Antidosis

For who does not know that Corcyra has the best strategic position among the cities in the neighborhood of the Peloponnese; Samos, among the cities of Ionia; Sestos and Crithôte, among those in the Hellespont; and Potidaea and Torône among the settlements in Thrace? All these cities he has taken and presented to you, with no great outlay of money, without imposing burdens upon your present allies, and without forcing you to pay many taxes[*](Special taxes levied for military purposes.) into the treasury.

Indeed, for the voyage of the fleet around the Peloponnese, Athens allowed him only thirteen talents and fifty triremes,[*](Sixty, according to Xen. Hell. 5.4.63.) and yet he captured Corcyra, a city with a fleet of eighty triremes, and about the same time he won a naval battle over the Lacedaemonians and forced them to agree to the terms of the present peace—a peace which has so changed the relative positions of Athens and of Lacedaemon

that from that day to this we celebrate the peace with sacrifices every year because no other treaty has been so advantageous to our city;[*](This campaign took place in 375. It was followed up the next year by a peace patched up between Athens and Sparta. Nothing is known about the terms of this peace, but in any case it was promptly broken. See Grote, History, vol. ix. pp. 348 ff. Isocrates seems to refer, not to that temporary truce, but to the important “Peace of Callias” in 371, which virtually gave Athens the command of the sea, limiting Sparta to the land, and weakening her, according to Isocrates, for the decisive clash with the Theban power at Leuctra in the same year. See Grote, History, vol. ix. pp. 381 ff.) while, as for the Lacedaemonians, no man since that time has seen a ship of theirs voyage this side of Malea[*](The southern cape of the Peloponnesus.) nor any land force advance beyond the Isthmus, and anyone can see in this fact the cause of their disaster at Leuctra.