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For in this whole affair Demosthenes is responsible to you for three most serious mistakes. The first was this: when Philip was nominally making war against you, but really was far more the enemy of Thebes, as the event itself has proved (why need I say more?), Demosthenes concealed these facts, which were so important, and pretending that the alliance was to be brought about, not through the crisis, but through his own negotiations,
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first he persuaded the people to give up all consideration of the terms of the alliance, and to count themselves fortunate if only it were made; and when he had gained this point he betrayed all Boeotia to the Thebans by writing in the decree, If any city refuse to follow Thebes, the Athenians shall aid the Boeotians in Thebes,The traditional policy of Athens had been to support the smaller Boeotian cities in their refusal to recognize Theban dominion over them. cheating with words and altering the facts, as he is wont to do; as though, forsooth, when the Boeotians should be suffering in fact, they would be content with Demosthenes’ fine phrases, rather than indignant at the outrageous way in which they had been treated;
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and, secondly, he laid two thirds of the costs of the war upon you, whose danger was more remote, and only one third on the Thebans (in all this acting for bribes); and the leadership by sea he caused to be shared equally by both; but all the expenditure he laid upon you and the leadership by land, if we are not to talk nonsense, he carried away bodily and handed it over to Thebes. The result was that in all the war that followed, Stratocles, your general, had no authority to plan for the safety of his troops.
