Areopagiticus

so that it is hard to decide which of these lots one should prefer to bequeath to one's own children. For we shall find that from a lot which seems to be inferior men's fortunes generally advance to a better condition,[*](Cf. Isoc. 6.103 ff.) whereas from one which appears to be superior they are wont to change to a worse.

Of this truth I might cite examples without number from the lives of individual men, since these are subject to the most frequent vicissitudes; but instances which are more important and better known to my hearers may be drawn from the experiences of our city and of the Lacedaemonians. As for the Athenians, after our city had been laid waste by the barbarians, we became, because we were anxious about the future and gave attention to our affairs, the foremost of the Hellenes;[*](Athens, then a walled city, was temporarily abandoned by her people before the battle of Salamis, and destroyed by the troops of Xerxes. After the Persian Wars, she became the head of the Confederacy of Delos. See Isoc. 6.42 ff., and Isoc. 4.71-72.) whereas, when we imagined that our power was invincible, we barely escaped being enslaved.[*](At the end of the Peloponnesian War, Athens was at the mercy of Sparta and the Spartan allies. The latter proposed that Athens be utterly destroyed and her citizens sold into slavery, but the Spartans refused to allow the city “which had done a great service to Hellas” to be reduced to slavery. Xen. Hell. 2.2.19-20. Cf. Isoc. 8.78, 105; Isoc. 14.32; Isoc. 15.319.)

Likewise the Lacedaemonians, after having set out in ancient times from obscure and humble cities, made themselves, because they lived temperately and under military discipline, masters of the Peloponnesus;[*](See Isoc. 4.61; Isoc. 12.253 ff.) whereas later, when they grew overweening and seized the empire both of the sea and of the land, they fell into the same dangers as ourselves.[*](The Spartan supremacy began with the triumph over Athens in 404 B.C. and ended with the defeat at Leuctra, 371 B.C. See Vol I. p. 402, footnote. Cf. Isoc. 5.47. After Leuctra, Athens, in her turn, saved Sparta from destruction. See Isoc. 5.44 and note.)

Whoever, therefore, knowing that such great vicissitudes have taken place and that such mighty powers have been so quickly brought to naught, yet trusts in our present circumstances, is all too foolish,[*](For the language cf. Isoc. 6.48.) especially since Athens is now in a much less favorable condition than she was at that time, while the hatred[*](By the bitter “Social War.” See General Introduction p. xxxviii.) of us among the Hellenes and the enmity[*](In the course of the “Social War,” the Athenian general Chares had aided the satrap Artabazus in his revolt against Artaxerxes III. See Diodorus xvi. 22.) of the great King, which then brought disaster to our arms, have been again revived.