Athens

For such as by war or sedi tion were driven out of the rest of Greece, the most powerful of them retired to Athens, as to a place of security;

) Whereas if the Athenians were to suffer the same fate, I think their power would be conjectured, from the appearance of the city to the eye, to have been double what it is.

And the Corinthians, on hearing this, went themselves also to Athens on an embassy, to prevent the addition of the Athenian navy to that of the Corcyraeans being an impediment to their concluding the war as they wished.

During these days also, and while Thrasyllus was in Athens, Agis made a raid from Decelea up to the very walls of the city;

In the next year—in which was celebrated the ninety-third Olympiad, when the newly added two-horse race was won by Euagoras of Elis and the stadium by Eubotas of Cyrene, Euarchippus being now ephor at Sparta and Euctemon archon at Athens —the Athenians fortified Thoricus;

And when he found that the temper of the Athenians was kindly, that they had chosen him general, and that his friends were urging him by personal messages to return, he sailed in to Piraeus, arriving on the day when the city was celebrating the Plynteria and the statue of Athena was veiled from sight,—a circumstance which some people imagined was of ill omen, both for him and for the state;

And these cities, he said, were far fairer than Ecbatana and Babylon, and the Craneum and the Acropolis at Athens and the Propylaea far better built than the palaces there, falling short only in size;

Diogenes of Sinope, when he was exiled from Sinope, came to Greece and passed his time sometimes at Corinth, sometimes at Athens.

For Attica, he said, has neither great mountains nor rivers flowing through it, as the Peloponnese and Thessaly have;

The Athenians did, and by this means Pisistratus gained Athens for the third time, rooting his sovereignty in a strong guard and revenue collected both from Athens and from the district of the river Strymon, and he took hostage the sons of the Athenians who remained and did not leave the city at once, and placed these in Naxos.

These rose with Pisistratus and took the Acropolis;

When the Athenians heard this reported to them, they marked out for Aeacus that precinct which is now set in their marketplace, but they could not stomach the order that they must hold their hand for thirty years, seeing that the Aeginetans had dealt them a foul blow.

while Alcibiades, on account of his beauty, was hunted by many great ladies, and because of his influence at Athens and among her allies he was spoilt by many powerful men:

Obviously I should first entertain him when he came to Athens.

I remember that he once heard Criton say that life at Athens was difficult for a man who wanted to mind his own business.

Surely no man will dare to call it becoming that in a man reared at Pella, then a mean and insignificant city, such lofty ambition should be innate as to covet the dominion of all Greece, and admit that aspiration to his soul, while you, natives of Athens, observing day by day, in every speech you hear and ill every spectacle you behold, memorials of the high prowess of your forefathers, should si …

I ask you, Aeschines, what was the duty of Athens when she perceived that Philip’s purpose was to establish a despotic empire over all Greece?

Let me begin, men of Athens, by beseeching all the Powers of Heaven that on this trial I may find in Athenian hearts such benevolence towards me as I have ever cherished for the city and the people of Athens.

Yet through the agency of these men all these great and terrible transactions have been dominated by a single individual, though the city of Athens is still in being, the city whose ancestral prerogative it was to stand forth as the champion of the Hellenic race, and declare that such things shall not be.

You saved the Lacedaemonians in old time, and those accursed Euboeans lately, and many other peoples, not because they were virtuous, but because their safety profited Athens, as that of the Phocians would today.

Citizens of Athens, I do not doubt that you are all pretty well aware that this trial has been the center of keen partisanship and active canvassing, for you saw the people who were accosting and annoying you just now at the casting of lots.

” King Theseus himself in Euripides speaks in very different terms of the Athenian Republic;

” Seneca, the writer already quoted, produces two instances, the one of Callistratus at Athens, and the other of Rutilius at Rome, who refused to be restored from banishment thinking it better for two individuals to suffer hardship, than for the public to be plunged into calamities.

