But, I think, when Philip had taken Nicaea1 from them and given it to the Thessalians, and when he was now bringing back again upon Thebes herself through Phocis the same war that he had formerly driven from the borders of Boeotia,2 and when finally he had seized Elateia and fortified and garrisoned it,3 then, and not till then, it was, when the peril was laying hold on them, that they sent for the Athenians. You went out and were on the point of marching into Thebes under arms, horse and foot, before ever Demosthenes had moved one single syllable about an alliance.
1 Nicea was an important strategic post at the eastern end of the Pass of Thermopylae.
2 Aeschines represents the Amphissian war as virtually a resumption of the Phocian war; both were wars in behalf of the Delphic shrine, but the relation of Thebes to the two was very different.
3 After passing through Thermopylae, Philip seized Elateia in northern Phocis and made it his base for the winter. It commanded the main road towards Thebes and Athens. For the Athenian feeling of the significance of its seizure, see the famous passage in the speech of Demosthenes, On the Crown, Dem. 19.168 ff.
Aeschines. Aeschines with an English translation by Charles Darwin Adams, Ph.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1919.
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