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, 378-374 B.C. 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, Oropus, a
 town on the frontier between Attica and
 Boeotia , was long a bone of contention. In
 412 B.C. it was treacherously taken by Thebes (Thucydides viii. 60); at some time after
 402 B.C. it was under Athenian protection; in 366 B.C. Oropus was again seized by Thebes , but in 338 B.C. 
 Philip gave the town to Athens. yet themselves forcibly seize and portion out
 territory not their own?