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,

how in his desire to restore to power the son of Oedipus, his own son-in-law, he lost a great number of his Argive soldiers in the battle and saw all of his captains slain, though saving his own life in dishonor, and, when he failed to obtain a truce and was unable to recover the bodies of his dead for burial, he came as a suppliant to Athens, while Theseus still ruled the city, and implored the Athenians not to suffer such men to be deprived of sepulture nor to allow ancient custom and immemorial law to be set at naught—that ordinance which all men respect without fail, not as having been instituted by our human nature, but as having been enjoined by the divine power?[*](See Isoc. 4.55, note.)

When our people heard this plea, they let no time go by but at once dispatched ambassadors to Thebes to advise her people that they be more reverent in their deliberations regarding the recovery of the dead and that they render a decision which would be more lawful than that which they had previously made, and to hint to them also that the Athenians would not countenance their transgression of the common law of all Hellas.

Having heard this message, those who were then in authority at Thebes came to a decision which was in harmony neither with the opinion which some people have of them nor with their previous resolution; on the contrary, after both stating the case for themselves in reasonable terms and denouncing those who had invaded their country, they conceded to our city the recovery of the dead.

And let no one suppose that I fail to realize that I am giving a different version of these same events from that which I shall be found to have written in the Panegyricus. But I do not think that anyone of those who can grasp the meaning of these events is so obsessed by stupidity and envy as not to commend me and consider me discreet for the manner in which I have treated them then and now.[*](The version here is less offensive to the Thebans, perhaps because Athens is now cultivating friendlier relations with Thebes.)

On this topic, then, I know that I have written wisely and expediently. But how pre-eminent our city stood in war at that time—for it was with the desire to show this that I discussed what happened at Thebes—is, I consider, clearly revealed to all by the circumstances which compelled the king of the Argives to become a suppliant of Athens and which so disposed the authorities at Thebes towards us

that they chose of their own accord to accommodate themselves to the words dispatched to them by Athens more than to the laws ordained by the divine power. For our city would not have been in a position to settle properly any of those questions had she not stood far above the others both in reputation and in power.

Although I have many noble things to tell of in the conduct of our ancestors, I am debating in my mind in what manner to present them. Indeed I am more concerned about this than about any other thing. For I come now to that part of my subject which I reserved for the last—that part in which I promised to show that our ancestors excelled the Spartans much more in their wars and battles than in all other respects.[*](For the comparison of the early wars of Sparta and Athens, 175-198, cf. Isoc. 4.51-70.)

What I say on this topic will be counter to the opinions of the majority, but in equal degree it will appeal to the rest as the truth. A moment ago I was undecided whether I should first review the wars and battles of the Spartans or our own. Now, however, I elect to speak first of the perils and the battles of the Spartans, in order that I may close the discussion of this subject with struggles more honorable and more righteous.

When, then, the Dorians who invaded the Peloponnesus divided into three parts both the cities and the lands which they had taken from their rightful owners, those of them who received Argos and Messene as their portions ordered their affairs very much as did the Hellenes in general. But the third division of them, whom we now call Lacedaemonians, were, according to close students of their history, more embroiled in factional strife than any other people of Hellas. Moreover, the party which looked down upon the multitude, having got the upper hand, did in no wise adopt the same measures regarding the issues of that conflict as the other Hellenes who had gone through a similar experience.

For the latter suffered the opposing party to live with them and share in all the privileges of the state, excepting the offices and the honors, whereas the intelligent class among the Spartans held that such men were foolish in thinking that they could live in the same city with those against whom they had committed the greatest wrongs and yet govern the state in security; they themselves did nothing of the sort, but instead set up amongst their own class the only kind of equality and democracy[*](Those who enjoyed citizenship in Sparta are called by Aristotle (Aristot. Pol. 8.7) o(/moioi, “equals.” Cf. Isoc. 7.61.) which is possible if men are to be at all times in complete accord, while reducing the mass of the people to the condition of Perioeci,[*](In historical times the population of Laconia, the valley of the Eurotas river, was made up of the Spartans, who lived in the city of Lacedaemon (Sparta seems to have been a later name); the Helots, serfs bound to the soil, who worked the estates owned by the Spartans, paying a high rental, sometimes half the crop; and the Perioeci, free-holders of land, who were scattered in villages throughout theEurotas Valley—“the land of a hundred towns,” possessing apparently their own local governments, but under the general control and supervision of the Spartan state. These, like the Helots, were probably made up mainly of earlier inhabitants conquered by the Spartans. See Gilbert, Greek Constitutional Antiquities pp. 30 ff. Isocrates' picture of the driving out of the Perioeci from participation in the Spartan state as the result of a bitter factional fight seems to rest on a very doubtful tradition. See Grote's extended discussion of this passage, vol. 2, pp. 367 ff.) subjecting their spirits to a bondage no less abject than that endured by slaves.

And having done this, they disposed of the land, of which by right every man should have had an equal share, seizing for themselves—the few—not only the richest but more than any of the Hellenes possess, while to the mass of the people they apportioned only enough of the poorest land so that by working laboriously they could hardly gain their daily bread. Then they divided the multitude into the smallest groups possible and settled them upon many small tracts—groups who in name were spoken of as dwelling in cities, but in reality had less power than the townships with us.

And, having despoiled them of all the rights which free men ought to share, they imposed upon them the greatest part in all dangers. For in the campaigns which were conducted by their kings they not only ranged them man for man side by side with themselves, but some they stationed in the first line, and whenever need arose to dispatch a relief-force anywhere and they themselves were afraid of the hardships or the dangers or the length of time involved, they sent them forth to take the brunt of the danger from all the rest.