Noble indeed are these achievements—yea, and appropriate to those who dispute over the hegemony. But of the same breed as those which have been mentioned, and of such a kind as would naturally be expected of men descended from such ancestors, are the deeds of those who fought against Darius and Xerxes.At the decisive battles of Marathon, 490 B.C., and Salamis, 480 B.C. For when that greatest of all wars broke out and a multitude of dangers presented themselves at one and the same time, when our enemies regarded themselves as irresistible because of their numbers and our allies thought themselves endowed with a courage which could not be excelled, we outdid them both,

surpassing each in the way appropriate to each;This passage is closely imitated by Lyc. 1.70, and by Aristeides, Isoc. 12.217. and having proved our superiority in meeting all dangers, we were straightway awarded the meed of valor,By general acknowledgement. See Isoc. 4.99 and Isoc. 7.75, Isoc. 8.76. and we obtained, not long after, the sovereignty of the seaAthens obtained the supremacy as the head of the Confederacy of Delos 477 B.C. See Isoc. 7.17; Isoc. 12.67; Hdt. 9.106; Thuc. 1.95; Xen. Hell. 6.5.34. by the willing grant of the Hellenes at large and without protest from those who now seek to wrest it from our hands.

And let no one think that I ignore the fact that during these critical times the Lacedaemonians also placed the Hellenes under obligations for many services; nay, for this reason I am able the more to extol our city because, in competition with such rivals, she so far surpassed them. But I desire to speak a little more at length about these two states, and not to hasten too quickly by them, in order that we may have before us reminders both of the courage of our ancestors and of their hatred against the barbarians.

And yet I have not failed to appreciate the fact that it is difficult to come forward last and speak upon a subject which has long been appropriated, and upon which the very ablest speakers among our citizens have many times addressed you at the public funerals;The custom of delivering funeral orations for those who fell in battle seems to have originated in the Persian Wars. Of such orations the following are the most celebrated: the oration of Pericles in honor of those who died in the first year of the Peloponnesian War (Thuc. 2.35-46); the of Gorgias, published in Athens some time after 347 B.C., represented by fragments only; the attributed to Lysias on those who fell in the Corinthian War, 394 B.C.; the of Plato; the attributed to Demosthenes on those who were killed at Chaeronea; that of Hypereides on the heroes of the Lamian War. for, naturally, the most important topics have already been exhausted, while only unimportant topics have been left for later speakers. Nevertheless, since they are apposite to the matter in hand, I must not shirk the duty of taking up the points which remain and of recalling them to your memory.

Dion. Hal. Isoc. 5, gives a digest of 75-81 and remarks with unction that no one can read it without being stirred to patriotism and devoted citizenship. However, later (14) he quotes extensively from the same division of the speech to illustrate the author’s excessive artifices of style. Now the men who are responsible for our greatest blessings and deserve our highest praise are, I conceive, those who risked their bodies in defense of Hellas; and yet we cannot in justice fail to recall also those who lived before this war and were the ruling power in each of the two states; for they it was who, in good time, trained the coming generation and turned the masses of the people toward virtue, and made of them stern foemen of the barbarians.