[76]
Before the revolt of Mytilene1 my father gave visible proof of his devotion to your interests. When, however, the city as a whole was so ill-advised as to commit the blunder of revolting,2 he was forced to join the city as a whole in that blunder. Not but what even then his feelings towards you remained unchanged: although he could no longer display his devotion in the old way. It was not easy for him to leave the city, as the ties which bound him, his children, and his property, were strong ones; nor yet could he set it at defiance as long as he remained there.
1 Mytilene had revolted from Athens some ten years previously, in 428.
2 Although the τῆς ὑμετέρας γνώμης of the Mss., if retained and taken with ἥμαρτε, would give the sense “failed in what you expected of them,” an expression for which there are parallels, συνεξαμαρτεῖν REQUIRES ἥμαρτε alone to balance it, and the repetition of γνώμη lines later is harsh in the extreme.
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