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In what invasion into your country of all that have ever been made have they failed to take part? Who, more consistently than they, have been your enemies and ill-wishers? In the Decelean War1 were they not authors of more mischief than the other invaders? When misfortune befell you,2 did not they alone of the allies3 vote that your city should be reduced to slavery and its territory be abandoned to pasturage as was the plain of Crisa,4
1 The Decelean War is the name given to the latter part （413-404 B.C.） of the Peloponnesian War when a Spartan force occupied the Attic post, Decelea, in 413 B.C.
2 A reference to the Athenian naval defeat at Aegospotami, in 405 B.C.
3 This is an exaggeration; not only the Thebans, but the Corinthians and other Peloponnesians, voted for the destruction of Athens, but Sparta refused; cf. Xen. Hell. 2.2.19-20.
4 After the first Sacred War, at the end of the sixth century B.C., the plain of Crisa, between Delphi and the Corinthian Gulf, was declared holy ground and was dedicated to Apollo.
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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