On the Confiscation of the Property Of The Brother Of Nicias (11-15)

The result was that Pausanias began to be favorable to the people, holding up our calamities to the Lacedaemonians as an example of the villainy of the Thirty. For it had become evident to all the Peloponnesians who had come that they were putting to death, not the most villainous of the citizens, but those who were especially deserving of honor on account of their birth, their wealth and their general excellence.

Such was the pity felt for us, and such an impression of our grievous sufferings was made on everyone, that Pausanias rejected the hospitable offerings[*] of the Thirty, and accepted ours. Surely it will be strange, gentlemen of the jury, if after being pitied as children by the enemy who had come to succor the oligarchy we, who have proved ourselves the men we are, should be stripped of our property by you, gentlemen, whose fathers gave their lives for the democracy!

For everyone will know that formerly you punished with a fine[*] of a thousand drachmae the man who proposed that our land should be confiscated, and yet that today he has prevailed with his demand for its confiscation; and that in these two suits, in which the same man was illegally prosecuted, the Athenians voted in contradiction of themselves.

Would it not then be disgraceful of you, after confirming your agreements with the Lacedaemonians, to shatter so lightly what you have voted on your own account, and to make valid your covenants with them, but invalidate those that you have made with yourselves? You are incensed with any other Greeks who value the Lacedaemonians more than you; and will you show in your own disposition more fidelity to them than to yourselves?