Helen

for what, pray, is more grievous than to live in constant fear lest some bystander kill you, dreading no less your own guards than those who plot against you? Theseus, then, despising all these and considering such men to be not rulers, but pests, of their states, demonstrated that it is easy to exercise the supreme power and at the same time to enjoy as good relations as those who live as citizens on terms of perfect equality.

In the first place, the scattered settlements and villages of which the state was composed he united, and made Athens into a city-state[*](A reference to the sunoikismo/s attributed to Theseus, i.e., the uniting of the scattered villages in Attica into a polis or city-state. Cf. Thuc. 2.15.) so great that from then even to the present day it is the greatest state of Hellas: and after this, when he had established a common fatherland and had set free the minds of his fellow-citizens, he instituted for them on equal terms that rivalry of theirs for distinction based on merit, confident that he would stand out as their superior in any case, whether they practised that privilege or neglected it, and he also knew that honors bestowed by high-minded men are sweeter than those that are awarded by slaves[*](With this passage (Isoc. 10.34-35) Isoc. 4.38-89, with note, should be compared.). And he was so far from doing anything contrary to the will of the citizens

that he made the people masters of the government, and they on their part thought it best that he should rule alone, believing that his sole rule was more to be trusted and more equitable than their democracy. For he did not, as the other rulers did habitually, impose the labors upon the citizens and himself alone enjoy the pleasures; but the dangers he made his own, and the benefits he bestowed upon the people in common.