Against Leocrates (100-104)

We have therefore good reason to thank Euripides, because, apart from his other merits as a poet, he chose this subject for a play,[*] believing that in the conduct of those people the citizens would have a fine example which they could keep before them and so implant in their hearts a love of their country. You must hear the iambic lines, gentlemen of the jury, which, in the play, are spoken by the mother of the girl. You will find in them a greatness of spirit and a nobility worthy of Athens and a daughter of Cephisus.

Speech from Euripides

He wins men’s hearts who with a ready hand

Confers his favors; he who in the doing

Delays and falters is less generous.

But I consent to give my child to die

For many reasons: first there is no state

I count more worthy to accept my gift

Than Athens, peopled by no alien race.

For we are of this soil, while other towns,

Formed as by hazard in a game of draughts,

Take their inhabitants from diverse parts.

He who adopts a city, having left

Some other town, resembles a bad peg

Fixed into wood of better quality,

A citizen in name but not in fact.

And secondly: it is that we may guard

Our country and the altars of the gods

That we get children for ourselves at all.

This city, though it bears a single name,

Holds many people in it. Should I then

Destroy all these, when it is in my power

To give one girl to die on their behalf?

The mere ability to count, and tell

The greater from the less, convinces me

That this, the ruin of one person’s home,

Is of less consequence and brings less grief

Than would result if the whole city fell.

If I had sons at home instead of girls,

When hostile flames beset the city’s walls,

Should I not send them forth into the fight,

Though fearing for them? May my children then

Fight also, vie with men, and not become

Mere shapes of vanity within the state.

And yet, when mothers send their sons to war

With tears, they often daunt them as they leave.

I hate the women who above all else

Prefer their sons to live and put this thought

Before their honor, urging cowardice.

But if they fall in battle they obtain

A common grave and glory which they share

With many others; whereas she, my child,

By dying for this city will attain

A garland destined solely for herself.

And she will save her mother and you too

And both her sisters. Is it right to scorn

Honors like these? Except in nature’s way

This girl whom I shall give for sacrifice

To save her native land is not my own.

And if the city falls, what further chance

Shall I have left me to enjoy my child?

So far as rests with me, all shall be saved.

Let others rule in Athens; I will be

Her savior, and without my wish no man

Shall harm what most concerns our common good,

The ancient laws our fathers handed down.

Eumolpus and his slavish Thracian train

Shall set no trident in our midst or deck

It round with garlands, where the olive tree

And Gorgon’s golden head have been revered;

Nor shall Athena meet with utter scorn.

Come, citizens, and use my travail’s fruit

To save yourselves and conquer, knowing well

That I could never hesitate to save

This city for the sake of one poor life.

My country, were the love of all your sons

As great as mine! You could not suffer ill,

And we possessing you would live secure.

On these verses, gentlemen, your fathers were brought up. All women are by nature fond of children, but this one Euripides portrayed as loving her country more than her offspring and made it clear that, if women bring themselves to act like this, men should show towards their country a devotion which cannot be surpassed, not forsake it and flee, as Leocrates did, nor disgrace it before the whole of Greece.

I want also to recommend Homer to you. In your fathers’ eyes he was a poet of such worth that they passed a law that every four years at the Panathenaea he alone of all the poets should have his works recited[*]; and thus they showed the Greeks their admiration for the noblest deeds. They were right to do so. Laws are too brief to give instruction: they merely state the things that must be done; but poets, depicting life itself, select the noblest actions and so through argument and demonstration convert men’s hearts.

Thus Hector, while exhorting the Trojans to defend their country, speaks these words:

Fight on unresting by the ships; and if some meet their fate

By wound of dart, or battling hand to hand, then let them die.

To fall in combat for your country’s sake is no disgrace;

For wife and child will live unharmed, and home and plot last on,

If once the Achaeans leave and sail their ships to their own land.

These are the lines, gentlemen, to which your forefathers listened, and such are the deeds which they emulated. Thus they developed such courage that they were ready to die, not for their country alone, but for the whole of Greece as a land in whose heritage they shared. Certainly those who confronted the barbarians at Marathon, by defeating an army from the whole of Asia, won, at their own peril, security for every Greek alike. They gave themselves no credit for glory but valued rather conduct deserving of it, whereby they made themselves the champions of the Greeks and lords of the barbarians. Their pursuit of valor was no idle boast; they displayed it in action to the world.