Panathenaicus

I have gone into these matters,not without realizing that some will dare to say that I have here used an argument which lies beyond the scope of my subject. I, however, hold that never has an argument been advanced more pertinent than this to the foregoing discussion, neither is there any by which one can show more clearly that our ancestors were wiser in dealing with the greatest questions than were those who governed our city and the city of the Spartans after the war against Xerxes.

For it will be seen that these states in the times following that war made peace with the barbarians, that they were bent on destroying each other and the other Hellenic states, that at the present time they think themselves worthy to rule over the Hellenes, albeit they are sending ambassadors to the King, courting his friendship and alliance; whereas those who governed Athens before that time did nothing of the sort, but entirely the opposite;

for they were as firmly resolved to keep their hands off the states of Hellas as were the devout to abstain from the treasures stored up in the temples of the gods, conceiving that, second only to the war which we carry on in alliance with all mankind against the savagery of the beasts, that war is the most necessary and the most righteous which we wage in alliance with the Hellenes against the barbarians, who are by nature our foes and are eternally plotting against us.

The principle is not of my invention but is deduced from the conduct of our ancestors. For when they saw that the other states were beset by many misfortunes and wars and seditions, while their own city alone was well governed, they did not take the view that those who were wiser and more fortunate than the rest of the world were justified in caring nothing about the others or in permitting those states which shared the same stock[*](The reference is to Athens, an Ionian state, as leader of the Ionian Colonization. The looseness of structure in this discourse is shown by his treatment of this theme in three places, in 42 ff. and in 190 ff. as well as here. Cf. Isoc. 4.34-37.) with them to be destroyed, but rather that they were bound to take thought and adopt measures to deliver them all from their present misfortunes.

Having determined upon this, they endeavored in the case of the less afflicted states to compose their quarrels by means of embassies and persuasion, but to the states which were more severely rent by factions they dispatched the most highly reputed of their citizens, who advised them regarding their present difficulties, and, associating themselves with the people who were unable to gain a livelihood in their own states or who had fallen below the requirements of the laws—a class which is generally destructive to ordered states[*](See Isoc. 5.121 ff.)—, they urged these to take the field with them and to seek to improve the conditions of their present life;

and when there proved to be many who were inclined and persuaded to take this course, they organized them into an army, conquered the peoples who occupied the islands of the barbarians and who dwelt along the coast of either continent, expelled them all, and settled in their stead those of the Hellenes who stood in greatest need of the necessities of life. And they continued doing this and setting this example to others until they learned that the Spartans, as I have related, had subjected to their power all the cities which are situated in the Peloponnesus.[*](Isocrates regards the Ionian Colonization as contemporaneous with the Dorian Conquest of the Peloponnesus.) After this they were compelled to center their thoughts upon their own interests.

What, then, is the good which has resulted from the war which we waged and the trouble which we took in the colonization of the Hellenes? For this is, I think, a question which the majority would very much like to have answered. Well, the result was that the Hellenes found it easier to obtain subsistence and enjoyed a greater degree of concord after they had been relieved of so great a number of the class of people which I have described; that the barbarians were driven forth from their own territory and humbled in their pride; and that those who had brought these conditions to pass gained the fame and the name of having made Hellas twice as strong as she was of old.

I could not, then, point out a greater service than this, rendered by our ancestors, nor one more generally beneficial to the Hellenes. But I shall, perhaps, be able to show one more particularly related to their conduct of war, and, at the same time, no less admirable and more manifest to all. For who does not himself know or has not heard from the tragic poets[*](See Aesch. Seven; Soph. Ant.; Eur. Phoen.) at the Dionysia of the misfortunes which befell Adrastus[*](Compare the treatment of the Adrastus episode in Isoc. 4.54 ff.) at Thebes,