For the People of Megalopolis (21-25)

Surely it is more honorable and satisfactory that we should win the alliance of the Thebans on our own account and resist Spartan ambition, than that we should shrink from rescuing the allies of Thebes and abandon them now, only to rescue the Thebans in the end, and to be kept moreover in perpetual alarm for ourselves.

For I cannot regard it as a pledge of our security, that the Lacedaemonians should seize Megalopolis and grow great once more, seeing as I do that even now they have not taken up arms to avenge an injury, but to recover the power that once was theirs; and what their ambition was in the day of their power, you know perhaps better than I, and will distrust them accordingly.

I should like to ask those speakers who profess hatred of the Thebans and of the Lacedaemonians, whether they hate them in either case for your sake and in your interests, or whether they hate the Thebans for the sake of the Lacedaemonians and the Lacedaemonians for the sake of the Thebans respectively. If the latter, you must not take the advice of either party, because they are both mad; but if they allege your interests, why do they unduly forward the interests of those other states.

For it is surely possible to humble the Thebans without strengthening the Lacedaemonians; nay, it is much easier. How it can be done, I will try to explain.

Everyone knows this much, that all men, even against their wishes, are, up to a certain point, ashamed not to do what is just, but make a display of opposition to injustice, especially in cases where there are definite victims; and we shall find that what ruins everything—the root in fact of all evil—is unwillingness to act justly under all circumstances.

In order, then, that this unwillingness may not stand in the way of the weakening of Thebes, let us admit that Thespiae, Orchomenus and Plataea ought to be restored, and let us co-operate with their inhabitants and appeal to the other states, for it is a just and honorable policy not to allow ancient cities to be uprooted; but at the same time let us not abandon Megalopolis and Messene to their oppressors, nor allow the restoration of Plataea and Thespiae to blind us to the destruction of existing and established states.