Against Eratosthenes (16-20)

With these conclusions I took to flight, while they were keeping guard over the courtyard door:[*] there were three doors[*] for me to pass through, and they all chanced to be open. I reached the house of Archeneos the ship-captain, and sent him into town to inquire after my brother: on his return he told me that Eratosthenes had arrested him in the street and taken him off to prison.

Thus apprised of his fate, I sailed across on the following night to Megara. Polemarchus received from the Thirty their accustomed order to drink hemlock, with no statement made as to the reason for his execution: still less was he allowed to be tried and defend himself.

And when he was being brought away dead from the prison, although we had three houses amongst us, they did not permit his funeral to be conducted from any of them, but they hired a small hut in which to lay him out. We had plenty of cloaks, yet they refused our request of one for the funeral; but our friends gave either a cloak, or a pillow, or whatever each had to spare, for his interment.

They had seven hundred shields of ours, they had all that silver and gold, with copper, jewellery, furniture and women’s apparel beyond what they had ever expected to get; also a hundred and twenty slaves, of whom they took the ablest, delivering the rest to the Treasury; and yet to what extremes of insatiable greed for gain did they go, in this revelation that they made of their personal character! For some twisted gold earrings, which Polemarchus’s wife had in her possession when she first came into his house, were taken out of her ears by Melobius.

And not even in respect of the smallest fraction of our property did we find any mercy at their hands but our wealth impelled them to act as injuriously towards us as others might from anger aroused by grievous wrongs. This was not the treatment that we deserved at the city’s hands, when we had produced all our dramas for the festivals,[*] and contributed to many special levies;[*] when we showed ourselves men of orderly life, and performed every duty laid upon us; when we had made not a single enemy, but had ransomed many Athenians from the foe. Such was their reward to us for behaving as resident aliens far otherwise than they did as citizens!