Panathenaicus

I marvel that there are none who regard battles and victories won contrary to justice as more disgraceful and fraught with greater reproaches than defeats which are met without dishonor—and that too, knowing that great, but evil, powers prove often stronger than good men who choose to risk their lives for their country.

For such men are much more deserving of our praise than those who, while ready and willing to face death to gain the possessions of others, are yet in no wise different from hireling soldiers. For these are the acts of men depraved, and if men of honest purpose sometimes come off worse in the struggle than men who desire to do injustice, we may attribute this to negligence of the gods.

But I might apply this point also to the misfortune which befell the Spartans at Thermopylae, which all who have heard of it praise and admire more than the battles and victories which have been won over adversaries against whom wars ought never to have been waged,[*](Cf. Isoc. 5.148; Isoc. 4.90; Isoc. 6.99-100.) albeit some are without scruple in extolling such successes, not realizing that nothing is either righteous or honorable which is not said or done with justice.[*](The high moral tone here is, like the plea for absolute justice as a principle of foreign policy in the Peace, inconsistent with the “practical” doctrine of Isoc. 12.117-118. See note on 118.)

But the Spartans have never given a thought to this truth; for they look to no other object than that of securing for themselves as many of the possessions of other peoples as they can. Our ancestors, on the other hand, have shown concern for nothing in the world so much as for a good name among the Hellenes; for they considered that there could be no truer or fairer judgement than that which is rendered by a whole race of people.

And they have been manifestly of this mind both in their government of the state in other respects and in the conduct of the greatest affairs. For in the three wars,[*](Three “wars,” with no attention to chronology: (1) that against Xerxes; (2) the warfare connected with the Ionian Colonization; (3) four campaigns summarized as one, all dealing with invasions: (a) that against Eumolpus and the Thracians; (b) that against the Scythians; (c) that against Eurystheus; (d) that against Dareius.) apart from the Trojan war, which were fought by the Hellenes against the barbarians—in all these they placed our city in the forefront of the fighting. Of these wars, one was the struggle against Xerxes,[*](See Isoc. 12.49 ff.) in which they were as much superior to the Lacedaemonians in every crisis as were the latter to the rest of the Hellenes.

Another was the war connected with the founding of the colonies,[*](See Isoc. 12.42 ff. and Isoc. 12.164 ff.) in which none of the Dorians came to help them, but in which Athens, having been made the leader of those who were lacking in the means of subsistence and of all others who desired to join with her, so completely reversed the state of affairs that, whereas the barbarians had been wont in times past to seize and hold the greatest cities of Hellas, she placed the Hellenes in a position where they were able to do what they had formerly suffered.

Now as to the two wars, I have said enough earlier in this discourse.[*](In 49 ff., 42 ff., 164 ff.) I shall now take up the third, which took place when the other Hellenic cities had just been founded and while our own city was still ruled by kings. In those days there occurred at the same time very many wars and very great perils. I could neither ascertain nor set forth the history of all of them,

and I shall pass over the great bulk of the things which were then done, but do not now press upon us to be told, and shall endeavor to inform you as briefly as I can of the enemies who attacked our city, of the battles which deserve to be recalled and recounted, of their leaders, and, furthermore, of the pretexts which they alleged, and of the strength of the peoples who joined in their campaigns. For these details will be enough to discuss in addition to what we have said about our adversaries.