History of the Peloponnesian War

For with Athenians you have walked in the way of injustice. And thus much we have laid open touching our involuntary Medizing and your voluntary Atticizing.

"And for this last injury you charge us with, namely, the unlawful invading of your city in time of peace and of your new-moon sacrifice, we do not think, no not in this action, that we have offended so much as you yourselves.

For though we had done unjustly if we had assaulted your city or wasted your territory as enemies of our own accord; yet when the prime men of your own city, both for wealth and nobility, willing to discharge you of foreign league and conform you to the common institutions of all Boeotia, did of their own accord call us in, wherein lieth the injury then? For they that lead transgress rather than they that follow.

But as we conceive, neither they nor we have transgressed at all. But being citizens as well as you and having more to hazard, they opened their own gates and took us into the city as friends not as enemies with intention to keep the ill-affected from being worse and to do right to the good, taking upon them to be moderators of your councils and not to deprive the city of your persons but to reduce you into one body with the rest of your kindred, and not to engage you in hostility with any but to settle you in peace with all.

"And for an argument that we did not this as enemies, we did harm to no man but proclaimed that if any man were willing to have the city governed after the common form of all Boeotia, he should come to us.

And you came willingly at first and were quiet. But afterwards, when you knew we were but few, though we might seem to have done somewhat more than was fit to do without the consent of your multitude, you did not by us as we did by you, first innovate nothing in fact and then with words persuade us to go forth again, but contrary to the composition assaulted us. And for those men you slew in the affray, we grieve not so much; for they suffered by a kind of law. But to kill those that held up their hands for mercy, whom taken alive you afterwards had promised to spare, was not this a horrible cruelty?

You committed in this business three crimes, one in the neck of another; first, the breach of the composition; then, the death that followed of our men; and thirdly, the falsifying of your promise to save them if we did no hurt to anything of yours in the fields. And yet you say that we are the transgressors and that you for your parts deserve not to undergo a judgment. But it is otherwise. And if these men judge aright, you shall be punished now for all your crimes at once.