Against Eratosthenes (56-60)

and thereby revealed in all clearness that their faction was not working for the Peiraeus party nor for those who were being unjustly destroyed; and that their vexation lay, not in those who had been or were about to be put to death, but in those who had greater power or were more speedily enriched.

For having got hold of their offices and the city they made war on both sides,—on the Thirty who had wrought every kind of evil, and on you who had suffered it in every way. And yet one thing was clear to all men,—that if the exile of the Thirty was just, yours[*] was unjust while if yours was just, that of the Thirty was unjust; for it was not as answerable for some other acts that they were banished from the city, but simply for these.

It ought therefore to be a matter for the deepest resentment that Pheidon, after being chosen to reconcile and restore you, joined in the same courses as Eratosthenes and, working on the same plan, was ready enough to injure the superior members of his party on your account, but unwilling to restore the city to you who were in unjust exile: he went to Lacedaemon, and urged them to march out, insinuating that the city would be falling into the hands of the Boeotians, with other statements calculated to induce them.

Finding that he could not achieve this,—whether because the sacred signs impeded, or because the people themselves did not desire it,—he borrowed a hundred talents for the purpose of hiring auxiliaries, and asked for Lysander to be their leader, as one who was both a strong supporter of the oligarchy and a bitter foe of the city, and who felt a special hatred towards the party of the Peiraeus.

Bent on our city’s destruction, they hired all and sundry, and were enlisting the aid of cities and finally that of the Lacedaemonians and as many of their allies as they could prevail upon and thus they were preparing, not to reconcile, but to destroy the city, had it not been for some loyal men, to whom I bid you declare, by exacting requital from your enemies, that they no less will get your grateful reward.