100
But now when he had said this, he gave the clerk a resolution to read, longer than the Iliad, but more empty than the speeches that he is accustomed to deliver and the life that he has lived. Empty did I say? Nay, full of hopes that were not to be realized and of armies that were never to be assembled. And leading you off out of sight of his fraud, and suspending you on hopes, at last he gathers all up in a motion that you choose ambassadors to go to Eretria and beg the Eretrians—of course it was necessary to beg!—no longer to pay their contribution of five talents to you,The contribution that they had formerly paid as members of the maritime league but it was now some years since they had thus contributed. but to Callias; and further, that you choose other ambassadors to go to Oreus to beg the people of that city to make common cause with the Athenians.
101
Here again, in this resolution, you see how entirely absorbed he is in his thievery, for he also moves that your ambassadors ask the people of Oreus to give their five talents, not to you, but to Callias. But to prove that I am speaking the truth, read—leave out the grandiloquence and the triremes and the pretence, and come to the trick worked on us by the vile and wicked man, who, according to Ctesiphon’s motion which we are discussing, constantly speaks and does what is best for the people of Athens.
102
Resolution
102
So then the triremes and the land forces and the full moon and the congress were so much talk for your ears, but the contributions of the allies, those ten talents, were very real, and you lost them.