The Funeral Speech

But if, after all, there is any human being who might rightly lay a charge concerning the issue of that battle, he would with good reason advance it against those of the Thebans who were appointed to this command,[*](Philip seems to have deceived the Athenians by a feigned retreat while throwing his strongest troops against the Thebans. This stratagem broke the line and decided the battle. The Theban general Theagenes and his colleagues seem to have been no more to blame than the rest.) nor could anyone rightly lay blame upon the rank and file of either the Thebans or ourselves. Those men, receiving command of a military force that would neither brook defeat nor make excuse and had an emulous zest for glory, made the right use of none of these.

As for the other questions touching this campaign, each individual is at liberty to draw conclusions according to his judgement, but what has become manifest to all living men alike is this—that, in effect, the freedom of the whole Greek world was being preserved in the souls of these men. At any rate, since fate removed them, not one of those remaining has made a stand against the foe. While I desire that my words may be free from offence, it seems to me that if one should declare that the valor of these men was the very life of Greece he would speak the truth;

for at one and the same time their spirits were separated from their dear bodies and the self-esteem of Greece was taken from her. We shall therefore seem guilty perhaps of a bold exaggeration, but still it must be uttered: for just as, if the light of day were removed out of this universe of ours,[*](Kennedy quotes Cicero De Amic. 13.47 solem enim e mundo tollere videntur qui amicitiam e vita tollunt. According to Aristot. Rh. 1.7 and Aristot. 3.10, Pericles had once said in a funeral speech it was as if the spring had been taken out of the year.) all the remnant of life would be harsh and irksome, so, now that these men have been taken from us, all the old-time ambition of the Greeks is sunk in gloom and profound obscurity.