most illustrious cities, formerly the lights of Greece, under
your feet, that their continuance in bondage may tarnish our title of
deliverers of Greece? But the Argives took part with Philip: we excuse
you from taking any concern in that cause, so that you need not be
angry with them on our behalf. We have received sufficient proof, that
the guilt of that proceeding is chargeable on two only, or, at most,
three persons, and not on the state; just, indeed, as in the case of
the invitation given to you and to your army, and your reception into
the citadel, not one step was taken by public authority. We know,
that the Thessalians, Phocians, and Locrians, with unanimous consent,
joined in espousing the cause of Philip; yet we have given liberty to
them in common with the rest of Greece. How then can you suppose we
shall conduct ourselves towards the Argives, who are acquitted of
having publicly authorized misconduct? You said, that your inviting
slaves to liberty, and the distribution of lands among the indigent,
were objected to you as crimes; and crimes, surely, they are, of no
small magnitude. But what are they in comparison with those atrocious
deeds, that are daily perpetrated by you and your adherents, in
continual succession? Show us a free assembly of the people, either at
Argos or Lacedaemon, if you wish to hear a true recital of the crimes
of the most abandoned tyranny. To omit all other instances of older
date, what a massacre did your son-in-law, Pythagoras, make at Argos
almost before my eyes! What another did you yourself perpetrate, when
I was nearly within the confines of the Lacedaemonians! Now, give
orders, that the persons whom you took out of the midst of an
assembly, and committed to prison, after declaring, in the hearing of
all your countrymen, that you would keep them in custody, be produced
in their chains, that their wretched parents may know that those are
alive, for whom, under a false impression, they are mourning. Well,
but you say, though all these things were so, Romans, how do they
concern you? Can you say this to the deliverers of Greece; to people
who crossed the sea, and have maintained a war on sea and land, to
effect its deliverance? Still you tell us, you have not directly
violated the alliance, or the friendship established between us. How
many instances must I produce of your having done so? But I will not
go into long detail; I will bring the matter to a short issue. By
what acts is