On the False Embassy

Now I calculate that the news from Athens reached the Phocians on the fourth day after that date, for there were Phocian envoys in the city, and they were interested in knowing what report these men would submit and what decree you would adopt. Therefore the twentieth was the day on which we reckon that the Phocians received the news, that is, the fourth day after the sixteenth. Then followed the twenty-first, twenty-second, twenty-third; and on the twenty-third the convention was made, and the fortunes of Phocis perished and came to an end.

How, then, is this date proved? On the twenty-seventh, when you were holding an assembly at Peiraeus to discuss dockyard business, Dercylus arrived from Chalcis with the intelligence that Philip had put the whole affair into the hands of the Thebans, and he computed that it was then the fourth day after the convention. Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven: that makes it the fourth day. Therefore these dates, together with their own reports and decrees, all convict these men of having co-operated with Philip, and they share with him the guilt of the destruction of the Phocians.