59
He will perhaps in his impetuosity raise the argument, suggested to him by certain of his advocates, that he is not liable on a charge of treason, since he was not responsible for dockyards, gates or camps nor in fact for any of the city’s concerns. My own view is that those in charge of these positions could have betrayed a part of your defences only, whereas it was the whole city which Leocrates surrendered. Again, it is the living only whom men of their kind harm, but Leocrates has wronged the dead as well, depriving them of their ancestral rites.
60
Had the city been betrayed by them it would have been inhabited though enslaved, but left as this man left it, it would have been deserted. Moreover, after suffering hardships cities may well expect to see a change to better times, but with complete destruction even the hopes common to every city are taken from them. A man, if he but lives, has still a prospect of change from evil fortunes, but at his death there perishes with him every means by which prosperity could come. And so it is with cities; their misfortune reaches its limit when they are destroyed.
61
Indeed, the plain fact is that for a city destruction is like death. Let us take the clearest illustration. Our city was enslavedBy the Pisistratids from c. 560 to 510 and by the Thirty from 404 to 403. The walls were destroyed in 404. in earlier times by the tyrants and later by the Thirty, when the walls were demolished by the Spartans. Yet we were freed from both these evils and the Greeks approved us as the guardians of their welfare.
