Orationes 43

539. Men of Rhodes who yet survive: what has befallen you it is not easy to forget, nor, while we remember it, to bear with moderation. For not only to you, who once prayed for the privilege of dwelling in Rhodes, but to all who are reckoned among the Greeks, what greater calamity could there be than the present one, now that the very ornament of our common race has perished? And one would groan most of all on reflecting that, formerly, the greatest thing one could say in speaking of the city was this: that, among other peoples, one may hear stories, and see what remains of some trophy, a monument, a fountain, while the guide who leads one about points out, among faint and obscure tokens, "This was the chamber of Semele, this of Harmonia, or of Leda," or something of the sort; but among you alone it was possible to see exactly, not merely to hear, what the city was. For everything looked as though it had only just been completed, so that the matter was not akin to a dirge, but held astonishment and admiration for all who beheld it. As one sailed in, there were straightway harbours so many and so great, raised up into the open sea upon jutting moles of stone: some to receive ships from Ionia, others those from Caria, others those from Egypt and Cyprus and Phoenicia, as though each had been made for the reception of a different city. Set above the harbours were dockyards, of such number and such kind as they had been when you were masters of the sea, in no way diminished by time, not such as to compel one to guess where they might once have stood, but visible themselves and astonishing to behold. Of these, had one looked down upon the roofs from above, he would have likened them to a kind of hanging plain. Upon these one might further see triremes, ships of two banks and of three, and up to seven and to nine

540. tiers of oars, some seaworthy, others laid up as in a storehouse; and if one wished to sail in any one of them, he might launch it and put to sea. Of others there were beaks tipped with bronze, some about the harbours, others distributed throughout the upper quarters of the city, together with many splendid spoils: some taken from the piracy of the Tyrrhenians, others from the campaigns with Alexander, others from wherever each had been brought into the city. Of the precincts of the gods, the temples and the statues, such was the multitude, such the magnitude, such the beauty, that they were worthy to be thank-offerings for those other achievements, and so that one could not determine which of them he should admire the more; of which even any single one, taken at random, afforded sufficient distinction for another city. Besides these, there were bronze likenesses set against all those in the rest of Greece, paintings of every art dedicated in one place or another of the city, and adornments, some of them unique to that place, others the most beautiful in existence. The acropolis was full of plains and groves; while of the rest of the city no part surpassed another, but the construction was uniform and equal, so that it might be the work, not of a city, but of a single household. The streets ran unbroken from beginning to end, in no way deserving to be called alleys; and the city stretched out splendidly, splendid in every direction. But the wonder above all and before all, the one that brought the eyes no satiety, was the circuit of the walls and the height and beauty of the towers set in among them, which served the approaching mariners in place of beacons, so that those alone who made for Rhodes, even as they looked upon it, became at once greater in spirit. And the fairest thing of all was that this circuit was not detached from the rest of the city, nor did it leave any empty space in between, but lay close against the city, running round it like a crown about a head.

Of Rhodes alone could it be said that it was walled both house by house and as a whole. For the walls resembled the fence of a courtyard, and availed against the city within only so far as to define its bounds, 541. since in dignity all parts were equal. To speak truly, one thing of the ancient possessions was lacking — to fight at sea; but the whole city besides was preserved purely and entire; and you would say that it alone had withdrawn from empire of its own good sense, while remaining itself, the very city it once was — not merely a name without substance, but itself, exactly what it had been. But now the beauty of the harbours is gone, the fairest of crowns has fallen, the temples are bereft of their statues and the altars of their sacrifices, the running-tracks are empty and the theatres empty of men; and where on earth or sea the ship-sheds once stood, not one of those who did not know them before could even conjecture. The countless number of likenesses of both kinds lies confounded and scattered together with the stones and the remains of the bodies that were destroyed; gone too is the ivory and the gold that ranks second to the art itself; the walls that everywhere held up the spoils have perished together with their ornament. As for the swords and spears among the spoils, these were brought here from the enemy, and amid these disasters they have done further harm to those who fell among them, so that the calamity might attain its very fullest measure. The city is left as a mere crag, no nearer to being level with the ground than the stones that, rising up, keep alive the memory of the disaster. So far has this city's calamity surpassed everything Greek of which we have heard by report, that of those places I mentioned just now — these very same — the palaces of dynasts and certain chambers are still shown, and some portions even of the cities yet remain, so that you would say they had become smaller from greater; but here not even so much is left as would house the man who would guide visitors round. And there one might see a monument and a trophy, but here not even a tomb has remained unscathed by the outrage; rather the city has fared alike without and within, and has become, in place of a monument, itself a monument to its citizens. And instead of beholding the city as one approaches it, far out at sea, one must, upon landing, search out what each thing was, gazing upon an unlovely hill in place of a city. So great is the difference between the city and itself, and the misfortunes of others as well have all befallen it together. So one must pardon

