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and that, while you are giving it out that you intend to go to the rescue of the Messenians,1 if you can settle the Phocian question, you really design to subdue the Peloponnesus to your rule. The Thessalians,2 they say, and the Thebans, and all those who belong to the Amphictyony,3 stand ready to follow your lead while the Argives, the Messenians, the Megalopolitans,4 and many of the others are prepared to join forces with you and wipe out the Lacedaemonians; and if you succeed in doing this, you will easily be master of the rest of Hellas.
1 The Messenians were at war with Sparta and in alliance with Philip. Paus. 4.28.2.
2 See Isoc. 5.20.
3 The Amphictyony was an association of states for the protection of the worship of Apollo at Delphi （Grote, Hist. ii. pp. 284 ff.）. The members of the Amphictyony, among whom the Thebans and the Thessalians were prominent, were now engaged in the Sacred War against the Phocians, seeking to wrest from the latter the control of the Temple. In 338 B. C. Philip had been invited by the Amphictyony to join them against the Phocians.
4 See Isoc. 5.49 ff.
Isocrates. Isocrates with an English Translation in three volumes, by George Norlin, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1980.
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