[68]
But the best and strongest proof of the fairness of the people is that, although those who had remained in the city had borrowed a hundred talents from the Lacedaemonians1 with which to prosecute the siege of those who occupied the Piraeus, yet later when an assembly of the people was held to consider the payment of the debt, and when many insisted that it was only fair that the claims of the Lacedaemonians should be settled, not by those who had suffered the siege, but by those who had borrowed the money, nevertheless the people voted to pay the debt out of the public treasury.2
1 See Lys. 12.59.
2 This is attested to by Aristotle （Aristot. Ath. Pol. 40） in a passage which pays a high compliment to the admirable spirit in which the feud between the two parties was wiped out.
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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