542. all that you say and do. Yet, even though things stand thus, you must bear it, holding the old saying to be right: that what has happened can no longer be otherwise — not even if you should lay every charge against Fortune and revile her, and destroy yourselves utterly by despair; whereas to bear these things as nobly as may be is no small gain, in circumstances such as these. And you are not lacking in misfortunes, that you should add to them; rather, by subtracting from what has befallen and always procuring for yourselves what occasions of relief are possible, you would show good sense and do what you ought. You must know, too, that you who are left are still Rhodians, however many you may be, and that Fortune, in robbing you besides of that name so august and honoured among Greeks and barbarians, has left you a station of which you must be seen to be worthy.

Now is the time, if ever, men of Rhodes, to save yourselves out of the surrounding evils, to come to the aid of the race of the island, and to stand against Fortune with splendour — bearing in mind the saying of your fellow-citizen the helmsman, who, when his ship was storm-tossed and he expected it to founder, uttered that famous word: "O Poseidon, know that I shall sink her upright." For he would have done nothing base or mean in his straits, but would have discharged all his own duty before perishing ill; since over the loss and foundering of the ship Fortune is ever sovereign, but over doing what one must beforehand, the demand falls upon no other — a man owes this to himself alone, and over this alone he is master, and he ought not to abandon it while he yet lives. Do not, then, throw down still further the city that has already fallen, adding meanness to the disaster; but since it has sunk first, struck down, do you who remain abide steadfast within yourselves. For it would be shameful, and the reproach would come from your own quarter, that the city of you here should appear meaner of spirit than a single man, and should fail to show this — that even in misfortune you know yourselves. So you will also seem to have suffered these things undeservedly. For it is a fine thing, I think, both to conquer in arms, 543. and to set up trophies in a sea-fight has its distinction, nor is it fitting for good men to abandon the zeal for such things — in which your ancestors of old won great glory, reasonably, and admiration, justly. But since all the occasions for such contests are past, and the present circumstances demand of you another sort of contest, this one you must undertake. And this is far more glorious and fairer for you than those contests: to range yourself against Fortune and to set up a trophy over her, even if at the first onset she leaped hard upon you. For of the victory in that other contest no one is so great as to be master of it through to the end, but the deity holds the largest share; whereas of the victory here judgment is sovereign. Show, then, that you possess such judgment as you ought, and do not become in all things inferior to Fortune, but contend against her now, since formerly it was not possible. For if it is in our power to lament worthily, let us do so, even if we should join together all the remaining nights and days of our lives. For it is fitting for Greece to invoke Rhodes, fared as she has, not three times only, but ten thousand times over. But as it is, who is there of so mighty an eloquence, or so consummate a sophist, or so equal to the task, as to lament the present sufferings worthily, without omitting many a part of what he thinks to say, but going through all in their order? For this is the strangest thing of all: that while lamenting what has happened and recounting how surpassing it is, we omit most of it, and think we are speaking when we are not. For who could tell worthily either these calamities, so strange and unheard of, gone beyond all bringing-on of evils, or the very crisis of the disaster that beset you? Who could keep his self-command, recalling that woeful noonday, when the evil first began and came down — when the sea stood waiting for what was to come, as though expecting some other great and incurable storm; when all the air held silence, as though awaiting what should be, and the birds and all things were still 544. before what was coming; while the city all the while lay subject to such a calamity, and against her the whole earthquake was being marshalled? Then for the last time the sun shone upon his own city, and suddenly all the terrors came at once together. The sea withdrew, and all the inner waters of the harbours were laid bare; houses were flung up and tombs torn open; tower fell upon tower, ship-shed upon trireme, temple upon altar, votive offering upon statue, man upon man, towers upon harbours, and all things upon one another. In the space in which a man hoists his anchor to put out, turning round he could no longer see the city, but everything became confounded at once: the harbours on dry land, the city in dust, courses running from alleys into houses, from houses into alleys, deaths in the houses, in the temples, at the doors, in the gateways. Without, the tombs cast up those who lay in them; within, the dying were buried out of sight. Of some, as though they were votive offerings hung up in prayer, the hands were seen on the tops of walls, of others the feet, of others some other remnant; nor was it possible even to guess, of each of these, whose it was that remained. Some, fleeing their own houses, perished in those of others; some, remaining in their own out of terror, were caught; some, rushing out, were overtaken; some, left behind half-dead, unable to come up to the surface or to rescue even themselves, took on famine as an addition to their evils, and gaining only so much as to recognise that their fatherland was no more, perished over and above. Of some, Fortune divided the very bodies, and half was cut off within the doors, while the severed half lay out in front. And upon these, again, fell other bodies, household gear, stones — whatever the earthquake bore along and mingled with each. Some kept on expecting rescue, others searched for their kin, others knew not whether to lament themselves or their own; some bewailed the city, others were set on fire, the roofs and the hearths falling together. Some, snatching up their children, were themselves caught fast; others slew themselves over their dead. Wild indeed was that revel of what had been but now the best of feasts.