Thus at the suggestion of Pericles, Melesippus, the Lacedaemonian ambassador, was sent out of the territories of Athens;

Nay, Protagoras of Abdera, of whom you made mention just now, perhaps the greatest sophist of those times, having set down at the beginning of his book "Of the gods I am not able to say either that they are or that they are not," was by decree of the Athenians banished from city and country, and his books burned in the assembly;

And indeed we praise the Vulcan at Athens which Alcamenes made, in which, as the god stands clothed, a slight, not unsightly limp appears:

When I was at Athens, scarcely one was found in a whole troop of youths — I see why you smiled, but the matter stands so.

He becomes a mere hereditary general, as in Lacedæmon, a mere functionary, as the King Archon at Athens, or a mere formal hierophant, like the Rex Sacrificulus at Rome.

It is remarkable too that the “equality” of laws on which the Greek democracies prided themselves—that equality which, in the beautiful drinking song of Callistratus, Harmodius and Aristogiton are said to have given to Athens—had little in common with the “equity” of the Romans.

and, if we may judge them by the popular courts of Athens, of whose working we possess accurate knowledge, the Greek tribunals exhibited the strongest tendency to confound law and fact.

After having dwelt upon this subject, deplored the misfortunes of Hellas, and urged Athens not to allow herself to remain in her present state, finally I summon her to a career of justice, I condemn the mistakes she is now making, and I counsel her as to her future policy.

and they ought, furthermore, to appreciate the fact that while any number of men both among the Hellenes and among the barbarians have been able to lay down laws, there are not many who can discourse upon questions of public welfare in a spirit worthy both of Athens and of Hellas.

Then, having concluded the account of these benefactions, and desiring to show more convincingly that leadership in the expedition is the right of Athens, I further try to prove that far greater honor is due to her for the perils she has faced in war than for her other benefactions.

If, then, one views Athens in this light and compares her, not with any city chosen at random, but with the city of the Spartans, which most people praise moderately while some extol her as though the demigods had there governed the state, then Athens, in her power, in her deeds and in her benefactions to the Hellenes, will be seen to have outdistanced Sparta more than Sparta the rest of the world.

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 …

I shall now proceed to discourse upon the benefactions of Athens to the Hellenes, not that I have not sung the praises of our city more than all others put together who have written in poetry or prose.

that while the lawgiver, in case any one is subject to audit for a single office—though it be the least—does not permit him to be crowned until lie has rendered his account and submitted to audit, Ctesiphon did not hesitate to move to crown Demosthenes, who was holding all the offices in Athens at once.

But if, as I briefly recall the dates, and cite the resolutions which Demosthenes moved in cooperation with Philocrates, the truthful audit of the facts shall convict Demosthenes of having moved more resolutions than Philocrates concerning the original peace and alliance, and of having flattered Philip and his ambassadors with a shamelessness which was beyond measure, and of being responsible to t …

how they have mustered their forces, and how they have gone begging up and down the market place, in the attempt to prevent the fair and orderly course of justice in the state.

—nor shall he prosecute men who have served as ambassadors, nor shall he be a hired slanderer— nor ever address senate or assembly, not even though he be the most eloquent orator in Athens.

If a man at Athens not only abuses other people, but even his own body, here where there are laws, where you are looking on, where his personal enemies are on the watch, who would expect that same man, when he had received impunity and authority and office, to have placed any limit on his license?

Now if this trial were taking place in another city, and that city were the referee, I should have demanded that you should be my witnesses, you who best know that I am speaking the truth.

But we, who have shrines and family tombs in our native land, and such life and intercourse with you as belong to free men, and lawful marriage, with its offspring and connections, we while at Athens were worthy of your confidence, or you would never have chosen us, but when we had come to Macedonia we all at once turned traitors!

On our return, then, after we had rendered to the senate a brief report of our mission and had delivered the letter from Philip, Demosthenes praised us to his colleagues in the senate, and he swore by Hestia, goddess of the senate, that he congratulated the city on having sent such men on the embassy, men who in honesty and eloquence were worthy of the state.

