Funeral Oration

For the King of Asia, not content with the wealth that he had already, but hoping to enslave Europe as well, dispatched an army of five hundred thousand. These, supposing that, if they obtained the willing friendship of this city or overwhelmed its resistance, they would easily dominate the rest of the Greeks, landed at Marathon, thinking that we should be most destitute of allies if they made their venture at a moment when Greece was in dissension as to the best means of repelling the invaders.

Besides, from the former actions of our city they had conceived a particular opinion of her: they thought that if they attacked another city first, they would be at war with it and Athens as well, for she would be zealous in coming to succor her injured neighbors; but if they made their way here first, no Greeks elsewhere would dare attempt the deliverance of others, and for their sake incur the open hostility of the foreigners.

These, then, were the motives of the foe. But our ancestors, without stopping to calculate the hazards of the war, but holding that a glorious death leaves behind it a deathless account of deeds well done, had no fear of the multitude of their adversaries, but rather had confidence in their own valor. And feeling ashamed that the barbarians were in their country, they did not wait till their allies should be informed and come to their support; rather than have to thank others for their salvation, they chose that the rest of the Greeks should have to thank them.

With this one resolve in the minds of all, they marched to the encounter, though few against many: for death, in their opinion, was a thing for them to share with all men, but prowess with a few; and while they possessed their lives, because of mortality, as alien things, they would leave behind something of their own in the memory attached to their perils. And they deemed that a victory which they could not win alone would be as impossible with the aid of their allies. If vanquished, they would perish a little before the others; if victorious, they would liberate the others with themselves.

They proved their worth as men, neither sparing their limbs nor cherishing their lives when valor called, and had more reverence for their city’s laws than fear of their perils in face of the enemy; and so in their own land they set up on behalf of Greece a trophy of victory over the barbarians, who had invaded others’ territory for money,

past the frontiers of their land; and so swiftly did they surmount their ordeal that by the same messengers information reached the other Greeks both of the barbarians’ arrival here and of our ancestors’ triumph. For indeed none of the other Greeks knew fear for the peril to come; they only heard the news and rejoiced over their own liberation. No wonder, then, that these deeds performed long ago should be as though they were new, and that even to this day the valor of that band should be envied by all mankind.

Thereafter Xerxes, King of Asia, who had held Greece in contempt, but had been deceived in his hopes, who was dishonored by the event, galled by the disaster, and angered against its authors, and who was unused to ill-hap and unacquainted with true men, in ten years’ time prepared for war and came with twelve hundred ships; and the land army that he brought was so immense in numbers that to enumerate even the nations that followed in his train would be a lengthy task.

But the surest evidence of their numbers is this: although he had a thousand ships to spare for transporting his land army over the most narrow part of the Hellespont, he decided against it, for he judged that it would cause him a great waste of time:

despising alike the effects of nature, the dispositions of Heaven and the purposes of men, he made him a road across the sea, and forced a passage for ships through the land, by spanning the Hellespont and trenching Athos; none withstood him, for the unwilling submitted, and the willing chose to be traitors. The former were not capable of resisting, and the latter were corrupted by bribes: they were under the double persuasion of gain and dread.

But while Greece showed these inclinations, the Athenians, for their part, embarked in their ships and hastened to the defence of Artemisium; while the Lacedaemonians and some of their allies went off to make a stand at Thermopylae, judging that the narrowness of the ground would enable them to secure the passage.

The trial came for both at the sane time: the Athenians conquered in the sea-fight, while the Lacedaemonians, showing no failure of spirit, but deceived as to the numbers alike of those whom they expected to mount guard and of those with whom they had to contend, were destroyed, not having been worsted by their adversaries, but slain where they had been stationed for battle.

When in this manner the one side had suffered disaster, and the other had captured the passage, the invaders advanced against this city; while our ancestors, informed of the calamity that had befallen the Lacedaemonians, and perplexed by the difficulties that surrounded them, were aware that, if they marched out to meet the barbarians on land, they would sail against the city with a thousand ships and take it undefended, and if they embarked on their war-vessels they would be reduced by the land army; that they[*](The Athenians left the city.) would be unequal to the double strain of repelling the foe and leaving behind a sufficient garrison.

So having to choose one of two courses, either to desert their native land or to join the barbarians in enslaving the Greeks, they decided to prefer freedom together with valor and poverty and exile to their country’s servitude in infamy and wealth: they left their city for the sake of Greece, that they might challenge each of the two forces[*](i.e., the fleet and the army of the Persians.) in turn, not both at once.

They deposited their children and wives and mothers safe in Salamis, and assembled to their aid the ships of their allies. A few days later both the land army and the fleet of the barbarians appeared; at such a sight, who would not have been afraid of the greatness and terror of the danger that had come upon our city in her struggle for the freedom of Greece?

What were the feelings of those who beheld their friends on board those ships, when their own salvation was as doubtful as the approaching contest; or again, of those who were about to do battle at sea for their dearest, for the prizes there in Salamis?

On every hand they were surrounded by such a multitude of foes that they reckoned it the least of their present troubles to anticipate their own death, but saw the greatest of disasters in the fate that they must expect to be dealt by the barbarians, if successful, to those whom they had transported from the city.

We may be sure that the perplexity of their case made them often grasp each other by the hand, and with reason bewail their plight; knowing their own ships to be few, and seeing those of the foe to be many; understanding that their city was now deserted, that their land was being ravaged and overrun by the barbarians, that the temples were being burnt, and that horrors of every kind were close upon them.

At the same moment they heard mingled battle hymns of Greek and barbarian, exhortations on either side, and shrieks of the perishing: the sea was full of corpses, there was clashing of many wrecks of friends’ and foemen’s vessels, and for a long time the sea-fight was evenly balanced; they seemed at one moment to have conquered and been saved, at another to have been defeated and destroyed.

Certainly the fear that was upon them must have made them believe that they saw many things which they saw not, and heard many that they did not hear. What supplications, what reminders of sacrifices, were not sent up to Heaven! What pity was felt for children, what yearning over wives, what compassion for fathers and mothers, in calculating the evils that would result from their ill success!

What deity would have denied them pity for such an awful danger? What man but would have shed tears? Who would not have marvelled at their daring? Beyond all compare did those men in their valor surpass all mankind, whether in their counsels or in the perils of that war; for they abandoned their city and embarked on their ships, and pitted their own few lives against the multitude of Asia.