I have often wondered, therefore, at the audacity of those who speak in his defence, except when I reflect that the same men who commit every sort of crime are wont also to commend those who act in a similar way.

For this is not the first occasion of his working in opposition to your people in the time of the Four Hundred411 B.C. also, seeking to establish an oligarchy in the army, he abandoned the war-ship which he was commanding and fled from the Hellespont with Iatrocles and others whose names I have no call to mention. On his arrival here he worked in opposition to those who were promoting a democracy. I will present you with witnesses to these facts.

Witnesses

Now his life in the interval I will here pass over: but when the sea-fightThe battle of Aegospotami, in 405 B.C. took place, with the disaster that befell the city, and while we still had a democracy (at this point they started the sedition), five men were set up as overseersIn imitation of the Ephors, who were the five chief magistrates of Sparta. by the so-called club men, to be organizers of the citizens as well as chiefs of the conspirators and opponents of your common wealth; and among these were Eratosthenes and Critias.

They placed tribal governors over the tribes, and directed what measures should be passed by their votes and who were to be magistrates; and they had absolute powers for any other steps that they chose to take. Thus by the plotting, not merely of your enemies, but even of these your fellow-citizens, you were at once prevented from passing any useful measure and reduced to a serious scarcity.

For they knew perfectly well that in other conditions they could not get the upper hand, but that if you were in distress they would succeed. And they supposed that in your eagerness to be relieved of your actual hardships you would give no thought to those that were to follow.