History of the Peloponnesian War

And these few, hoping yet further, if the Medes prevailed, to increase their own power, kept the people under and furthered the coming in of the barbarian. And so did the whole city, but it was not then master of itself nor doth it deserve to be upbraided with what it did when they had no laws [but were at the will of others].

But when the Medes were gone and our city had laws, consider now, when the Athenians attempted to subdue all Greece and this territory of ours with the rest wherein through sedition they had gotten many places already, whether by giving them battle at Coroneia and defeating them, we delivered not Boeotia from servitude then, and do not also now with much zeal assist you in the asserting of the rest, and find not more horses and more provision of war than any of the confederates besides. And so much be spoken by way of apology to our Medizing.

"And we will endeavour to prove now that the Grecians have been rather wronged by you and that you are more worthy of all manner of punishment. You became, you say, confederates and denizens of Athens for to be righted against us.

Against us then only the Athenians should have come with you and not you with them have gone to the invasion of the rest, especially when if the Athenians would have led you whither you would not, you had the league of the Lacedaemonians made with you against the Medes, which you so often object, to have resorted unto, which was sufficient not only to have protected you from us but, which is the main matter, to have secured you to take what course you had pleased. But voluntarily and without constraint you rather chose to follow the Athenians.

And you say it had been a dishonest thing to have betrayed your benefactors. But it is more dishonest and more unjust by far to betray the Grecians universally, to whom you have sworn, than to betray the Athenians alone, especially when these go about to deliver Greece from subjection and the other to subdue it.