Against Agoratus (11-15)

Well, he went to Lacedaemon and stayed there a long time, though he had left you here in a state of siege, and knew that your population was in desperate straits, as owing to the war and its distresses the majority must be in want of the necessaries of life. But he thought that, if he should reduce you to the condition to which he in fact reduced you, you would be only too glad to make peace on any sort of terms.

The others remained here, with the design of subverting the democracy: they brought Cleophon to trial, on the pretext that he did not go to the camp for his night’s rest, but really because he had spoken on your behalf against the destruction of the walls. So they packed a jury for his trial, and these promoters of oligarchy appeared before the court and had him put to death on that pretext.

Theramenes arrived later from Lacedaemon. Then some of the generals and commanders—among them Strombichides[*] and Dionysodorus, and some other citizens, who were loyal to you, as indeed they showed later—went to him and protested strongly.

For he had brought to us a peace whose nature we had learnt through the lessons of experience, since we had lost a great number of worthy citizens, and had ourselves been banished by the Thirty. Instead of a breach of ten stades’ length in the Long Walls, its terms required the razing of the Long Walls in their entirety; and instead of his contriving to get some additional boon for the city, we were to surrender our ships and dismantle the wall around the Peiraeus.

These men perceived that, although nominally we had the promise of peace, in actual fact it was the dissolution of the democracy, and they refused to authorize such a proceeding: their motive was not pity, men of Athens, for the walls that were to come down, or regret for the fleet that was to be surrendered to the Lacedaemonians,—for they had no closer concern in these than each one of you,—