545. Bridegrooms but lately summoned lay there, having sung the wedding-hymn to no good end; nor is it easy to know whether they themselves were the more unfortunate, or the brides they had taken. Some, who had come up from the sea, found their ancestral hearth less to be trusted than the sea; others, hastening to set sail, then for the last time put out from home, their fatherland having foundered before them.

There held sway together the earthquake of the sea, the crash of the cloud, wailings, the din of falling buildings, the eruptions of the earth. For I think that neither the cataracts beyond Egypt, nor the surf of the outer sea, nor fire-bearing thunderbolts, nor whatever among men sounds loudest, could be compared with the evil and the din of that time, which rose up as one mingled roar out of all of them, filling out that unexpected and graceless concert at which Rhodes had set forth. Brought together into one were corpses, altars, roofs, dust, blood, furniture, ceilings, foundations, slaves, masters, limbs of bodies, likenesses, slaughters, tombs, banquets. Some, taking up their lodging amid the bodies of their dearest, did not perceive it; others searched for what remained of themselves — some for their feet, some for their hands, some for whatever part of his body each had been maimed of; some even buried these along with their kindred; some, caught fast by what had fallen in on either side, held out; some were buried before they died. Every kind of evil, and such as none had ever before conceived, men then for the first time looked upon. The survivors knew not what to pray for, whether to be saved or to die. What heralds, what poets, will lament these things with a worthy voice? Who is equal to the telling? For what suffering was ever keener, or, if you will, more prolonged? What Greek or barbarian city in all of time was overtaken by such a thing? — when the city lay overthrown, fallen faster than ever ship foundered; and the days and nights that came on revealed some still living, just so far as to draw breath, 546. wounded among the most of the survivors, and others dead and already rotting, having nothing whatever of their limbs intact, but only as the fall had taken something from each or added something to him. Strange funeral-pyres burned alike by night and day, the counterparts of the holy festivals of old; and instead of mines of gold and silver, the soil of the city furnished for digging, and for months on end the clearing-away of those who lay there. And formerly, O Zeus, you used to try cases of bloodshed outside the gates, since it was not, in your eyes, consistent with piety even to pass sentence of death within the wall; but now, in a single day, the deity has condemned to destruction so great a multitude at once both within the city and along with it, and you who are left were compelled to burn these very men within the city, and the deity has made the city that was untrodden by men of blood a place of burial for each of those who perished. And the things said of old were mere legends — that the gods released this island from beneath the sea, where it lay hidden, and gave it as a gift to the Sun; but now the tale has come round to the opposite, that this city has sunk beneath the earth and departed from among men, while the sun stood above the earth, and the Sun has looked, in Rhodes, upon spectacles unfit to be seen by him. And Homer said that Zeus poured down wealth upon the island and upon your ancestors about Tlepolemus, and Pindar took up the tale and told how he rained gold, having set a golden cloud above them. But now, what gifts has the deity poured down, what cloud has he set above the city! — gifts unworthy of those of old, unworthy of you and of the city's former state. And now one may see Carpathus and Casos and other islands inhabited, with nothing to say for themselves — islands from which, but a little while ago, it was yours to gather tribute — and other little towns, wretched and built on shifting sand, and disputed. But Rhodes, O Zeus, and you, O Sun, who behold all things save Rhodes, is now nowhere; but, like those who tell the old tales, we must recount to those who come after us, who will receive the story from us, that there was once a city Rhodes, over against Caria, conspicuous for its beauty and its size, and we must point out the place 547. as we now point out that of Ialysus and Cameirus. And you will hold the festival of the Sun, and the precinct where you will hold it has remained safe; but this headland, named after the Sun's nymph, has taken on the shape of a mere beach. And of old you used to show to visitors the contrivances made from the hair of the women who cut it off, and it was a marvel; but now the city itself is left to set before men and to show, in such a spectacle, to those who arrive — a theatre and a council-house, and tablets half torn asunder, and crags pointed out in place of towers: pitiable remains of the once-renowned Rhodes. And when the greatness of other cities is brought up in conversation, it will be possible neither to take up the rivalry nor to keep silent without bursting. In a word, you will know of what a city you are bereft, and what manner of city you will have none to show; and for the present time you will call to witness those of the Greeks who knew it before, but when the appointed lot has carried these too away, what remains except to lose the case "by default," as they say — to be recognised, O ye powers, not from your sea-fights, nor from your harbours and dockyards, nor from the city's adornment, but because you suffered the greatest misfortune of the Greeks; and those who remember Rhodes must not exult, but lament. With you alone, in what you have now suffered, do the illustrious men of six hundred years ago share the wrong; and even those who had no connection with the city, who adorned the city with their works, were adorned in turn by being remembered.

