Persian Wars

When, however, they saw the army at Acharnae, only sixty stades from the city, they considered it no longer bearable, and, as was natural, when their land was being ravaged before their eyes—a thing which the younger men had never yet seen, nor even the elder, except in the Persian wars—it was thought a great indignity, and all of them, especially the young men, determined to go out against them, …

and after they were united, still, from the force of habit, the generality of them at that early period, and even afterwards, down to the time of this war, having with all their families settled and lived in the country, did not remove without reluctance, (especially as they had but lately recovered their establishments after the Median war,) but were distressed and grieved to leave their houses, …

This distich then the Lacedaemonians at the very time erased from the tripod, and engraved by name all the cities that had joined in overthrowing the barbarian, and had dedicated the offering.

Do they mean those who lived at the time of the Persian Wars or those who governed the city before the Decelean War?

The families of the most illustrious Athenians and our greatest houses, which survived the civil conflicts under the tyrants and the Persian Wars as well, have been, you will find, entirely wiped out under this empire upon which we set our hearts.

And it was because they acquired just this position that our ancestors in the time of the Persian Wars did not live in the manner of freebooters, now having more than enough for their needs, again reduced to a state of famine and siege and extreme misfortune;

Now, while the most celebrated of our wars was the one against the Persians, yet certainly our deeds of old offer evidence no less strong for those who dispute over ancestral rights.

for when the Persians landed in Attica the Athenians did not wait for their allies, but, making the common war their private cause, they marched out with their own forces alone to meet an enemy who looked with contempt upon the whole of Hellas—a mere handful against thousands upon thousands —as if they were about to risk the lives of others, not their own;

so strenuously did they both hasten, the Lacedaemonians to share in the dangers, the Athenians to engage the enemy before their helpers should arrive.

indeed, it would be wrong to say that Greece defended herself, for had not the bondage that threatened her been warded off by the concerted policy of the Athenians and Lacedaemonians, practically all the Greek races would have been confused together by now, and barbarians confused with Greeks and Greeks with barbarians,—just as the races under the Persian empire today are either scattered abroad o …

After this, endless threats and stories of huge preparations kept arriving from the Persian king.

what I call disgraceful is this,—that, in the first place, one only of those three States defended Greece, while the other two were so basely corrupt that one of them actually prevented Lacedaemon from assisting Greece by warring against her with all its might, and Argos, the other,—which stood first of the three in the days of the Dorian settlement— when summoned to help against the barbarian, pa …

then the existing fleet of old, unseaworthy triremes with which we had won Greece her independence by defeating the king of Persia and his barbarians—these existing vessels were replaced by a hundred new ones:

The Athenians after the Persian Wars, in accordance with an oracle, took up his bones from there and buried them.

And sometimes this is also brought about by accidental occurrences, as for instance at Tarentum when a great many notables were defeated and killed by the Iapygians a short time after the Persian wars a constitutional government was changed to a democracy, and at Argos when those in the seventh tribe had been destroyed by the Spartan Cleomenes the citizens were compelled to admit some of the surro …

Also if a man is great and capable of being yet greater, he stirs up faction in order that he may be sole ruler (as Pausanias who commanded the army through the Persian war seems to have done at Sparta, and Hanno at Carthage).

as for example the Council on the Areopagus having risen in reputation during the Persian wars was believed to have made the constitution more rigid, and then again the naval multitude, having been the cause of the victory off Salamis and thereby of the leadership of Athens due to her power at sea, made the democracy stronger;

although the whole of our citadel is a holy place, and although its area is so large, the inscription stands at the right hand beside the great brazen Athene which was dedicated by the state as a memorial of victory in the Persian war, at the expense of the Greeks.

Those men single-handed twice repulsed by land and sea the expedition assembled out of the whole of Asia, and at their individual risks established themselves as the authors of the joint salvation of all the Greeks.

But formerly too there was once a jealousy between the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians, and at first the Laconians led, then it befell the Greeks to incline rather toward the Athenians after the Persian wars.

After him, Themistocles, placed at the head of our forces in the Persian War, counselled our ancestors to abandon the city (and who could have persuaded them to do this but a man of surpassing eloquence?

This conclusion we may justly draw from the ancient struggles which they carried on against the Amazons and the Thracians and all of the Peloponnesians, and also from the wars which they waged against the Persians, in which, both when they fought alone and when they were aided by the Peloponnesians, whether on land or on the sea, they were victorious over the barbarians and were adjudged the meed of valor;

But at a later time, when the Persian War took place (Xerxes, who was then king, having gathered together a fleet of thirteen hundred triremes and a land force numbering five millions in all, including seven hundred thousand fighting men, and led this vast force against the Hellenes), the Spartans, although they were masters of the Peloponnesus, contributed to the sea-fight which determined the is …

And the greatest proof of this is that those who then fought together took the hegemony away from the Lacedaemonians and conferred it upon our ancestors.

Again, the Lacedaemonians contributed to this battle the leadership of Eurybiades, who, had he carried into effect what he intended to do, could have been prevented by nothing in the world from bringing destruction upon the Hellenes, whereas the Athenians furnished Themistocles, who, by the common assent of all, was credited with being responsible for the victorious outcome of that battle as well …

It is a just request, for our ancestors, we are told, when in the Persian War your fathers had abandoned this land, alone of those who lived outside of the Peloponnesus shared in their perils and thus helped them to save their city.

For while all other trophies have been erected by one city victorious over another, those were in commemoration of the victory of all Greece pitted against all the power of Asia.

Pray what would be their feelings—if we may assume that the dead yonder possess any perception of what takes place here —if they should perceive that, although you are masters, those who saw fit to be the slaves of barbarians had become despots over all the other Greeks and that we, who fought at your side for freedom, alone of the Greeks, have been driven from our homes, and that the graves of th …

Let such, in the first place, call to mind the Persian Wars.