30
And these Thebans, who have recently behaved in such fashion toward your city and in times past have been guilty of betraying Greece as a whole,In the Persian Wars. have seen fit to demand for themselves forgiveness for their evil deeds willingly committed and so monstrous, yet to us, for acts done under compulsion, they think no mercy ought to be shown, but they, true Thebans as they are, have the effrontery to reproach others for siding with the Lacedaemonians, when they, as we all know, have for the longest time been in servitude to them and have fought more zealously for Spartan domination than for their own security!
31
In what invasion into your country of all that have ever been made have they failed to take part? Who, more consistently than they, have been your enemies and ill-wishers? In the Decelean WarThe Decelean War is the name given to the latter part (413-404 B.C.) of the Peloponnesian War when a Spartan force occupied the Attic post, Decelea, in 413 B.C. were they not authors of more mischief than the other invaders? When misfortune befell you,A reference to the Athenian naval defeat at Aegospotami, in 405 B.C. did not they alone of the alliesThis is an exaggeration; not only the Thebans, but the Corinthians and other Peloponnesians, voted for the destruction of Athens, but Sparta refused; cf. Xen. Hell. 2.2.19-20. vote that your city should be reduced to slavery and its territory be abandoned to pasturage as was the plain of Crisa,After the first Sacred War, at the end of the sixth century B.C., the plain of Crisa, between Delphi and the Corinthian Gulf, was declared holy ground and was dedicated to Apollo.
