Funeral Oration (6-10)

To deal with the achievements of the city as a whole is, as I said before, a task which I shall not attempt, and I will here confine myself to Leosthenes and his companions. At what point, then, shall I take up the story? What shall I mention first? Shall I trace the ancestry of each?

To do so would, I think, be foolish. Granted, if one is praising men of a different stamp, such as have gathered from diverse places into the city which they inhabit, each contributing his lineage to the common stock, then one must trace their separate ancestry. But from one who speaks of Athenians, born of their own country and sharing a lineage of unrivalled purity, a eulogy of the descent of each must surely be superfluous.

Am I then to touch upon their education, and, as other speakers often do, remind you how as children they were reared and trained in strict self-discipline? None of us, I think, is unaware that our aim in training children is to convert them into valiant men; and that men who have proved of exceptional courage in war were well brought up in childhood needs no stressing.

The simplest course, I think, will be to tell you of their courage under arms, revealing them as authors of many benefits conferred upon their country and the rest of Greece. First I shall take the general, as is his due.

For Leosthenes perceived that the whole of Greece was humiliated and ⋯cowed, corrupted by men who were accepting bribes from Philip and Alexander against their native countries. He realized that our city stood in need of a commander, and Greece herself of a city, able to assume the leadership, and he gave himself to his country and the city to the Greeks, in the cause of freedom.