Greek Texts & Translations

9.41That this is so, you surely see for yourselves with regard to the present, and you need no evidence of mine, but that it was the opposite in the days of old I will prove, not in my own words, but by the written record of your ancestors, which they engraved on a bronze pillar and set up in the Acropolis. [It was not for their own use, for without these documents their instinct was right; but it was that you might have these examples to remind you that such cases ought to be regarded seriously.] 9.42“Arthmius of Zelea,” it says, “son of Pythonax, outlaw and enemy of the people of Athens and of their allies, himself and his family.” Then is recorded the reason for this punishment: “because he conveyed the gold of the Medes to the Peloponnese.” So runs the inscription. 9.43I earnestly implore you to consider what was the intention of the Athenians who did this thing, or what was their proud claim. They proscribed as their enemy and the enemy of their allies, disfranchising him and his family, a man of Zelea, one Arthmius, a slave of the Great King (for Zelea is in Asia), because in the service of his master he conveyed gold, not to Athens but to the Peloponnese. ^note 9.44This was not outlawry as commonly understood; for what mattered it to a native of Zelea if he was to be debarred from a share in the common rights of Athenian citizens? But the statutes relating to murder provide for cases where prosecution for murder is not allowed [but where it is a righteous act to slay the murderer]; “and he shall die an outlaw,” says the legislator. This simply means that anyone slaying a member of Arthmius's family would be free from blood-guilt. 9.45So our ancestors thought that they were bound to consider the welfare of all Greeks, for except on that assumption bribery and corruption in the Peloponnese would be no concern of theirs; and in chastising and punishing all whom they detected, they went so far as to set the offenders' names on a pillar. The natural result was that the Greek power was dreaded by the barbarian, not the barbarian by the Greeks. But that is no longer so. For that is not your attitude towards these and other offences. What then is your attitude? 9.46[You know it yourselves. For why should you bear the whole blame, when all the other Greeks are just as bad as you? That is why I assert that the present crisis calls for earnest zeal and wise counsel. What counsel?] ^note Do you want me to tell you, and will you promise not to be angry?[He reads from an official record]
^note

9.47Now there is a foolish argument advanced by those who want to reassure the citizens. Philip, they say, after all is not yet what the Lacedaemonians were; they were masters of every sea and land; they enjoyed the alliance of the king of Persia; nothing could stand against them: and yet our city defended itself even against them and was not overwhelmed. But for my own part, while practically all the arts have made a great advance and we are living today in a very different world from the old one, I consider that nothing has been more revolutionized and improved than the art of war.