The Funeral Speech

While it stands to reason that many influences helped to make them what they were, not least was their virtue ascribable to our form of government.[*](This topic is treated in Plat. Menex. 238b-239d. Blass compares Dem. 20.108, but the similarity is not impressive.) For though absolute governments dominated by a few create fear in their citizens, they fail to awaken the sense of shame. Consequently, when the test of war comes, everyone lightheartedly proceeds to save himself, knowing full well that if only he succeeds in appeasing his masters by presents or any other civility whatsoever, even though he becomes guilty of the most revolting conduct, only slight reproach will attach to him thereafter.

Democracies, however, possess many other just and noble features, to which right-minded men should hold fast, and in particular it is impossible to deter freedom of speech, which depends upon speaking the truth, from exposing the truth. For neither is it possible for those who commit a shameful act to appease all the citizens,[*](Under an oligarchy, the speaker means, it is possible for the wrongdoer to seal the mouths of the small ruling clique by means of bribes, but under a democracy it is impossible to buy the silence of thousands of citizens. The reference is to oligarchic governments set up by the Spartans in subject states. Pericles praised the Athenian form of government as against the Spartan, Thuc. 2.37-39.) so that even the lone individual, uttering the deserved reproach, makes the guilty wince: for even those who would never speak an accusing word themselves are pleased at hearing the same, provided another utters it. Through fear of such condemnation, all these men, as was to be expected, for shame at the thought of subsequent reproaches,[*](The fear of exposure as a factor in democratic government is mentioned by Pericles, Thuc. 2.37.3, and by Hyp. 25. Blass compares Dem. 22.31.) manfully faced the threat arising from our foes and chose a noble death in preference to life and disgrace.

The considerations that actuated these men one and all to choose to die nobly have now been enumerated,—birth, education, habituation to high standards of conduct, and the underlying principles of our form of government in general. The incentives that challenged them severally to be valiant men, depending upon the tribes to which they belonged, I shall next relate.[*](The list which here begins is our chief authority for the names and order of precedence of the ten Athenian tribes as established by Cleisthenes in 508 B.C. The particular myths that suit the context, however, are for the most part obscure and of relatively recent origin. For example, the older legends speak of but one daughter of Erechtheus as being sacrificed. The later version is known to Cicero Tusc. Disp. 1.48.116.) All the Erechtheidae were well aware that Erechtheus, from whom they have their name, for the salvation of this land gave his own daughters, whom they call Hyacinthides, to certain death, and so extinguished his race. Therefore they regarded it as shameful, after a being born of immortal gods had sacrificed everything for the liberation of his native land, that they themselves should have been found to have placed a higher value upon a mortal body than upon immortal glory.[*](Hyp. 24 reads in part θνητοῦ σώματος ἀθάνατον δόξαν ἐκτήσαντο, gained immortal glory at the price of a mortal body.)