On the Crown

How could we have returned the gaze of visitors to our city, if the result had been what it is—Philip the chosen lord paramount of all Greece—and if other nations had fought gallantly to avert that calamity without our aid, although never before in the whole course of history had our city preferred inglorious security to the perils of a noble cause?

There is no man living, whether Greek or barbarian, who does not know that the Thebans, or the Lacedaemonians, who held supremacy before them,[*](The Spartan hegemony lasted from 404 to 371, the Theban from 371 to 362.) or the king of Persia himself, would cheerfully and gratefully have given Athens liberty to keep what she had and to take what she chose, if only she would do their behest and surrender the primacy of Greece.

But to the Athenians of old, I suppose, such temporizing was forbidden by their heredity, by their pride, by their very nature. Since the world began, no man has ever prevailed upon Athens to attach herself in the security of servitude to the oppressors of mankind however formidable: in every generation she has striven without a pause in the perilous contention for primacy, and honor, and renown.

Such constancy you deem so exemplary, and so congenial to your character, that you still sing the praises of those of your forefathers by whom it was most signally displayed. And you are right. Who would not exult in the valor of those famous men who, rather than yield to a conqueror’s behests, left city and country and made the war-galleys their home; who chose Themistocles, the man who gave them that counsel, as their commander, and stoned Cyrsilus[*](stoned Cyrilus: at Salamis, 479 B.C., when Athens was held by the Persians; see Hdt. 9.5, where, however, the name is Lycides. Not 480 B.C., as Cicero, Off. 3.11.48, implies; though the rest of the sentence refers to the conditions of that year.) to death for advising obedient submission? Aye, and his wife also was stoned by your wives.