Panathenaicus (201-205)

He came, upon being summoned, and, having read through my discourse (for why take up time in relating what happened in the interval?) he took no offence at anything which I had written but, on the contrary, praised the speech in the highest possible terms and expressed views on each part of it which were very similar to those which I held. And yet it was manifest that he was not pleased with what I had said about the Lacedaemonians.

And he showed it forthwith; for he made bold to say that if the Spartans had done no other service to the Hellenes, at any rate, they deserved the gratitude of all men because they had discovered the best ways of life and not only followed these ways themselves but had taught them to the rest of the world.

This assertion, so brief and so brusque, furnished the reason why I did not close my speech at the point where I was inclined to end it. I thought that it would be shameful and reprehensible on my part to permit one who had been my pupil to make in my presence a statement which was unsound. With this in mind, I asked him whether he had no regard for his present auditors and was not ashamed of having said things which were impious and false and full of many contradictions.

“You will realize,” I said, “that your assertion is such as I have declared it to be if you will ask any intelligent men, first what they think are the best ways of life, and next how long a time has passed since the Lacedaemonians settled in the Peloponnesus. For there is no one who, among the ways of life, will not give preference to the practice of reverence in relation to the gods and of justice in relation to mankind and of wisdom in relation to all activities in general, and they will tell you that the Spartans have lived in the Peloponnesus not more than seven hundred years.

These things being so, if you speak the truth when you assert that they were the discoverers of the best ways of life, then it must follow that those who lived many generations before the Spartans settled there had no part in them—neither those who made the expedition against Troy nor those who were of the generation of Heracles and Theseus or of Minos, son of Zeus, or Rhadamanthus or Aeacus[*] or any of the others who are celebrated in song for the virtues which I have mentioned, but that all of them have in this respect a reputation which is false.