Now although we have shown ourselves to be of such character and have given so convincing proof that we do not covet the possessions of others, we are brazenly denounced by those who had a hand in the decarchiesIn Athens and in other states under ther influence there was in the oligarchical party a group of Spartan sympathizers who out-Spartaned the Spartans. After the downfall of Athens at the close of the Peloponnesian war, when Sparta became the supreme power in Greece, 404 B.C., governing commissions of ten (“decarchies”) composed of these extremists, with a Spartan harmost and garrison to support them, were set up in most of these states by the Spartan general Lysander (Xen. Hell. 3.4.2). In Athens the “decarchy” succeeded the rule of the thirty tyrants. Compare what Isocrates says here about the decarchies with Isoc. 5.95 and Isoc. 12.54.—men who have befouled their own countries, who have made the crimes of the past seem insignificant, and have left the would-be scoundrels of the future no chance to exceed their villiany; and who, for all that, profess to follow the ways of Lacedaemon, when they practise the very opposite, and bewail the disasters of the Melians, when they have shamelessly inflicted irreparable wrongs upon their own citizens. For what crime have they overlooked?

What act of shame or outrage is wanting in their careers? They regarded the most lawless of men as the most loyal; they courted traitors as if they were benefactors; they chose to be slaves to one of the HelotsThe reference is to Lysander, who on his mother’s side was of Helot blood. The Helots were serfs of the Spartans. so that they might oppress their own countries; they honored the assassins and murderers of their fellow-citizens more than their own parents;

and to such a stage of brutishness did they bring us all that, whereas in former times, because of the prosperity which prevailed, every one of us found many to sympathize with him even in trifling reverses, yet under the rule of these men, because of the multitude of our own calamities, we ceased feeling pity for each other, since there was no man to whom they allowed enough of respite so that he could share another’s burdens.

For what man dwelt beyond their reach? What man was so far removed from public life that he was not forced into close touch with the disasters into which such creatures plunged us? But in the face of all this, these men, who brought their own cities to such a pitch of anarchy, do not blush to make unjust charges against our city; nay, to crown their other effronteries, they even have the audacity to talk of the private and public suits which were once tried in Athens, when they themselves put to death without trial more menIn Athens 1500, according to Isoc. 7.67; Isoc. 20.11. in the space of three months than Athens tried during the whole period of her supremacy.