Plataicus (16-20)

For it will be clearly evident that the Thebans’ argument has no other meaning; since it is no accusation against our city in particular that has led them to destroy it but, on the contrary, they will be able to bring that same charge also against those others. These are matters which demand your deliberation and concern, lest the overbearing ways of the Thebans shall reconcile those who formerly hated the rule of the Lacedaemonians and cause them to believe that the alliance with them is their own salvation.

Remember also that you undertook your most recent war,[*] not to secure the freedom of either yourselves or your allies (for you all enjoyed that already), but in behalf of those who were being deprived of their autonomy in violation of the oaths and covenants. But surely it would be the most outrageous thing in the world, if you are going to permit these cities, which you thought ought not to be in servitude to the Lacedaemonians, now to be destroyed by the Thebans—men who are so far from emulating your clemency that it would have been better for us to suffer at the hands of this city that fate which is regarded as the most dreadful of all misfortunes,

to be taken prisoners of war, than to have got them as neighbors; for those whose cities were taken by you by storm were straightway freed of a Spartan governor and of slavery, and now they have share in a Council and in freedom, whereas, of those who live anywhere near the Thebans, some are no less slaves than those who have been bought with money, and as for the rest, the Thebans will not stop until they have brought them to the condition in which we now are.

They accuse the Lacedaemonians because they occupied the Cadmea and established garrisons in their cities, yet they themselves, not sending garrisons, but razing the walls of some and entirely destroying others, think they have committed no atrocity; nay, they have come to such a pitch of shamelessness that while they demand that all their allies should be guardians of the safety of Thebes, yet they arrogate to themselves the right to impose slavery upon everybody else.

And yet what man would not detest the greedy spirit of these Thebans, who seek to rule the weaker, but think they must be on terms of equality with the stronger and who begrudge your city the territory ceded by the Oropians,[*] yet themselves forcibly seize and portion out territory not their own?