These things, then, so terrible and admitting, as one might think, no consolation, must be borne — most of all and first by the very counsel of necessity, and so much the more as the matter has gone beyond the bounds of tears. For what cannot be lamented worthily — how is it not necessary to put away grief, let it be, and, as the saying goes, to shut our eyes and bear it? Moreover, the slighter misfortunes need no great preparation against them, but the greater ones must necessarily be borne in a great spirit too — I do not say simply in a great spirit, 548. but with a high mind. For just as against the greater wars there is need of greater preparation, while the lesser ones a man might carry through with feebler means, so too, of terrors, those that surpass all bounds require great strength in the sufferers to face them. We must, then, resist them with all our might and, prepared with our whole spirit, fight out this contest, if a man is not to be caught and swept away — reasoning that, formerly, those who looked upon the likenesses and statues admired the art of those who had made them, but now all will admire your judgment, if, even without these, you appear to think highly of yourselves. And, in sum, just as the touchstone reveals gold, so calamities judge good men; and all these things — the earthquake, the conflagration, everything that followed upon the one first evil — will now show what manner of men you are. And yet I am doing a paradoxical thing: for though I myself need consolation for what has befallen you, I claim the right to keep you in check. And this very thing might justly help me toward persuasion. For those who share in suffering I hold to be, reasonably, trustworthy counsellors also to men of good sense. For of matters that touch them, it is likely both that they take thought and that they speak out of goodwill, and that they confirm what is possible first of all by this — that, though similarly disposed, they nonetheless think it right to be seen bearing it. And I, for my part, hold that to suffer misfortunes of such magnitude is not the lot of the meanest of men, nor of those who have no height from which to fall, but of those able to receive this measure of calamity. Or do you suppose, by the gods, that this fall belongs to Seriphos, or to Syme here, or to any other of the many islands round about? It was Rhodes, I think, that had so much and so great a thing to lose. To you the deity allotted both extremes: for in virtue and power and the construction of your city you surpass the most illustrious of others; but since it was needful — though it ought not — to make trial of the opposite as well, Fortune has equalled these too with your advantages above; and possessing the greatest things, 549. you have fallen from the greatest. And just as Hesiod said that, if heaven and earth came together, the greatest crash would arise, as being the greatest fall from a height, so, of things on earth, Rhodes in falling resounded the greatest, and the perception of it reached the most men, both Greeks 549. and barbarians, and the very rulers of Greeks and barbarians. For nothing else has happened than that the whole sea has been stripped of its ornament and is for the future widowed of what least of all it ought to be. So it is reasonable that you have very many who grieve along with you. For neither was the event obscure, by reason of its magnitude, nor was there anyone who would rejoice at your suffering. For you were the common friends and hosts of all, and to many you were saviours besides — good guides and escorts of those who sailed past the island in either direction, more pleasant and more splendid than the Phaeacians whom Homer made in his tale, and named even among those at the ends of the earth. So that, to those who did not know the city but heard of it from those who did, even if they could speak of all else in their lives as lived to their liking, this one thing at least seemed to be lacking, and that not the least — that they had never yet seen Rhodes. And indeed one might be at a loss for whom it is now the more fitting to lament: those who never beheld the city, or those who had dealings with it. For the one are deprived of the fairest of spectacles, the others, of the greatest of what they had seen; and as much as they gained, by so much are they penalized: for they are not ignorant of how great a thing has perished. And for this reason most of all you must be eager to bear the present with cheerfulness and nobility, because you have many spectators and witnesses of how you will carry it, before whom it is well that the Rhodians too should display the abundance of their nobility — that even if the walls should fall ten times, yet the dignity of the city will not fall so long as one Rhodian is left, but will stand and remain unshaken; so that they may not so much grieve along with you as admire you, nor remember the city 550. with dirges, but with emulation of what is left; nor send to console you, but you them — preserving the spirit native to the Dorians, which is now displayed in you alone, or most of all, of the Greeks.

