Panathenaicus

There is, moreover, connected with the above achievement one which, though less significant than those which I have mentioned, is more important and more deserving of mention than those which have been extolled again and again. For he commanded an army which had come together from all the cities of Hellas, a host whose size may be imagined since it contained many of the descendants of the gods and of the direct sons of the gods[*](Cf. Isoc. 10.52.)—men who were not of the same temper as the majority of mankind nor on the same plane of thinking, but full of pride and passion and envy and ambition—,

and yet he held that army together for ten years, not by great bribes nor by outlays of money, by which means all rulers nowadays maintain their power,[*](Mercenary armies were now commonly relied upon even in Athens. See Isoc. 8.44 ff.) but by the supremacy of his genius, by his ability to provide from the enemy subsistence for his soldiers, and most of all by his reputation of being better advised in the interest of others than others in their own interest.

But the final achievement by which he crowned all these is no less worthy of admiration. For he will be found to have done nothing unseemly or unworthy of these exploits which I have already described; on the contrary, although he waged war, ostensibly against a single city, but in reality not only against all the peoples who dwelt in Asia but also against many other races of the barbarians, he did not give up fighting nor depart for home before reducing to slavery the city of him who had offended against Hellas[*](Paris, who carried off Helen, the wife of Menelaus.) and putting an end to the insolence of the barbarians.

I am well aware of the space which I have given to the praises of Agamemnon's virtue; I am well aware also that if any of you should go over these one by one, many as they are, to see what might be rejected, no one would venture to subtract a single word, and yet I know that when they are read one after the other, all will criticize me for having said much more than I should.

For my part, if I inadvertently prolonged this topic I should be ashamed of being so lacking in perception when discoursing on a subject which no one has even ventured to discuss. But in fact I knew much better than those who will dare to take me to task that many will criticize this excess. I considered, however, that it would be less objectionable to be thought by some to disregard due measure in this part of my discourse than to leave out, in speaking of such a man, any of the merits which belong to him and which it behoves me to mention.

I thought also that I should be applauded by the most cultivated of my hearers if I could show that I was more concerned when discoursing on the subject of virtue about doing justice to the theme than about the symmetry of my speech and that too, knowing well that the lack of due proportion in my speech would detract from my own reputation, while just appreciation of their deeds would enhance the fame of those whose praises I sing. Nevertheless I bade farewell to expediency and chose justice instead.

And you will find that I am of this mind not only in what I am now saying but likewise upon all occasions, since it will be seen that I take more pleasure in those of my disciples who are distinguished for the character of their lives and deeds than in those who are reputed to be able speakers. And yet when they speak well, all men will assign the credit to me, even though I contribute nothing to what they say, whereas when they act right no man will fail to commend the doer of the deed even though all the world may know that it was I who advised him what to do.[*](these last two paragraphs show striking use of antithesis and parisosis—devices of rhetoric which at the beginning of this discourse he pretends to have outgrown. See Isoc. 12.2 and note.)

But I do not know whither I am drifting.[*](For this rhetorical doubt cf. Isoc. 15.310.) For, because I think all the time that I must add the point which logically follows what I have said before, I have wandered entirely from my subject. There is, therefore, nothing left for me to do but to crave indulgence to old age for my forgetfulness and prolixity—faults which are wont to be found in men of my years—and go back to the place from which I fell into this garrulous strain.

For I think that I now see the point from which I strayed. I was speaking in reply to those who reproach us with the misfortunes of the Melians and of villages with like populations, not meaning that we had done no wrong in these instances, but trying to show that those who are the idols of these speakers have laid waste more and greater cities than the Athenians have done, in which connection I discussed the virtues of Agamemnon and Menelaus and Nestor, saying nothing that was not true, though passing, mayhap, the bounds of moderation.

But I did this, supposing that it would be apparent that there could be no greater crime than that of those who dared lay waste the cities which bred and reared such great men, about whom even now one might say many noble things. But it is perhaps foolish to linger upon a single point, as if there were any lack, as if there were not, on the contrary, a superabundance of things to say about the cruelty and the harshness of the Lacedaemonians.

For the Lacedaemonians were not satisfied with wronging these cities and men of this character, but treated in the same way those who had set out with them from the same country, joined with them in the same expedition, and shared with them the same perils[*](In the Trojan War.)—I mean the Argives and the Messenians. For they determined to plunge these also into the very same misfortunes which had been visited upon their former victims.[*](The distinction—not altogether clear—is between the older and the later inhabitants.) They did not cease laying siege to the Messenians until they had driven them from their territory, and with the same object they are even now making war upon the Argives.[*](For the conquest of Messene see Isoc. 6.26 ff. The Spartans and Argives were almost always at war. See Isoc. 5.51.)

