| Lycurgus, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Lycurg.]. | ||
| <<Lycurg. 1.33 | Lycurg. 1.44 (Greek) | >>Lycurg. 1.56 |
1.41Many sufferings were being visited upon the city; every citizen had felt misfortune at its worst; but the sight which would most surely have stirred the onlooker and moved him to tears over the sorrows of Athens was to see the people vote that slaves should be released, that aliens should become Athenians and the disfranchised regain their rights note: the nation that once proudly claimed to be indigenous and free. The city had suffered a change indeed.
1.42She who used once to champion the freedom of her fellow Greeks was now content if she could safely meet the dangers that her own defence entailed. In the past she had ruled a wide extent of foreign land; now she was disputing with Macedon for her own. The people whom Lacedaemonians and Peloponnesians, whom the Greeks of Asia used once to summon to their help, note were now entreating men of Andros , Ceos , Troezen and Epidaurus to send them aid.
1.43Therefore, gentlemen, if at a time of fears like these, a time of such great danger and disgrace, there was a deserter from the city, a mall who neither took up arms in his country's defence nor submitted his person to the generals for enrollment but ran away and betrayed the safety of the people, what patriotic juryman with any scruples would vote for his acquittal? What advocate summoned into court would help a traitor to his city? He had not even the grace to share our grief at the misfortunes of his country, and he has made no contribution towards the defence of Athens and our democracy.
1.44Yet men of every age offered their services for the city's defence on that occasion when the land was giving up its trees, the dead their gravestones, and the temples arms. Some set themselves to building walls, others to making ditches and palisades. Not a man in the city was idle. Leocrates did not offer himself to be enrolled for a single one of these tasks.
1.45You would do well to remember this and punish with death this man who did not even deign to help collect the bodies or attend the funeral of those who at Chaeronea died for freedom and the safety of our people; for had it rested with him those men would be unburied. He was not even ashamed to pass their graves when he greeted their country eight years after.
Boeotia , to fight for the freedom of Greece . They neither rested their hopes of safety on city walls nor surrendered their lands for the foe to devastate. Believing that their own courage was a surer protection than battlements of stone, they held it a disgrace to see the land that reared them wasted. And they were right. Men do not hold their foster parents so dear as their own fathers, and so towards countries which are not their own but which have been adopted during their lifetime they feel a weaker loyalty.
1.48In such a spirit did these men bear their share of dangers with a courage unsurpassed; but their prowess was not equalled by their fortune. For they have not lived to reap the enjoyment of their valor; they died and have bequeathed their glory in its stead. Unconquered, they fell at their posts in the defence of freedom,
1.49and if I may use a paradox but one which yet conveys the truth, they triumphed in their death. For liberty and courage, the prizes offered to brave men in war, are both in the possession of the dea neither can we say that men have been defeated whose spirits did not flinch at the aggressor's threat. For it is only those who meet an honorable end in war whom no man justly could call beaten, since by the choosing of a noble death they are escaping slavery. The courage of these men has made this plain. They alone among us all held in their persons the liberty of Greece .
1.50For at the very moment when they passed away her lot was changed to servitude. With the bodies of these men was buried the freedom of every other Greek, and thus they proved it to the world that they were fighting for no private ends but facing danger for our common liberty. I therefore say without misgiving that their lives have been a laurel wreath for Athens .
1.51They had good reason for their conduct, note since you, Athenians, alone among Greeks know how to honor valiant men. In other cities, you will find, it is the athletes who have their statues in the market place, whereas in yours it is victorious generals and the slayers of the tyrants: men whose like it is hard to find though we search the whole of Greece for but a few, whereas the winners of contests for a wreath have come from many places and can easily be seen. It is then only right, since you pay the highest honors to your benefactors, that you should also punish with the utmost rigor those who dishonor and betray their country.
1.46I wish to say a few words more about these men, gentlemen, and I ask you to listen and not regard such pleas as out of keeping with public trials. For the praise of brave men provides an unanswerable refutation of all whose conduct is opposed to theirs. And it is fair too that that praise which is to them the only reward for danger should be remembered at the public trials in which the entire city shares, since it was for her safety as a whole that they forfeited their lives. 1.47Those men encountered the enemy on the borders of
| Lycurgus, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Lycurg.]. | ||
| <<Lycurg. 1.33 | Lycurg. 1.44 (Greek) | >>Lycurg. 1.56 |
