44
How can you avoid the charge of acting with inconsistency if, while you do not prevent the Thebans from violating their oaths and treaties, yet you pretend that you are making war on the Lacedaemonians on behalf of the same obligations? Or again, if you abandoned your own possessions in your desire to strengthen the alliance as much as possible, yet are about to permit the Thebans to keep the territory of others and act in such fashion as to injure your reputation with all the world?
45
But this would be the crowning outrage—if you have determined to stand by those who have been the constant allies of the Lacedaemonians when the Lacedaemonians demand of them an action which violates the treaty, and yet shall permit us, who have been your allies for the longest time, and were subservient to the Lacedaemonians under compulsion in the last war only, to become for that reason the most miserable of all mankind.
46
For who could be found to be more unhappy than we are who, in one day deprived of our city, our lands, and our possessions, and being destitute of all necessities alike, have become wanderers and beggars, not knowing whither to turn and, whatever our habitation, finding no happiness there? For if we fall in with the unfortunate, we grieve that we must be compelled, in addition to our own ills, to share in the ills of others;
47
and if we encounter those who fare well, our lot is even harder to bear, not because we envy them their prosperity, but because amid the blessings of our neighbors we see more clearly our own miseries—miseries so great that we spend no day without tears, but spend all our time mourning the loss of our fatherland and bewailing the change in our fortunes.
