Now I showed that the motive of this expedition was righteous and just; but I said that the Amphictyonic Council ought to be convened at the temple, receiving protection and freedom to vote,1 and that those individuals who were originally responsible for the seizure of the shrine ought to be punished—not their cities, but the individuals who had plotted and carried out the deed; and that those cities which surrendered the wrongdoers for trial ought to be held guiltless. “But if you take the field and with your forces confirm the wrongdoing of the Thebans,2 you will receive no gratitude from those whom you help, for you could not possibly do them so great a service as the Athenians once did, and they have no memory for that; while you will be wronging those whom you leave in the lurch, and will find them, not your friends in the future, but all the more your enemies.”
1 The Council had been unable to meet while the Phocians were holding the shrine. Aeschines would have Philip' s army occupy Delphi, and so restore the Amphictyons to their rights.
2 If Philip should help the Thebans to subdue the Phocians, the confirmation of Theban control over the Boeotian cities would naturally follow, as it did in the event.
Aeschines. Aeschines with an English translation by Charles Darwin Adams, Ph.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1919.
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