Who then merit the detestation of the Hellenes more justly than you, you who sought their ruin under the mask of honour?
The former virtues that you allege you now show not to be proper to your character; the real bent of your nature has been at length damningly proved: when the Athenians took the path of injustice you followed them.
"Of our unwilling Medism and your wilful Atticizing this then is our explanation.

The last wrong wrong of which you complain consists in our having, as you say, lawlessly invaded your town in time of peace and festival.

Here again we cannot think that we were more in fault than yourselves.

If of our own proper motion we made an armed attack upon your city and ravaged your territory, we are guilty; but if the first men among you in estate and family, wishing to put an end to the foreign connection and to restore you to the common Boeotian country, of their own free will invited us, wherein is our crime?
Where wrong is done, those who lead, as you say, are more to blame than those who follow.

Not that, in our judgment, wrong was done either by them or by us.