And for my part, were I not about to say something too paradoxical, I would have bidden you send envoys everywhere in Greece to console each people and to charge them not to pity you, on the ground that it is not native to Rhodes, nor to you who are Rhodians, to be lamented rather than emulated; and, of these envoys going about and asking now one thing, now another of others, this embassy would, in my opinion, have been in no way less honourable to the city. For these other things too, I think, are necessary and serviceable — who could find fault? — to send some men to one place and some to another to make appeal, laying common contributions, as it were, upon all the Greeks as fellow-citizens; and this I approve. Nevertheless, even toward these very ends that other posture would have contributed. For who would not have admired? Who would not have lent aid? Who would not have thought that such a thing was a favour to himself rather than to you? But if it is not possible nor practicable to send round this embassy, then you must conduct this embassy to your own selves, that you may render the third thing to the two I mentioned just now, and not fall short in that alone where most of all you must not. Greatest of the Greeks, you have been most grievously struck; you must bear these things most nobly, so that everywhere the city may be seen to have met with the greatest things and to be faring throughout alike from beginning to end, and that, to the two extremes that belong to you, the one mean between them may be added, and the things that now seem terrible and incurable may turn out to your advantage. For the more you appear superior to them, by so much the more will you be well esteemed. And the poets too say of the heroes that, to those of them whose life the god mixed, interchanging a portion of goods and evils, to these he granted a happy lot; but those to whom he gave the portion of evils outright, these he utterly destroyed. So that the continuous possession of goods [to the end] is not 551. given to men, but the lives of men are of two kinds, some wholly in evils, others mixed. You, then, he first deemed worthy of the portion of goods, and that for the longest time. For let this be the greatest consolation for you: that in the things in which you held first place you held out for a long time, and day by day the city fared worthily of itself, whereas the misfortune was that of a single day — nay, not of a whole hour, if only you keep your good sense. Do not, then, make it the misfortune of all time, nor prolong the earthquake beyond the span in which it then ceased. For it is absurd to blame Fortune and chafe at what has happened as surpassing all bounds, and yet to add of yourselves what the earthquake passed over. Of what, then, was the earthquake master? And of what are you now master? It, of casting down and destroying houses and walls and bodies; you, of setting reason against what has happened. Do not, then, suffer this to depart from you, nor let your judgment too fall along with the rest, so that, in the very way in which formerly the sailors, putting in and putting out, saw the city and the circuit of the walls from the greatest distance and to the greatest distance, so now those who are able may see the city's spirit standing firm, and may behold that this is a thing which neither earthquake nor conflagration nor loss of property, nor the taking-away of houses, nor anything else, has cast down nor ever shall cast down, has despoiled nor ever shall despoil. If this stands firm, Rhodes stands, for those who see aright; since the very walls and dockyards and the other adornments along with them were acquired by men who had spirit and such reasonings about affairs as one ought, and these were the votive offerings of the judgment of those men — who, for the sake of emulation and of the love of honour in noble things, thought they must undertake all toils, all dangers, whereby they sailed every sea that was navigable, and contended, both by themselves and in alliances, in many great and renowned struggles;

552. of whom you must be worthy, reasoning — even if it is paradoxical to say so at the first — that it is even easier for you than for them at that time to have all that must be accomplished. For you need not now send out fleets, nor go forth on expeditions, nor, taking up arms against the strong, run risks, nor, abandoning your fatherland, be carried now here, now there over the sea, subject to storms and to enemies, the one present and the other still to come; but, remaining at home and enjoying your own, to be temperate. For the island has not sunk beneath the sea, so that there is no place left for the surviving Rhodians to stand.

