for not one of their states is unscathed, not one but has neighbors ready to do it
 injury; in consequence, their fields have been laid waste, their cities sacked, their
 people driven from their homes, their constitutions overturned, and the laws abolished
 under which they were once the most fortunate among the Hellenes. The Acheans ( Polyb. 2.38.6 ) and the Mantineans
 ( Ael. Var. Hist. 2.22 ) were famed for their excellent
 laws. 
 They feel such distrust and such hatred of one another that they fear their
 fellow-citizens more than the enemy; instead of preserving the spirit of accord and mutual
 helpfulness which they enjoyed under our rule, they have become so unsocial that those who
 own property had rather throw their possessions into the sea than lend aid to the needy,
 while those who are in poorer circumstances would less gladly find a treasure than seize
 the possessions of the rich; having ceased sacrificing victims at the altars they slaughter one another Possibly Isocrates may have in mind the massacre at Corinth in 392 B.C. ( Xen. Hell. 4.4.3 ), the murder of certain Achaean
 suppliants, who took refuge in the temple of Heliconian Poseidon (Pausanias vii. 25), or
 the slaughter of 1200 prominent citizens in Argos in 371 B.C. (Diodorus xv. 58). Cf. Isoc. 5.52 . there instead; and more people are in exile
 now from a single city than before from the whole of the Peloponnesus . But although the miseries which I have recounted are so many,
 those which remain unmentioned far outnumber them; for all the distress and all the horror
 in the world have come together in this one region. With these miseries some states are already replete; others too will shortly have their
 fill, and then they will seek to find some relief for the troubles which now beset them.
 For do not imagine that they will continue to put up with these conditions; for how could
 men who grew weary even of prosperity endure for a long time the pressure of adversity?
 And so not only if we fight and conquer, but even if we keep quiet and bide our time, you
 will see them veer round and come to regard alliance with us as their only safety. Such,
 then, are the hopes which I entertain. However, so far am I from complying with the enemy’s demands that, if none of these
 hopes should be realized and we should fail to obtain help from any quarter, but on the
 contrary some of the Hellenes should wrong us and the rest should look on with
 indifference—even so I should not alter my opinion; but I would undergo all the hazards
 which spring from war before I would agree to these terms. For I should be equally
 chagrined in either case—if we charged our forefathers with having deprived the Messenians
 of their land unjustly, or if, although insisting that they acquired it rightly and
 honorably, we made any concession regarding this territory contrary to our just rights.