Greek Texts & Translations

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 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.

1.52You should bear in mind, gentlemen, that it is not even in your power, unless you go beyond your rights, to acquit this man Leocrates, since his offence has had judgement passed upon it and a vote of condemnation too. For the council of the Areopagus;—(No one need interrupt me. That council was, in my opinion, the greatest bulwark of the city at the time;)—seized and executed men who then had fled from their country and abandoned it to the enemy. You must not think, gentlemen, that these councillors who are so scrupulous in trying other men for homicide would themselves have taken the life of any citizen unlawfully. 1.53Moreover you condemned Autolycus ^note and punished him because, though he himself had faced the dangers, he was charged with secretly sending his wife and sons away. Yet if you punished him when his only crime was that he had sent away persons useless for war, what should your verdict be on one who, though a man, did not pay his country the price of his nurture? The people also, who looked with horror upon what was taking place, decreed that those who were evading the danger which their country's defence involved were liable for treason, meriting in their belief the extreme penalty.