For in the first place, if it is the most experienced and the most capable who in any field of action deserve to be honored, it is without question our right to recover the hegemony which we formerly possessed; for no one can point to another state which so far excels in warfare on land as our city is superior in fighting battles on the sea.

But, in the next place, if there are any who do not regard this as a fair basis of judgement, since the reversals of fortune are frequent (for sovereignty never remains in the same hands), and who believe that the hegemony, like any other prize, should be held by those who first won this honor, or else by those who have rendered the most service to the Hellenes, I think that these also are on our side;

for the farther back into the past we go in our examination of both these titles to leadership, the farther behind shall we leave those who dispute our claims. For it is admitted that our city is the oldestSee Isoc. 12.124 and Hdt. 7.161. and the greatestThe same boast is made in Isoc. 10.35 and Isoc. 15.299. in the world and in the eyes of all men the most renowned. But noble as is the foundation of our claims, the following grounds give us even a clearer title to distinction:

for we did not become dwellers in this land by driving others out of it,In contrast particularly to the ancestors of the Spartans when they established themselves in the Peloponnesus. nor by finding it uninhabited, nor by coming together here a motley horde composed of many races; but we are of a lineage so noble and so pure that throughout our history we have continued in possession of the very land which gave us birth, since we are sprung from its very soilThe “autochthony” of the Athenians was a common theme of Athenian orators and poets: Isoc. 8.49, Isoc. 12.124-125; Thuc. 1.2.5; Eur. Ion 589 ff.; Aristoph. Wasps 1076. and are able to address our city by the very names which we apply to our nearest kin;

for we alone of all the Hellenes have the right to call our city at once nurse and fatherland and mother. And yet, if men are to have good ground for pride and make just claims to leadership and frequently recall their ancestral glories, they must show that their race boasts an origin as noble as that which I have described.A challenge to Spartan pride and pretensions.

So great, then, are the gifts which were ours from the beginning and which fortune has bestowed upon us. But how many good things we have contributed to the rest of the world we could estimate to best advantage if we should recount the history of our city from the beginning and go through all her achievements in detail; for we should find that not only was she the leader in the hazards of war, but that the social order in general in which we dwell,

with which we share the rights of citizenship and through which we are able to live, is almost wholly due to her. It is, however, necessary to single out from the number of her benefactions, not those which because of their slight importance have escaped attention and been pased over in silence, but those which because of their great importance have been and still are on the lips and in the memory of all men everywhere.

Now, first of all, that which was the first necessity of man's nature was provided by our city; for even though the storyFor the story of Demeter and Persephone (here called Kore, “the maiden”) see HH Dem.; Ovid, iv. 393-620, and v. 385 ff.; Claudian, and Walter Pater, “Demeter and Persephone” in his has taken the form of a myth, yet it deserves to be told again. When Demeter came to our land, in her wandering after the rape of Kore, and, being moved to kindness towards our ancestors by services which may not be told save to her initiates, gave these two gifts, the greatest in the world—the fruits of the earth,Cf. Plat. Menex. 237e; Lucret. vi. 1 ff. which have enabled us to rise above the life of the beasts, and the holy riteFor the Eleusinian Mysteries see Lobeck, vol. i; Gardner and Jevons, pp. 274 ff.; Gardner's xiii; Diehl, viii. which inspires in those who partake of it sweeter hopesQuoted in Isoc. 8.34. For the blessedness of the Mystics see HH Dem. 480 ff.; Pindar, Fr. 102; Sophocles, Fr. 753 Nauck. regarding both the end of life and all eternity,

—our city was not only so beloved of the gods but also so devoted to mankind that, having been endowed with these great blessings, she did not begrudge them to the rest of the world, but shared with all men what she had received.So Plat. Menex. 238a. Cf. Cicero, 62, “adsunt Athenienses unde humanitas, doctrina, religio, frugeres, iura, leges ortae atque in omnes terras distributae putantur.” The mystic rite we continue even now, each year,In the month Boëdromion (August). to reveal to the initiates; and as for the fruits of the earth, our city has, in a word, instructed the world in their uses, their cultivation, and the benefits derived from them.

This statement, when I have added a few further proofs, no one could venture to discredit. In the first place, the very ground on which we might disparage the story, namely that it is ancient, would naturally lead us to believe that the events actually came to pass; for because many have told and all have heard the story which describes them, it is reasonable to regard this not, to be sure, as recent, yet withal as worthy of our faith. In the next place, we are not obliged to take refuge in the mere fact that we have received the account and the report from remote times; on the contrary, we are able to adduce even greater proofs than this regarding what took place.