Now when we presented the report of our embassy before the assembly, Ctesiphon came for ward first and spoke, including in his account the points that he was to make according to his agreement with Demosthenes, I mean about Philip’s social accomplishments, his personal appearance, and his doughty deeds at the cups.

I left Athens for the report of your philosophy, passing over the schools there.

For the man whom you suppose to have forgotten you—I held him in respect even long ago, when he was young, seeing him vie with old men in temperance, and that too in that city which teems with pleasures, and already possessing a great share of eloquence.

O Muses, and eloquence, and Athens!

Solon, then, gave laws to the Athenians, Pittacus to the Mitylenaeans.

The Greeks say that, after Orpheus and Linus and the most ancient of the poets among them, the first to be admired for wisdom were the seven called the Sages.

This man transferred the school from Ionia to Athens.

For my prayer would ever be that Athens may abound in all blessings, but especially that the best men and the most numerous benefactors of this city may be her own citizens.

It is fitting, therefore, to allow these inscriptions to hold good for all time, that as long as any of the men are alive, they may suffer no wrong at your hands, and when they die, those inscriptions may be a memorial of our national character, and may stand as proofs to all who wish to do us service, declaring how many benefactors our city has benefited in return.

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

suppose he praised you and described your city to them in these words:

The sacred apparel—for all apparel provided for use at a festival I regard as being sacred until after it has been used—and the golden crowns,which I ordered for the decoration of the chorus, he plotted to destroy,men of Athens, by a nocturnal raid on the premises of my goldsmith.

Now if I had not been chorus-master, men of Athens, when I was thus maltreated by Meidias, it is only the personal insult that one would have condemned;

there did Phoebus force his love on Creusa, daughter of Erechtheus, beneath the rock of Pallas, northward of Athens’ steep realm, called Macrae by the kings of Attica.

Athens, I am told,—that glorious city of a native race,—owns no aliens;

’tis a deep-laid plot to outrage us and drive us from Erechtheus’ halls.

At Athens, the most nearly corresponding institution differed considerably from the Hindu form.

The daughter here becomes neither the true successor of her father nor the priestess of his worship, but a channel through which his blood passes to a male child, capable, according to the oldest notions, of sacrificing to him;

It was the exclusive principle of the Roman law under the Twelve Tables, and it governed the remoter collateral successions under the law of Athens, which prescribed that agnates should always have precedence over cognates (προτιμα̑σθαι τοὺς ἀπὸ τω̑ν ἄῤῥένων τω̑ν ἀπὸ θηλείων).

’ The order of change thus departs from that followed in Athenian history, where the institution of kingship survived only in the name of the King Archon, who was a judicial functionary, and from that followed in Roman history, where the Rex Sacrificulus was a hierophant or priest.

At the beginning of Athenian history we find the Athenian commonalty the bondslaves through debt of the Eupatrids;

The Athenian Assembly made true laws for residents on Attic territory, but the dominion of Athens over her subject cities and islands was clearly a tax-taking as distinguished from a legislating Empire.

For seven years after he had killed Agamemnon he ruled in Mycenae, and the people were obedient under him, but in the eighth year Orestes came back from Athens to be his bane, and killed the murderer of his father.

She went to Marathon and to the spacious streets of Athens, where she entered the abode of Erechtheus;

"Then I saw Phaedra, and Procris, and fair Ariadne daughter of the magician Minos, whom Theseus was carrying off from Crete to Athens, but he did not enjoy her, for before he could do so Artemis killed her in the island of Dia on account of what Bacchus had said against her.

and the multitude of people who visit us is so great that, whatever advantage there is in our associating together, this also has been compassed by our city, Athens.

But how many good things we have contributed to the rest of the world we could estimate to best advantage if we should recount the history of our city from the beginning and go through all her achievements in detail;

—our city was not only so beloved of the gods but also so devoted to mankind that, having been endowed with these great blessings, she did not begrudge them to the rest of the world, but shared with all men what she had received.