But to those who think life not worth living unless they are to pass it in a fatherland as great and such as before, I say this — and let no one be exasperated at my words — there was a time when this city, Rhodes, did not yet exist; nor even, as the poets say, this island, but these things were once bare sea. Yet that is not what I mean. Rather, in the times before Lysander the Spartan admiral, nearly all of you know that your city had not yet been founded by you, but there was only the name of the island, and Rhodes was not yet a city, nor was it inhabited by any; but the men who were Rhodians in those times dwelt in the three ancient cities, which Homer too enumerated. And coming together afterwards from all the cities, they founded this one — with no wholly favourable omens, it seems — whose great and wonderful name and form and beauty, and whatever else one wishes to say of it, he will not err in saying. This argument, then, has two forces for me. One, men of Rhodes, is to suppose, in your reasonings, that you are back in those times when you did not yet possess the city, and to bear it more moderately; the other, and the whole of it, is not even now to despair of the present nor give up, using the example of your forefathers — that they too, taking the resolve one ought, made the city out of nothing, and great out of no city, and wonderful out of obscurity, at the first.

553. And where is it endurable to live, deprived of such a city? Do not waste yourselves on mere grief, but turn to the setting-right of what has happened, by whatever means may appear possible. And indeed the recovery of the city is far easier for you, if you consider rightly, than was the original founding for them. For they, having no resource whatever from the place — no harbours, no likenesses, no adornments, no stones, so to speak — finding themselves, I think, in much deliberation and perplexity first of all as to where in the land they should dwell, in this way appointed it; and, greatest of all, with no existing model before them, but discovering it themselves and setting it forth first, as a true model of a city. But you need now neither search at all concerning the whole, and whatever of the ancient things remains comes to your aid — and these are many in respect of the whole, even if altogether few as compared with all that was. For you need now neither to bank up harbours, nor to rebuild a council-house or a theatre, nor to plant groves. And there are some likenesses left in tablets, and of the works in bronze enough for a sample — both the great statue and this place of ours here, in which I have many a time contended often together with you. Even if you despise these and judge what remains to be nothing, comparing them with the ancient things, be well assured that other cities would glory if even a part of them were theirs. And indeed you need not send for any model, nor emulate anything from beyond your borders, but to make, out of the old Rhodes, a new Rhodes from Rhodes herself. Moreover, they founded the city amid wars and tumults, themselves quite unable to keep quiet while all the rest of Greece too was being carried up and down, sailing and campaigning at once as they founded it, as men walling off some fort or camp on a march. But you will be able, in much peace and deep quiet — which, doing well to all men, has increased their fortunes — and with many helping you, not merely not hindering, to have many of the Greeks 554. take part with you, as though filling up a common contribution for the race: some repaying you for benefits in return for what they themselves once received when in need; some laying up in you a safeguard against the uncertainty of Fortune; some bringing forth this very thing as a sample of their love of the beautiful and their magnificence — that they have contributed to you in your present need. And greatest of all is the hope from the ruler of all men, to whom above all it must seem a matter of zeal, so far as is possible, to restore the city, that the fairest of his possessions may not lie dishonoured upon the ground, nor that crags and dust be henceforth the substance of Rhodes.

