It is evident that they were of this mind; for when they were not able to marshal
 themselves against both the land and the sea forces at once, they took with them the
 entire population, abandoned the city, and sailed to the neighboring island, in order that
 they might encounter each force in turn. Cf. Lys. 2.33 ff. And yet how could men be shown to be braver
 or more devoted to Hellas than our ancestors,
 who, to avoid bringing slavery upon the rest of the Hellenes, endured to see their city
 made desolate, their land ravaged, their sanctuaries rifled, their temples burned, and all
 the forces of the enemy closing in upon their own country? But in truth even this did not satisfy them; they were ready to give battle on the
 sea—they alone against twelve hundred ships of war. They were not, indeed, allowed to
 fight alone; for the Peloponnesians, put to shame by our courage, and thinking, moreover,
 that if the Athenians should first be destroyed, they could not themselves be saved from
 destruction, and that if the Athenians should succeed, their own cities would be brought
 into disrepute, they were constrained to share the dangers. Now the clamors that arose
 during the action, and the shoutings and the cheers—things which are common to all those
 who fight on ships—I see no reason why I should take time to describe; Unlike Gorgias, Fr. 18, and Lys.
 2.37 , who do go into such details. 
 my task is to speak of those matters which are distinctive and give claim to leadership,
 and which confirm the arguments which I have already advanced. In short, our city was so
 far superior while she stood unharmed that even after she had been laid waste she
 contributed more ships to the battle for the deliverance of Hellas than all the others put together So
 Isoc. 12.50 
 Lys. 2.42 . But according to Hdt.
 8.44-48 the Athenians furnished 180, the others 198. who fought in the
 engagement; and no one is so prejudiced against us that he would not acknowledge that it
 was by winning the sea fight that we conquered in the war, and that the credit for this is
 due to Athens . Cf. Isoc. 12.51 . 
 Who then should have the hegemony, when a campaign against the barbarians is in
 prospect? Should it not be they who distinguished themselves above all others in the
 former war? Should it not be they who many times bore, alone, the brunt of battle, and in
 the joint struggles of the Hellenes were awarded the prize of valor? Should it not be they
 who abandoned their own country to save the rest of Hellas, who in ancient times founded
 most of the Hellenic cities, and who later delivered them from the greatest disasters?
 Would it not be an outrage upon us, if, having taken the largest share in the evils of
 war, we should be adjudged worthy of a lesser share in its honors, and if, having at that
 time been placed in the lead in the cause of all the Hellenes, we should now be compelled
 to follow the lead of others? Now up to this point I am sure that all men would acknowledge that our city has been the
 author of the greatest number of blessings, and that she should in fairness be entitled to
 the hegemony. But from this point on some take us to task, urging that after we succeeded
 to the sovereignty of the sea we brought many evils upon the Hellenes; and, in these
 speeches of theirs, they cast it in our teeth that we enslaved the Melians and destroyed
 the people of Scione . The Melan episode is dramatically
 told by Thucydides v. 84-116. Because the Melians refused to join the Delian Confederacy
 they were besieged and conquered by the Athenians, 416 B.C. 
 The men of military age were put to the sword and the women and children sold into
 slavery. Five hundred Athenians were later settled there. Scione revolted from the Confederacy in 423 B.C. Reduced to subjection in 421
 B.C. , the people suffered the same fate as did the Melians later and their
 territory was occupied by Plataean refugees ( Thuc.
 4.120-130 ). These are blots on the record which Isocrates can at best condone.
 “Even the gods are not thought to be above reproach,” he says in the Isoc. 12.62-64 , where he discusses frankly these sins of the
 Athenian democracy. Xenophon tells us that when the Athenians found themselves in like
 case with these conquered peoples after the disaster at Aegospotami they bitterly repented them of this injustice, Xen. Hell. 2.3 .