d
no harm to any one, but publicly invited those who wished to live under
a national, Boeotian government to come over to us; which as first you
gladly did, and made an agreement with us and remained tranquil, until
you became aware of the smallness of our numbers. Now it is possible
that there may have been something not quite fair in our entering
without the consent of your commons. At any rate you did not repay us in
kind. Instead of refraining, as we had done, from violence, and inducing
us to retire by negotiation, you fell upon us in violation of your
agreement, and slew some of us in fight, of which we do not so much
complain, for in that there was a certain justice; but others who held
out their hands and received quarter, and whose lives you subsequently
promised us, you lawlessly butchered. If this was not abominable, what
is? And after these three crimes committed one after the other--the
violation of your agreement, the murder of the men afterwards, and the
lying breach of your promise not to kill them, if we refrained from
injuring your property in the country--you still affirm that we are the
criminals and yourselves pretend to escape justice. Not so, if these
your judges decide aright, but you will be punished for all together.

"Such, Lacedaemonians, are the facts. We have gone into them at some
length both on your account and on our own, that you may fed that
you will justly condemn the prisoners, and we, that we have given an
additional sanction to our vengeance. We would also prevent you from
being melted by hearing of their past virtues, if any such they had:
these may be fairly appealed to by the victims of injustice, but only
aggravate the guilt of criminals, since they offend against their better
nature. Nor let them gain anything by crying and wailing, by calling
upon your fathers' tombs and their own desolate condition. Against this
we point to the far more dreadful fate of our youth, butchered at their
hands; the fathers of whom either fell at Coronea, bringing Boeotia over
to you, or seated, forlorn old men by desolate hearths, with far more
reason implore your justice upon the prisoners. The pity which they
appeal to is rather due to men who suffer unworthily; those who suffer
justly as they do are on the contrary subjects for triumph. For their
present desolate condition they have themselves to blame, since they
wilfully rejected the better alliance. Their lawless act was not
provoked by any