Athenian ancestors

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

In those days, when they manned their triremes, they put on board crews of foreigners and slaves but sent out citizens to fight under heavy arms.

It is, therefore, my duty and the duty of all who care about the welfare of the state to choose, not those discourses which are agreeable to you, but those which are profitable for you to hear.

In those days there occurred at the same time very many wars and very great perils.

whereas those who governed Athens before that time did nothing of the sort, but entirely the opposite;

and that those who had brought these conditions to pass gained the fame and the name of having made Hellas twice as strong as she was of old.

Can you name anything that you have acquired and that you will bequeath to posterity, as they bequeathed the Chersonesus, and Amphipolis, and the glory of noble exploits?

But the really scandalous thing is, not that our counsels are inferior to those of our ancestors, who surpassed all mankind in virtue, but that they are worse than those of all other nations.

Now, while the administrators of public affairs have risen from poverty to affluence, and are provided with ample maintenance for a long time to come, you have not enough money laid by for a single day’s expenditure, and when something must be done, you are at once without the means of doing it.

But I will invoke your ancestors and the virtues of your ancestors, whose memory time has not effaced.

It is preposterous that your ancestors faced death to save the laws from destruction, but that you do not even punish those who have offended against the laws;

the effect of this vote will be that you have received authority to transgress with impunity the decisions of the jury and the laws handed down by our ancestors—to do, in fact, whatever you please.

It is said that Aristeides was banished by your ancestors and lived in Aegina till the people recalled him, and that Miltiades and Pericles, being fined thirty and fifty talents respectively, did not try to harangue the people until they had paid in full.

As it stands, then, this law reflects on your city not honor but disgrace, unworthy alike of your ancestors and of yourselves;

Reflect, rather, what a disgrace it would be if your fathers faced many hardships and great dangers in fighting the Lacedaemonians.

For our prosperity is inherited from our ancestors, and is of an earlier date than the prosperity not only of Philip, but, roughly speaking, of all the kings that have ever reigned in Macedonia.

what a disgrace if one, with only the tradition of Macedonia behind him, so cheerfully courts danger that, in the task of extending his sway, he has been wounded in every limb on the battle-field, but Athenians, whose ancestral boast it is in war to yield to none and conquer all, should renounce, through indolence or cowardice, alike the deeds of their ancestors and the interests of their fatherland.

Thus did our ancestors;

Rewards to citizens, rightly thus granted by our ancestors, are wrongly granted by you.

Yet consider how things were managed in the days of your ancestors, for you need not go abroad for examples to teach you your duty.

and you must see to it that our actions, rather than the speeches delivered from this platform, are worthy of our fathers.

Those who praise your ancestors, men of Athens, seem to me to choose an acceptable theme, which yet fails to do any real service to those whom they eulogize;

But he will hear that our resources consist of the ratable value of our country, and how we can fight in defence of it against invaders from his land, those ancestors of his who fought at Marathon best know;

For I suppose he learns from history and from report that your ancestors, when they might, at the price of submission to the Great King, have become the paramount power in Greece, not only refused to entertain that proposal, conveyed to them by Alexander, an ancestor of Philip’s line, but chose to quit their homes and endure every hardship, and thereafter wrought those deeds which all men are alwa …

what manner of men they were at home, in public or in private life, look round you and see.

Yet reflect, men of Athens, on what might be named as the outstanding achievements of the days of your ancestors and those of your own time.

Now your ancestors, whom their orators, unlike ours today, did not caress or flatter, for five and forty years commanded the willing obedience of the Greeks;

it was for you that your ancestors won this proud privilege and bequeathed it to you at great and manifold risk.

I earnestly implore you to consider what was the intention of the Athenians who did this thing, or what was their proud claim.

On the contrary, when you, or rather the Athenians of that day, were thought to be showing a want of consideration in dealing with others, all felt it their duty, even those who had no grievance against them, to go to war in support of those who had been injured;

In the same manner also they governed their relations with each other.

for the majority of men tend to assimilate the manners and morals amid which they have been reared.

for it was they who led on our youth to this spirit of heedlessness and destroyed the power of the Areopagus.

You must also take some thought of your ancestors and not be negligent of the piety due to them.

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 when the Argives came to your ancestors and implored them to take up for burial the bodies of the dead at the foot of the Cadmea, your forefathers yielded to their persuasion and compelled the Thebans to adopt measures more conformable to our usage, and thus not only gained renown for themselves in those times, but also bequeathed to your city a glory never to be forgotten for all time to come …

Your ancestors faced death to save the city from shame;

In age she surpasses every city, and in valor too our ancestors have no less surpassed their fellows.

These are the lines, gentlemen, to which your forefathers listened, and such are the deeds which they emulated.