We must also bear in mind the examples of the ancients. It is, in truth, an insensible thing to set your fortunes against those of anyone whatever; for, as I said, the one thing that lightens calamities is not present in the case at hand — an example. Nevertheless, even if some were not deprived of things so great, nor fell into so manifold an evil, yet many a city — some whose inhabitants were uprooted and were dissolved into desolation, some razed to the ground, some burned — of these we must choose the most notable and bear them in mind and say to ourselves: Ilium was captured, the most powerful city in Asia in those times, yet Ilium is now inhabited, and that though twice taken, as they say, once by Heracles, and a second time by the Greeks in common in the famous war — and some say a third time too, in later periods. Thebes is inhabited, though it too was twice razed and all those in the prime of life destroyed — which here the earthquake did not exactly accomplish, doing well in that part at least. To you, amid evils so great as these, it is in danger of being the most endurable thing that has befallen. For your city has not perished, taken in war, nor having shown itself inferior in men, nor has anyone set up a trophy over it, nor will anyone adorn his own sacred places out of your offerings, as you adorned your own city with spoils from abroad; but, like a man who has ended his life in his prime, it has perished of itself, alone, having met a more divine end, and neither 555. has any Rhodian been led off captive, nor has Rhodes been demolished, but, having flourished as far as was possible, it was suddenly made to vanish. And yet such deaths, even privately in the case of individual men, have proved not to be inglorious. Rather, Amphiaraus, who sank beneath the earth together with his chariot, is sung as an august hero, and the place that received him is able to be his precinct for the future. And I venture to say that this too has contributed to the city's praise. For concerning the city of the Lacedaemonians we can say that it did not continue unsacked, and concerning others one may suspect the future; and many things are risked by those who survive, and many men, undeservedly and beyond all expectation, have already been brought to grief by chance circumstances — men who, before they came to that pass, preserved a spirit unblemished and stronger than any hope; but this city has departed securely unconquered, like an athlete who in his good fortune has laid down his labours, and has set his seal, by his death, upon his former prime and power and splendour. For it did not fare well and then fare worse, nor wither little by little until it was quenched, but, while it existed, it was the greatest, and it descended into non-existence before it had abated anything of its existing dignity. Reasoning on these things, you must neither grieve overmuch at what has happened nor put away grief and let things be, but look to this: that just as it went from the greatest good fortune to the uttermost, so it is nothing improbable that, having fared thus, it should rise again, and that you should look for the change of Fortune to the other side — by as much the more as faring well is more habitual to the city than faring ill. And of being beloved of the gods it has brought forth many proofs, both of old and now; and from the opposite it stands as far removed as was most possible. For all which reasons you must bear what has happened as gently as may be, and cling stoutly to the second-best things, and confirm the saying that the city is not well-roofed houses, nor the stones of walls well built, nor alleys and dockyards, but men able to use whatever is at hand at any time, and not to think that any calamity is so strong that 556. no release from it can be found, nor that they have resources so small that by means of them a man could not get the better even of the greatest things — knowing by report that, when the Athenians had been deprived of their hegemony, and had razed their own walls with their own hands, and had fallen so far from their ancient prosperity as to be under the power of thirty masters and of the garrisons from Lacedaemon, seventy men, the first to band together and seize Phyle, brought about so great a change in all affairs that they took possession of the Piraeus, became masters of the harbours, saved both themselves and their own, and recovered the city and the ancestral constitution, ridding it of the Lacedaemonian garrisons; whence the city was again able to take counsel both for itself and for the other Greeks, to throw a wall about itself, and to recover the empire of the sea — through one man, an exile, Conon, who, when their triremes were destroyed at Aegospotami, alone of all escaped and got away.

If, then, neither Thrasybulus despaired of the situation nor took to heart what seventy men could be against the empire of the Lacedaemonians and the Fortune that then held Greece in common — for all alike had stooped beneath them — nor Conon perceived that he was in love with the impossible, when, possessing nothing whatever save his own person, he resolved to set up the walls again for the city and to renew its empire: how is it not perfectly clear that the most of affairs are judged by judgment and spirit and steadfastness of soul, and not by the multitude of one's resources? And why need I mention the city's ancient abandonment of itself, when on purpose they gave it up to the barbarians to burn, both temples and tombs in the land — that counsel at Salamis on behalf of the Greeks, and what they gained thereby? For none of the Greeks or barbarians is ignorant of these things, and least of all you, in so far as you excel all in education. And now, indeed, you have these examples to use. But as you too prove yourselves 557. good men, others will remember you on such occasions, and will set you and your affairs before themselves as an example for their own, so that, both for the sake of your reputation among those now living and among those who come after, and — greatest of all — for the sake of your own preservation, it is worth your while to make it your ambition to rank yourselves too in the number of those who, from small beginnings, recovered the rest, the great from the ancient. Think that your dead too require these things of you — fathers and brothers and the rest of your kin — and that they entreat you, by their own memory and by the remaining soil of the city, if you wish to do them any favour, not to look on while the name of Rhodes departs once and for all from among men, but to defend it and raise it up so far as you are able. And may you rise again under happier and better auspices, O Zeus and all you gods.