this too transpired among our ancestors alone. For Erichthonius, the son of Hephaestus
 and Earth, took over from Cecrops, who was without male descent, his house and kingdom;
 and beginning with this time all those who came after him—not a few in number—handed down
 their possessions and their powers to their sons until the reign of Theseus. I would give
 much not to have spoken about the virtue and the achievements of Theseus on a former
 occasion, See Isoc. 10.18
 ff. for it would have been more appropriate to discuss this topic in my
 discourse about our city. But it was difficult, or rather impossible, to postpone the things which at that time
 occurred to me to say to the present occasion, which I could not foresee would come to me.
 Therefore I shall pass over this topic, since I have already exhausted it for my present
 purpose, and shall mention only a single course of action which, as it happens, has
 neither been discussed by anyone before nor been achieved by any other man but Theseus,
 and which is a signal proof of his virtue and wisdom. For although he ruled over the securest and greatest of kingdoms Repeated from Isoc. 10.18 . and in the
 exercise of this power had accomplished many excellent things both in war and in the
 administration of the state, he disdained all this and chose the glory which, in
 consequence of his labours and his struggles, would be remembered for all time in
 preference to the ease and felicity which, because of his royal power, were at his command
 for the term of his life. And he did this, not after he had grown old and had taken his pleasure in the good things
 at hand, but in the prime of his manhood, it is said, he gave over the state to the people
 to govern, For Theseus as the author of the spirit of the
 Athenian polity see Isoc. 10.35-37 . while he himself
 risked his life without ceasing for the benefit of Athens and of the rest of the Hellenes.
 I have now touched upon the nobility of Theseus so far as I could on the present
 occasion, having formerly with some pains detailed his whole career. But as to those who
 took over the administration of the state, which he gave over to them, I am at a loss to
 know by what terms of praise I can adequately extol the genius of those men who, having no
 experience of governments, did not err in their choice of that polity which all the world
 would acknowledge to be not only the most impartial and the most just, but also the most
 profitable to all and the most agreeable to those who lived under it.