Menexenus (239-243)

Soc.

For whereas all other States are composed of a heterogeneous collection of all sorts of people, so that their polities also are heterogeneous, tyrannies as well as oligarchies, some of them regarding one another as slaves, others as masters; we and our people,

on the contrary, being all born of one mother, claim to be neither the slaves of one another nor the masters; rather does our natural birth-equality drive us to seek lawfully legal equality, and to yield to one another in no respect save in reputation for virtue and understanding. Wherefore the forefathers of these men and of us, and these men themselves, having been reared up thus in complete freedom, and being nobly born, achieved before all men many noble deeds both individual and national, deeming it their duty to fight in the cause of freedom alike with Greeks on behalf of Greeks and with barbarians on behalf of the whole of Greece. The story of how they repulsed Eumolpus [*] and the Amazons, [*] and still earlier invaders, when they marched upon our country, and how they defended the Argives against the Cadmeians [*] and the Heracleidae against the Argives, [*] is a story which our time is too short to relate as it deserves, and already their valor has been adequately celebrated in song by poets who have made it known throughout the world; consequently, if we should attempt to magnify the same achievements in plain prose, we should probably find ourselves outmatched. These exploits, therefore, for these reasons I judge that we should pass over, seeing also that they have their due meed of praise; but those exploits for which as yet no poet has received worthy renown for worthy cause, and which lie still buried in oblivion, I ought, as I think, to celebrate, not only praising them myself but providing material also for others to build up into odes and other forms of poetry in a manner worthy of the doers of those deeds. And of the deeds whereof I speak the first were these: The Persians were in command of Asia, and were enslaving Europe, when they came in contact with the children of this land, our own parents, of whom it is right and proper that we should make mention first and celebrate their valor. But if we are to celebrate it fitly, in order to visualize it we must place ourselves, in thought, at that epoch when the whole of Asia was already in bondage to the third of the Persian kings. Cyrus, [*] the first of these kings, had by his own spirited action set free his fellow-countrymen, the Persians, and not only enslaved the Medes, their masters, but also gained command of the rest of Asia, as far as to Egypt.

Soc.

His son [*] ruled over Egypt and as much of Libya as he could traverse; while the third king, Darius, extended his empire by land as far as to the Scythians, and by his navy controlled the sea and the islands,

so that none so much as thought of disputing his sway. Thus the minds of all men were enslaved; so many were the mighty and warlike nations which had fallen under the yoke of the Persian Empire. Then Darius, accusing us and the Eretrians of having plotted against Sardis, dispatched fifty myriads of men in transports and warships, together with three hundred ships of war, and Datis as their commander; and him the king ordered to bring back the Eretrians and Athenians in captivity, if he wished to keep his own head. He then sailed to Eretria against men who were amongst the most famous warriors in Greece at that time, and by no means few in number; them he overpowered within three days, and lest any should escape he made a thorough search of the whole of their country and his method was this. His soldiers marched to the limits of Eretria and posted themselves at intervals from sea to sea; then they joined hands and passed through the whole of the country, in order that they might be able to report to the king that not a man had escaped out of their hands. [*] With the same design they sailed off from Eretria to Marathon, supposing that they would have an easy task in leading the Athenians captive under the same yoke of bondage as the Eretrians. And while these actions were being accomplished in part, and in part attempted, not one of the Greeks lent aid to the Eretrians nor yet to the Athenians, save only the Lacedaemonians (and they arrived on the day after the battle); all the rest were terrorstricken, and, hugging their present security, made no move. It is by realizing this position of affairs that we can appreciate what manner of men those were, in point of valor, who awaited the onset of the barbarians’ power, chastised all Asia’s insolent pride, and were the first to rear trophies of victory over the barbarians; whereby they pointed the way to the others and taught them to know that the Persian power was not invincible, since there is no multitude of men or money but courage conquers it. I, therefore, affirm that those men were the begetters not merely of our bodies but of our freedom also, and the freedom of all the dwellers in this continent; for it was the example of that exploit of theirs which fired the Greeks with courage to risk the later battles in the cause of salvation, learning their lesson from the men of Marathon.

Soc.

To them, therefore, we award in this our speech the first prize for valor, and the second to those who fought and won the sea-fights off Salamis

