Panathenaicus (121-125)

since they were as much superior to those who rule with absolute power as the wisest and gentlest of mankind may be said to excel the wildest and the most savage of the beasts.[*] For what among crimes that are unparalleled in their wickedness and cruelty shall we not find to have been perpetrated in the other states and especially in those which at the time of which I am speaking were considered the greatest and even now are so reputed? Has there not abounded in them murder of brothers and fathers and guest-friends;

matricide and incest and begetting of children by sons with their own mothers; feasting of a father on the flesh of his own sons, plotted by those nearest of kin; exposure of infants by parents, and drownings and blindings[*] and other iniquities so many in number that no lack of material has ever been felt by those who are wont each year to present in the theatre[*] the miseries which transpired in those days?

I have recounted these atrocities with the desire, not of maligning these states, but of showing not only that nothing of the sort happened among the Athenians—for this would be a proof, not of their superior excellence, but merely that they were not of the same character as those who have proved themselves the most godless of men. However, those who undertake to praise any people in superlative terms must show, not only that they were not depraved, but that they excelled in all the virtues both those who lived at that time and those who are now living—which is the very claim that one may make for our ancestors.

For they administered both the affairs of the state and their own affairs as righteously and honorably as was to be expected of men who were descended from the gods,[*] who were the first to found a city and to make use of laws,[*] who at all times had practised reverence in relation to the gods and justice in relation to mankind, who were neither of mixed origin nor invaders of a foreign territory but were, on the contrary, alone among the Hellenes,

sprung from the soil itself,[*] possessing in this land the nurse of their very existence and cherishing it as fondly as the best of children cherish their fathers and mothers, and who, furthermore, were so beloved of the gods that—what is of all things in the world the most difficult and rare, namely, to find examples of royal houses or houses of absolute rulers remaining in power through four or five generations—