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Though the blessings we were enjoying were so great, we again brought war against the Lacedaemonians, persuaded by the Argives;1 and at last, in consequence of the eagerness of our public men for war, we sank so low as to see a Spartan garrison in our city, and the Four Hundred, and the impious Thirty;2 and it was not the making of peace that caused this,3 but we were forced by orders laid upon us. But when again a moderate government had been established, and the exiled democracy had come back from Phyle,4 with Archinus and Thrasybulus as the leaders of the popular party, we took the solemn oath with one another “to forgive and forget” an act which, in the judgment of all men, won for our state the reputation of the highest wisdom.

1 Athens entered into alliance with Argos, Mantineia, and Elis in 420. This immediately reopened the war with the Lacedaemonians.

2 The oligarchy of the Four Hundred was the result of the revolution of 411 b.c. The rule of the Thirty Tyrants followed the surrender of the city at the close of the Peloponnesian war. The Thirty were supported by a Spartan garrison （404-403）.

3 The setting up of the Thirty was dictated by Sparta.

4 Phyle, a post on the Boeotian frontier, was the rallying point of the band of exiles who began the movement for the expulsion of the Thirty

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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