For such men are much more deserving of our praise than those who, while ready and
 willing to face death to gain the possessions of others, are yet in no wise different from
 hireling soldiers. For these are the acts of men depraved, and if men of honest purpose
 sometimes come off worse in the struggle than men who desire to do injustice, we may
 attribute this to negligence of the gods. But I might apply this point also to the misfortune which befell the Spartans at
 Thermopylae , which all who have heard
 of it praise and admire more than the battles and victories which have been won over
 adversaries against whom wars ought never to have been waged, Cf. Isoc. 5.148 ; Isoc.
 4.90 ; Isoc. 6.99-100 . albeit some are
 without scruple in extolling such successes, not realizing that nothing is either
 righteous or honorable which is not said or done with justice. The high moral tone here is, like the plea for absolute justice as a principle
 of foreign policy in the Peace, inconsistent with the “practical” doctrine of Isoc. 12.117-118 . See note on 118. 
 But the Spartans have never given a thought to this truth; for they look to no other
 object than that of securing for themselves as many of the possessions of other peoples as
 they can. Our ancestors, on the other hand, have shown concern for nothing in the world so
 much as for a good name among the Hellenes; for they considered that there could be no
 truer or fairer judgement than that which is rendered by a whole race of people. And they have been manifestly of this mind both in their government of the state in other
 respects and in the conduct of the greatest affairs. For in the three wars, Three “wars,” with no attention to chronology: (1) that
 against Xerxes; (2) the warfare connected with the Ionian Colonization; (3) four
 campaigns summarized as one, all dealing with invasions: (a) that against Eumolpus and
 the Thracians; (b) that against the Scythians; (c) that against Eurystheus; (d) that
 against Dareius. apart from the Trojan war, which were fought by the Hellenes
 against the barbarians—in all these they placed our city in the forefront of the fighting.
 Of these wars, one was the struggle against Xerxes, See
 Isoc. 12.49 ff. in which they were as much
 superior to the Lacedaemonians in every crisis as were the latter to the rest of the
 Hellenes. Another was the war connected with the founding of the colonies, See Isoc. 12.42 ff. and Isoc. 12.164 ff. in which none of the Dorians came to help them, but in
 which Athens, having been made the leader of those who were lacking in the means of
 subsistence and of all others who desired to join with her, so completely reversed the
 state of affairs that, whereas the barbarians had been wont in times past to seize and
 hold the greatest cities of Hellas , she placed
 the Hellenes in a position where they were able to do what they had formerly suffered.