28 as carried unchanged from the first pass. The first-pass commentary above is therefore the published commentary for these sections.