and at Artemisium. [*] And truly concerning these men also one might have much to relate, regarding the manner of onsets they endured both by land and sea, and how they repelled them; but the achievement I shall mention is that which was, in my judgement, the noblest that they performed, in that it followed up the achievement of the men of Marathon. For whereas the men of Marathon had only proved to the Greeks thus much,—that it was possible to repel the barbarians by land though few against many, yet the prospect in a sea-fight remained still doubtful, and the Persians still retained the reputation of being invincible by sea, in virtue of their numbers and their wealth, their naval skill and strength. For this, then, the men who fought those sea-fights merit our praise, that they delivered the Greeks from the second of their fears, and put an end to the terrors inspired by multitudes of ships and men. So it came about, by the action of both—the soldiers who fought at Marathon and the sailors who fought at Salamis—, that the rest of the Greeks were trained and accustomed to have no fear of the barbarians, neither by land, as our soldiers taught them, nor yet, as our sailors taught them, by sea. The exploit at Plataea [*] I put third both in order and in merit of those which secured the salvation of Greece; and in this exploit, at last, the Lacedaemonians cooperated with the Athenians. By the action of all these men the greatest and most formidable danger was warded off, and because of this their valor we pronounce their eulogy now, as our successors will in the time to come. But, in the period that followed, many cities of the Greeks were still in league with the barbarian, and of the king himself it was reported that he was purposing to renew his attempt against the Greeks. Wherefore it is right that we should make mention also of those men who put the finishing touch to the work of salvation executed by their predecessors by sweeping away the whole of the barbarian power and driving it clean off the seas. These were the men who fought the sea-fight at the Eurymedon, [*] the men who served in the expedition against Cyprus, the men who voyaged to Egypt and to many another quarter, [*]—men whom we ought to hold in memory and render them thanks, seeing that they put the king in fear and caused him to give his whole mind to his own safety in place of plotting the destruction of Greece.

Soc.

Now this war was endured to the end by all our citizens who warred against the barbarians in defence of all the other Greek-speaking peoples as well as themselves. But when peace was secured and our city was held in honor, there followed the usual consequence which the successful suffer at the hands of men; for it was assailed by jealousy first, and after jealousy by envy; and thereby our city was plunged against its will into war with the Greeks. Thereupon, when war had broken out, they encountered the Lacedaemonians at Tanagra [*] while fighting in defence of the liberties of the Boeotians; and though the battle itself was indecisive, it was decided by the subsequent result. For whereas the enemy retired and made off, deserting those whom they had come to assist, our men won a victory after a two days’ battle at Oenophyta, [*] and rightfully restored those who were wrongfully exiled. These were the first of our men who, after the Persian war and now helping Greeks against Greeks in the cause of freedom, proved themselves men of valor and delivered those whom they were aiding; and they were the first to be honored by the State and laid to rest in this tomb. Later on, when there was widespread war, and all the Greeks had marched against us and ravaged our country, most evilly requiting our city, and our men had defeated them by sea and had captured their Lacedaemonian leaders in Sphagia, [*] although they had it in their power to destroy them, yet they spared their lives and gave them back and made peace, since they deemed that against their fellow Greeks it was right to wage war only up to the point of victory, and not to wreck the whole Greek community for the sake of a city’s private grudge, but to wage war to the death against the barbarians. It is meet, indeed, that we should praise these men who were warriors in this war and now lie here, inasmuch as they demonstrated that if any contended that in the former war, against the barbarians, others were superior to the Athenians, their contention was false. This they now proved by their triumph in the war when the Greeks were at feud, and by their conquest of those who were the leaders of the rest of Greece, when, alone by themselves, they defeated that city by whose allied aid they had formerly defeated the barbarians.

Soc.

This peace was followed by a third war, as formidable as it was unexpected, wherein many brave men lost their lives and now lie here. Many of these reared up numerous trophies of victory in Sicily, [*] fighting for the freedom

of Leontini, to succour which city, and to honor their pledges, they sailed to those regions; but inasmuch as our city was in a helpless, situation and unable to reinforce them owing to the length of the voyage, fortune was against them and they renounced their design; yet for their prudence and their valor they have received more praise from their foes of the opposite army than the rest of men am their friends. Many others of them fought in the sea-fights in the Hellespont, where in one single day they captured all the enemy’s ships, [*] besides winning many other engagements. But what I have termed the formidable and unexpected character of the war lay in this, that the rest of the Greeks had arrived at such a pitch of jealousy towards this city that they even brought themselves to solicit privately the aid of their deadliest foe, the very king whom they had publicly expelled with our assistance, inviting a barbarian as their ally against Greeks; and dared to range against our city the united forces of all the Greeks and barbarians. [*] And then it was that the strength and valor of our State shone out conspicuously. For when men fancied that she was already reduced by war, with her ships cut off at Mytilene, her citizens sent sixty ships to the rescue, manning the ships themselves and proving themselves disputably to be men of valor by conquering their foes and setting free their friends; [*] albeit they met with undeserved misfortune, and were not recovered from the sea to find their burial here. [*] And for these reasons it behoves us to have them in remembrance and to praise them always; for it was owing to their valor that we were conquerors not only in the sea-fight on that day but in all the rest of the war; and it was due to them that men formed the conviction regarding our city (and it was a true conviction) that she could never be warred down, not even by all the world. And in truth it was by our own dissensions that we were brought down and not by the hands of other men; for by them we are still to this day undefeated, and it is we ourselves who have both defeated and been defeated by ourselves. After these happenings, when we were at peace and amity with other States, our civil war at home was waged in such a way that—if men are fated to engage in civil strife—there is no man but would pray for his own State that its sickness might resemble ours.