[68]
First of
all, then, in the case of Conon, ask
yourselves whether dissatisfaction with the man or his performances justifies
the cancelling of the gifts conferred on him. For, as some of you who are his
contemporaries can attest, it was just after the return of the exiled democrats
from the Piraeus,1 when our city
was so weak that she had not a single ship, and Conon, who was a general in the
Persian service and received no prompting whatever from you, defeated the
Lacedaemonians at sea and taught the former dictators of Greece to show you deference; he cleared the
islands of their military governors, and coming here he restored our Long
Walls2; and he was the first
to make the hegemony of Greece once
more the subject of dispute between Athens and Sparta.
1 Under Thrasybulus in 403.
2 Conon obtained the support of Persia for Athens against Sparta and was appointed joint commander, with the satrap Pharnabazus, of the Persian fleet. In 394 he destroyed the Spartan fleet off Cnidus, sailed about the Aegean expelling the Spartan harmosts from many of the islands, and finally reached Athens, where he restored the Long Wall, dismantled since the Peloponnesian war.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by C. A. Vince, M. A. and J. H. Vince, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1926.
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