History of Rome

​Before they could take any action, terror had been struck into the Achaeans and the thought of how unequal the discussion would be, ​because they saw Areus and Alcibiades, whom they had condemned to death at their very last council, present with the envoys;

​nor did anyone dare to open their mouth. Appius showed that those things which the Lacedaemonians had complained of before the senate displeased the senate: first, the slaughter committed at Compasium of those who had come when summoned by Philopoemen to plead their cause;

​then, since such cruelty had been vented upon men, so that their ruthlessness might not fail in any part, that the walls of a most noble city had been demolished, its ancient laws abrogated, and the discipline of Lycurgus, famous among nations, abolished.

​When Appius had said these things, Lycortas, both because he was praetor and because he belonged to the faction of Philopoemen, the author of all that had been done at Lacedaemon, replied as follows.

”Our speech before you, Appius Claudius, is more difficult than it was recently before the senate at Rome.

​For then we had to reply to the accusations of the Lacedaemonians; now we are accused by you yourselves, before whom our cause must be pleaded.

​We submit to this unfairness of condition with the hope that you will hear us with the mind of a judge, laying aside the hostility with which you spoke a moment ago. For my part, since those complaints which the Lacedaemonians made here earlier before Quintus Caecilius and afterwards at Rome have just been repeated by you, I shall believe that I am replying not to you but to them before you. You object to the slaughter of those ​who, having been summoned by the praetor Philopoemen to plead their cause, were put to death. I believe that this charge ought not only not to have been brought against us by you, Romans, but not even before you. Why so? Because it was in your treaty that the Lacedaemonians should keep away from the maritime cities.

​At which time, when they had taken up arms and occupied by a night attack the cities from which they had been ordered to keep away, if Titus Quinctius, if a Roman army had been in the Peloponnese, as before, those who were captured and oppressed would doubtless have fled to them.

​Since you were far away, where else could they have fled but to us, your allies, whom they had seen before bringing aid to Gytheum, and attacking Lacedaemon with you for a similar cause?

​On your behalf, therefore, we undertook a just and pious war. Since others praise this, and not even the Lacedaemonians can censure it, and the gods themselves, who gave us victory, have approved it, how on earth do those things which were done by the law of war come into dispute? Of which, however, the greatest part has nothing to do with us.

​It is our concern that we summoned to plead their cause those who had stirred up the multitude to arms, who had stormed the maritime towns, who had plundered them, and who had slaughtered the leading men. But that they were killed while coming to the camp ​is your doing, Areus and Alcibiades, who now, if it pleases the gods, accuse us, not ours.

​The exiles of the Lacedaemonians, among whose number these two also were, were with us at that time; and because they had chosen the maritime towns for their home, believing themselves to be targeted, they made an attack on those by whose agency they, driven from their homeland, were indignant that they could not grow old even in a safe exile. Therefore, Lacedaemonians, ​not Achaeans, killed Lacedaemonians; and whether they were slain justly or unjustly, it is of no relevance to argue.