Furthermore, it would be strange if, having spoken of these wrongs, I failed to mention their treatment of the Plataeans. It was on the soil of Plataea that the Lacedaemonians had encamped with us and with the other allies, drawn up for battle against our enemies;[*](The battle of Plataea was the final, decisive battle of the Persian Wars.) there they had offered sacrifices to the deities worshipped by the Plataeans;[*](See Thuc. 2.71-72.)

and there we had won freedom, not only for the Hellenes who fought with us, but also for those who were compelled to be on the side of the Persians,[*](The Greek cities on the Asiatic seaboard, which had been subject to Persia.) and we accomplished this with the help of the Plataeans, who alone of the Boeotians fought with us in that war.[*](The Thebans had “Medized.” The Plataeans in this battle acquitted themselves well; according to Plutarch (Plut. Arist. 20), they were awarded the meed of valor. Cf. Isoc. 14.57 ff.) And yet, after no great interval of time, the Lacedaemonians, to gratify Thebes,[*](Cf. Isoc. 14.62.) reduced the Plataeans by siege and put them all to the sword with the exception of those who had been able to escape through their lines.[*](This was done by King Archidamus, who in the course of the Peloponnesian War besieged and took Plataea, 427 b.c. The walls of the town were razed, the women and children sold into slavery, the defenders slain, excepting some two hundred who escaped and found refuge in Athens. See Thuc. 3.57 ff.) Little did Athens resemble Sparta in the treatment of these peoples;

for, while the Lacedaemonians did not scruple to commit such wrongs both against the benefactors of Hellas and against their own kinsmen,[*](Fellow-Dorians.) our ancestors, on the other hand, gave the surviving Messenians a home in Naupactus[*](On the Corinthian gulf. For this event see Thuc. 1.103) and adopted the Plataeans who had escaped with their lives as Athenian citizens and shared with them all the privileges which they themselves enjoyed.[*](See Isoc. 4, note.) So that if we had nothing else to say about these two cities, it is easy to judge from these instances what was the character of each and which of the two laid waste more and greater cities.

I perceive that my feelings are changing to the opposite of those which I described a little while ago. For then I fell into a state of doubt and perplexity and forgetfulness, but now I realize clearly that I am not keeping the mildness of speech which I had when I began to write my discourse; on the contrary, I am venturing to discuss matters about which I did not think that I should speak, I am more aggressive in temper than is my wont, and I am losing control over some of the things which I utter because of the multitude of things which rush into my mind to say.

Since, however, the impulse has come to me to speak frankly and I have removed the curb from my tongue, and since I took a subject which is of such a character that it is neither honorable nor possible to leave out the kind of facts from which it can be proved that our city has been of greater service to the Hellenes than Lacedaemon, I must not be silent either about the other wrongs which have not yet been told, albeit they have been done among the Hellenes, but must show that our ancestors have been slow pupils[*](Cf. Isoc. 12.101.) in wrong-doing, whereas the Lacedaemonians have in some respects been the first to point the way and in others have been the sole offenders.

Now most people upbraid both cities because, while pretending that they risked the perils of war against the barbarians for the sake of the Hellenes, they did not in fact allow the various states to be independent and manage their own affairs in whatever way was expedient for each of them, but, on the contrary, divided them up, as if they had taken them captive in war, and reduced them all to slavery, acting no differently than those who rob others of their slaves, on the pretext of liberating them, only to compel them to slave for their new masters.

But it is not the fault of the Athenians that these complaints are made and many others more bitter than these, but rather of those who now in what is being said, as in times past in all that has been done, have been in the opposite camp from us. For no man can show that our ancestors during the countless years of our early history ever attempted to impose our rule over any city great or small, whereas all men know that the Lacedaemonians, from the time when they entered the Peloponnesus, have had no other object in their deeds or in their designs than to impose their rule if possible over all men but, failing that, over the peoples of the Peloponnesus.

And as to the stirring up of faction and slaughter and revolution in these cities, which certain critics impute both to Athens and to Sparta, you will find that the Lacedaemonians have filled all the states, excepting a very few, with these misfortunes and afflictions,[*](See Isoc. 4.114.) whereas no one would dare even to allege that our city, before the disaster which befell her in the Hellespont,[*](At Aegospotami, 405 b.c. See Isoc. 4.119.) ever perpetrated such a thing among her allies.

But when the Lacedaemonians, after having been in the position of dictators over the Hellenes, were being driven from control of affairs—at that juncture, when the other cities were rent by faction, two or three of our generals (I will not hide the truth from you) mistreated some of them, thinking that if they should imitate the deeds of Spartans they would be better able to control them.[*](See, however, Isocrates' bitter attack upon the Athenian militaristic policy in On the Peace, especially Isoc. 8.44. Among the Athenian generals, he is here thinking mainly of Chares (the enemy and opposite of his friend and pupil, Timotheus. See Isoc. 15.129 and note), who seems to have uniformly preferred force to persuasion or conciliation in the treatment of the Athenian allies. See Introduction to Isoc. 8.)