Funeral Oration (36-40)

They championed one lone woman wronged, but he staved off from all Greek women the violence coming upon them, aided by these men who now are being buried with him.

Remember the figures who,[*] born after the heroes of old, yet rivalled their deeds of valor, the followers of Miltiades and Themistocles, and those others who, by freeing Greece, brought honor to their country and glory to their lives;

whom Leosthenes so far outdid in bravery and counsel, that where they beat back the barbarian power as it advanced, he even forestalled its onslaught. They saw a struggle with the foe in their own land, but he defeated his opponents on the foe’s own soil.

Those too, I fancy, who gave the people the surest token of their mutual friendship, Harmodius and Aristogiton,[*] do not regard ⋯as Leosthenes and his comrades in arms; nor are there any with whom they would rather hold converse in the lower world than these. We need not wonder; for what these men did was no less a task than theirs; it was indeed, if judgement must be passed, a greater service still. Those two brought low the tyrants of their country, these the masters of the whole of Greece.

Noble indeed beyond our dreams was the courage these men attained, honorable and magnificent the choice they made. How supreme was the valor, the heroism in times of peril, which they, dedicating to the universal liberty of Greece ⋯