Panathenaicus

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.)

Therefore all may justly charge the Lacedaemonians with having been the instigators and teachers of such deeds, but may with good reason make allowance for us, as for pupils who have been deceived by the false promises of their tutors and disappointed in their expectations.

I come now finally to those offences which they alone and by themselves committed.[*](That is, conduct of the Spartans which has no parallel in Athenian history. Compare, for the contrast here drawn between Sparta and Athens in their feeling for the barbarians, Isoc. 4.156-159, 120, 121.) Who does not know that the Spartans, notwithstanding that they and we harbor in common a feeling of hatred towards the barbarians and their kings, and notwithstanding that the Athenians, although beset by many wars and involved at times in great disasters, their territory being often ravaged and cut off by the enemy,[*](In the Peloponnesian War.) never once turned their eyes towards friendship and alliance with the barbarians, but continued steadfastly to cherish a stronger hatred against them because of what they plotted against the Hellenes than we feel towards those who now seek to injure Athens—

who does not know, I say, that the Spartans, although untroubled by any evil or even by any prospect or fear of evil, advanced to such a pitch of greed that they were not satisfied to hold the supremacy by land, but were so greedy to obtain also the empire of the sea that at one and the same time they were inciting our allies to revolt, undertaking to liberate them from our power, and were negotiating with the Persian king a treaty of friendship and alliance,[*](The Treaty of Miletus, 412 b.c. See Thuc. 8.18.) promising to give over to him all the Hellenes who dwelt on the Asiatic coast?

And yet, after they had given these pledges both to our allies and to the King and had conquered us in war, they reduced those whom they had sworn to set free to a state of slavery worse than that of the Helots,[*](See Isoc. 4.111 and note.) and they returned the favour of the King in such wise that they persuaded Cyrus, his younger brother, to dispute the throne with him, and collected an army to support Cyrus, placing Clearchus at its head, and dispatched it against the King[*](For this episode see Isoc. 8.98 and note.).