For most of the Hellenic cities, in memory of our ancient services, send us each year the first-fruits of the harvest, and those who neglect to do so have often been admonished by the Pythian priestess to pay us our due portion of their crops and to observe in relation to our city the customs of their fathers.This custom is attested by inscriptions. See full discussion of it in Preller, i. p. 773. And about what, I should like to know, can we more surely exercise our faith than about matters as to which the oracle of Apollo speaks with authority, many of the Hellenes are agreed, and the words spoken long ago confirm the practice of today, while present events tally with the statements which have come down from the men of old?

But apart from these considerations, if we waive all this and carry our inquiry back to the beginning, we shall find that those who first appeared upon the earth did not at the outset find the kind of life which we enjoy to-day, but that they procured it little by little through their own joint efforts.for this view of the gradual progress of civilization see Xenophanes, Fr. 18 Diels; Aesch. PB 447 ff.; Eur. Supp. 201 ff.; Nauck, pp. 60, 236, 542, 771, 813, 931; and Lucretius's elaborate picture, v. 780 ff. Whom, then, must we think the most likely either to have received this better life as a gift from the gods or to have hit upon it through their own search?

Would it not be those who are admitted by all men to have been the first to exist, to be endowed with the greatest capacity for the arts, and to be the most devoted in the worship of the gods? And surely it is superfluous to attempt to show how high is the honor which the authors of such great blessings deserve; for no one could find a reward great enough to match the magnitude of their achievements.

This much, then, I have to say about that service to humanity which is the greatest, the earliest, and the most universal in its benefits. But at about the same time, our city, seeing the barbarians in possession of most of the country, while the Hellenes were confined within a narrow space and, because of the scarcity of the land, were conspiring and making raids against each other, and were perishing, some through want of daily necessities, others through war,

—our city, I say, was not content to let these things be as they were, but sent out leaders to the several states, who, enlisting the neediest of the people, and placing themselves at their head, overcame the barbarians in war, founded many cities on either continent, settled colonies in all the islands, and saved both those who followed them and those who remained behind;

for to the latter they left the home country—sufficient for their needs—and for the former they provided more land than they had owned since they embraced in their conquests all the territory which we Hellenes now possess.For the traditional “Ionic migration,” led by Athens, in the course of which settlements were made in Samos and Chios and in the islands of the Cyclades, in Asia Minor, and on the shores of the Black Sea, see Isoc. 12.43-44, 166, 190; Thuc. 1.2.6; Grote, (new edition), ii. pp. 21 ff. And so they smoothed the way for those also who in a later time resolved to send out colonists and imitate our city; for these did not have to undergo the perils of war in acquiring territory, but could go into the country marked out by us and settle there.

And yet who can show a leadership more ancestral than this, which had its origin before most of the cities of Hellas were founded, or more serviceable than this, which drove the barbarians from their homes and advanced the Hellenes to so great prosperity?

Nor did our city, after she had played her part in bringing to pass the most important benefits, neglect what remained to be done; on the contrary she made it but the beginning of her benefactions to find for those who were in want that sustenance which men must have who are to provide well also for their other needs; but considering that an existence limited to this alone was not enough to make men desire to live, she gave such careful thought to their remaining wants as well that of the good things which are now at the service of mankind—in so far as we do not have them from the gods but owe them to each other—there is not one in which our city has had no part, and most of them are due to her alone.

For, finding the Hellenes living without laws and in scattered abodes, some oppressed by tyrannies, others perishing through anarchy, she delivered them from these evils by taking some under her protection and by setting to others her own example; for she was the first to lay down laws and establish a polity.The tradition is probably correct that Athens was the first city to set her own house in order and so extended her influence over Greece. The creation of a civilized state out of scattered villages is attributed to King Theseus. See Isoc. 10.35; Isoc. 12.128 ff.. In Isoc. 12.151-4, Isocrates maintains that certain features of the Spartan constitution were borrowed from Athens.

This is apparent from the fact that those who in the beginning brought charges of homicide, and desired to settle their mutual differences by reason and not by violence, tried their cases under our laws.There is no evidence to bear out a literal interpretaion of this statement, but the tradition is probably right which regarded the Areopagus in Athens as the first court set up in Greece for the trial of cases of homicide. It was believed that this court was first convened to ty the case of Orestes, an alien. See Aesch. Eum. 684; Dem. 23.65 ff. Yes, and the arts also, both those which are useful in producing the necessities of life and those which have been devised to give us pleasure, she has either invented or stamped with her approval, and has then presented them to the rest of the world to enjoy.So Isoc. 12.202. Pliny Nat. Hist. 7.194, catalogues many Athenian discoveries in art. Cf. Milton, iv. 240: “Athens the eye of Greece, mother of arts and eloquence.”