not to forget that at the time of the great panic
at Sparta, after the earthquake, caused by the secession of the Helots
to Ithome, we sent the third part of our citizens to assist you.

"On these great and historical occasions such was the part that we
chose, although afterwards we became your enemies. For this you were to
blame. When we asked for your alliance against our Theban oppressors,
you rejected our petition, and told us to go to the Athenians who were
our neighbours, as you lived too far off. In the war we never have done
to you, and never should have done to you, anything unreasonable. If we
refused to desert the Athenians when you asked us, we did no wrong; they
had helped us against the Thebans when you drew back, and we could no
longer give them up with honour; especially as we had obtained their
alliance and had been admitted to their citizenship at our own request,
and after receiving benefits at their hands; but it was plainly our duty
loyally to obey their orders. Besides, the faults that either of you may
commit in your supremacy must be laid, not upon the followers, but on
the chiefs that lead them astray.

"With regard to the Thebans, they have wronged us repeatedly, and
their last aggression, which has been the means of bringing us into our
present position, is within your own knowledge. In seizing our city in
time of peace, and what is more at a holy time in the month, they justly
encountered our vengeance, in accordance with the universal law which
sanctions resistance to an invader; and it cannot now be right that we
should suffer on their account. By taking your own immediate interest
and their animosity as the test of justice, you will prove yourselves to
be rather waiters on expediency than judges of right; although if they
seem useful to you now, we and the rest of the Hellenes gave you
much more valuable help at a time of greater need. Now you are the
assailants, and others fear you; but at the crisis to which we allude,
when the barbarian threatened all with slavery, the Thebans were on
his side. It is just, therefore, to put our patriotism then against
our error now, if error there has been; and you will find the merit
outweighing the fault, and displayed at a juncture when there were few
Hellenes who would set their valour against the strength of Xerxes,
and when greater praise was theirs who preferred the dangerous path of
honour to the safe course of consulting their own interest wit