Areopagiticus (51-55)

for it was they who led on our youth to this spirit of heedlessness and destroyed the power of the Areopagus. For while this Council maintained its authority, Athens was not rife with law-suits,[*] or accusations,[*] or tax-levies,[*] or poverty,[*] or war; on the contrary, her citizens lived in accord with each other and at peace with mankind, enjoying the good will of the Hellenes and inspiring fear in the barbarians;

for they had saved the Hellenes from destruction and had punished the barbarians so severely that the latter were well content if only they might suffer no further injury.[*] And so, because of these things, our forefathers lived in such a degree of security that the houses and establishments in the country were finer and more costly than those within the city-walls,[*] and many of the people never visited Athens even for the festivals, preferring to remain at home in the enjoyment of their own possessions rather than share in the pleasures dispensed by the state.

For even the public festivals, which might otherwise have drawn many to the city, were not conducted with extravagance or ostentation, but with sane moderation, since our people then measured their well-being, not by their processions or by their efforts to outdo each other in fitting out the choruses,[*] or by any such empty shows, but by the sobriety of their government, by the manner of their daily life, and by the absence of want among all their citizens. These are the standards by which one should judge whether people are genuinely prosperous and not living in vulgar fashion.

For as things now are, who among intelligent men can fail to be chagrined at what goes on, when we see many of our fellow-citizens drawing lots in front of the law-courts to determine whether they themselves shall have the necessaries of life,[*] yet thinking it proper to support at their expense any of the Hellenes who will deign to row their ships;[*] appearing in the public choruses in garments spangled with gold, yet living through the winter in clothing which I refuse to describe and showing other contradictions of the same kind in their conduct of affairs, which bring great shame upon the city?

Nothing of the sort happened when the Areopagus was in power; for it delivered the poor from want by providing them with work and with assistance from the wealthy, the young from excesses by engaging them in occupations and by watching over them, the men in public life from the temptations of greed by imposing punishments and by letting no wrong-doer escape detection, and the older men from despondency by securing to them public honors and the devotion of the young. How then could there be a polity of greater worth than this, which so excellently watched over all the interests of the state?