Ancestors of Athens

For so stern were they toward all shameful conduct, and so precious did they hold the purity of their children, that when one of the citizens found that his daughter had been seduced, and that she had failed to guard well her chastity till the time of marriage, he walled her up in an empty house with a horse, which he knew would surely kill her, if she were shut in there with him.

Such, then, was the judgment of your fathers concerning things shameful and things honorable;

In the meantime, however, the city waxed powerful and seized the empire of the Hellenes, and our fathers, growing more self-assured than was meet for them, began to look with disfavor on those good men and true who had made Athens great, envying them their power, and to crave instead men who were base-born and full of insolence, thinking that by their bravado and contentiousness they would be able …

But reflect upon the glory and the greatness of the deeds wrought by our city and our ancestors, review them in your minds and consider what kind of man was he, what was his birth and what the character of his education, who expelled the tyrants, brought the people into their own, and established our democratic state;

for you will find if you review the career of each of these, that it was not those who lived unscrupulously or negligently nor those who did not stand out from the multitude who accomplished these things, but that it was men who were superior and pre-eminent, not only in birth and reputation, but in wisdom and eloquence, who have been the authors of all our blessings.