Sir Richard C. Jebb, Selections from the Attic Orators

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λεγομένην, κ.τ.λ. ‘These men [Strombichides and the democratic party, § 13] seeing that, though the talk was of peace, the work really in hand was the overthrow of the Democracy, said that they could not allow such terms to be ratified’. — ὀνόμ. λεγομ. εἰρ., lit. ‘that (the arrangement) was nominally called peace’. The conjecture γενομένην is unsuitable, since peace had not been concluded: we should require γιγνομένην. — οὐκ <ἂν> ἔφασαν ἐπιτρέψαι. Cp. note on § 6 above, μάλιστ᾽ <ἂν>...καταστήσασθαι.

οὐκ ἐλεοῦντες...ποιής.] ‘Not because their pity was moved by the threatened destruction of the walls, — not because they shrank from the thought of our fleet being surrendered to Sparta — for these things did not touch them more nearly than they touched every one of yourselves — but because they perceived that this was the way to ruin your Commonwealth: they were not, as some allege, reluctant that peace should be made, but they desired to obtain for the Athenian people a peace on better terms than these’. — Lysias has to show two things: (1) that the democrats were right in objecting to this peace; (2) that they sincerely desired a peace, and were not pursuing a party war-policy in selfish disregard of the extreme sufferings endured by their fellow-citizens. They would have made sacrifices, he says, however painful, if these sacrifices had not further involved the destruction of the Commonwealth.