Since we Plataeans know, Athenians, that it is your custom not only zealously to come to
 the rescue of victims of injustice, but also to requite your benefactors with the utmost
 gratitude, we have come as suppliants to beg you not to remain indifferent to our having
 been driven from our homes in time of peace by the Thebans. And since many peoples in the
 past have fled to you for protection and have obtained all they craved, we think it
 beseems you more than others to show solicitude for our city; for victims of a greater injustice than ourselves, or any who have been plunged into
 calamities so great, you could not find anywhere, nor any people who for a longer time
 have maintained toward your city a more loyal friendship. Cf. Herodotus vi. 108. Athens and Platea were allied as early as 510
 B.C. Furthermore, we have come here to ask you for assistance of such a
 kind that your granting it will involve you in no danger whatever and yet will cause all
 the world to regard you as the most scrupulous and most just of all the Greeks. If we did not observe that the Thebans have schemed to win you over, by fair means or
 foul, to their contention that they have done us no wrong, we could have finished our plea
 in a few words. But since we have reached such a state of misfortune that we must
 struggle, not only against them, but also against the ablest of your orators, men whom
 they have hired with our resources to be their advocates Athenian venal advocates are meant. we must explain our cause at greater length. It is difficult indeed not to speak inadequately on the subject of our wrongs. For what
 eloquence could match our misfortunes, or what orator could adequately denounce the wrongs
 the Thebans have done? Nevertheless, we must try to the best of our ability to make their
 transgressions known. And the chief cause of our indignation is that we are so far from being judged worthy of
 equality with the rest of the Greeks that, although we are at peace This seems to be a reference to the peace of 374
 B.C. , made between Athens and Sparta (see Jebb, Attic Orators ii. p. 177). and
 although treaties exist, we not only have no share in the liberty which all the rest
 enjoy, but that we are not considered worthy of even a moderate condition of servitude.