since they were as much superior to those who rule with absolute power as the wisest and gentlest of mankind may be said to excel the wildest and the most savage of the beasts.Compare Montaigne, , chapter 42: “Plutarch says somewhere that he does not find so great a difference between beast and beast as he does between man and man; which he says in reference to the internal qualities and perfections of the soul. And, in truth, I find so vast a difference between Epaminondas, according to my judgement of him, and some that I know, who are yet men of good sense, that I would willingly enhance upon Plutarch, and say that there is more difference between such and such a man than there is between such aman and such a beast.” For what among crimes that are unparalleled in their wickedness and cruelty shall we not find to have been perpetrated in the other states and especially in those which at the time of which I am speaking were considered the greatest and even now are so reputed? Has there not abounded in them murder of brothers and fathers and guest-friends;

matricide and incest and begetting of children by sons with their own mothers; feasting of a father on the flesh of his own sons, plotted by those nearest of kin; exposure of infants by parents, and drownings and blindingsMost of these horrors are taken from the Argive legend of the house of Pelops and the Theban story of the house of Labdacus: from the former, Thyestes feasting unwittingly upon the flesh of his own sons, served up to him by his brother, Atreus; from the latter, Oedipus exposed as a child by his parents to perish in the mountains, the slaying of Laius, his father, by Oedipus, the marriage of Oedipus to his own mother, Jocasta, the death at each other's hands of the sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, who were born of that incestuous union, and the blinding of Oedipus. and other iniquities so many in number that no lack of material has ever been felt by those who are wont each year to present in the theatreThese stories furnished largely the themes of the tragic poets. the miseries which transpired in those days?

I have recounted these atrocities with the desire, not of maligning these states, but of showing not only that nothing of the sort happened among the Athenians—for this would be a proof, not of their superior excellence, but merely that they were not of the same character as those who have proved themselves the most godless of men. However, those who undertake to praise any people in superlative terms must show, not only that they were not depraved, but that they excelled in all the virtues both those who lived at that time and those who are now living—which is the very claim that one may make for our ancestors.

For they administered both the affairs of the state and their own affairs as righteously and honorably as was to be expected of men who were descended from the gods,According to to one story it was from the seeds sown by Hephaestus on the soil of Attica that the Athenians were sprung. See Aesch. Eum. 13. who were the first to found a city and to make use of laws,See Isoc. 4.39-40 and notes. who at all times had practised reverence in relation to the gods and justice in relation to mankind, who were neither of mixed origin nor invaders of a foreign territory but were, on the contrary, alone among the Hellenes,

sprung from the soil itself,See Isoc. 4.24 and note. possessing in this land the nurse of their very existence and cherishing it as fondly as the best of children cherish their fathers and mothers, and who, furthermore, were so beloved of the gods that—what is of all things in the world the most difficult and rare, namely, to find examples of royal houses or houses of absolute rulers remaining in power through four or five generations—

this too transpired among our ancestors alone. For Erichthonius, the son of Hephaestus and Earth, took over from Cecrops, who was without male descent, his house and kingdom; and beginning with this time all those who came after him—not a few in number—handed down their possessions and their powers to their sons until the reign of Theseus. I would give much not to have spoken about the virtue and the achievements of Theseus on a former occasion,See Isoc. 10.18 ff. for it would have been more appropriate to discuss this topic in my discourse about our city.

But it was difficult, or rather impossible, to postpone the things which at that time occurred to me to say to the present occasion, which I could not foresee would come to me. Therefore I shall pass over this topic, since I have already exhausted it for my present purpose, and shall mention only a single course of action which, as it happens, has neither been discussed by anyone before nor been achieved by any other man but Theseus, and which is a signal proof of his virtue and wisdom.

For although he ruled over the securest and greatest of kingdomsRepeated from Isoc. 10.18. and in the exercise of this power had accomplished many excellent things both in war and in the administration of the state, he disdained all this and chose the glory which, in consequence of his labours and his struggles, would be remembered for all time in preference to the ease and felicity which, because of his royal power, were at his command for the term of his life.