Funeral Oration (46-50)

Taking the lesson to heart, and deeming their action unjust and ill advised, while the words of the Athenians were just and their recommendation was the wisest, they went to their support at Plataea. Most of the allies had deserted their posts at nightfall, owing to the multitude of the enemy; but the Lacedaemonians and Tegeates routed the barbarians, while the Athenians and Plataeans fought and vanquished all the Greeks who had despaired of freedom and submitted to slavery.

On that day they brought the ventures of the past to a most glorious consummation; for not only did they secure a permanence of freedom for Europe, but had given proof of their own valor in all those trials, whether alone or with others, in land-fights or in sea-fights, against the barbarians or against the Greeks; and thus they were judged worthy by all—by their comrades in peril no less than their foes in the field—to have the leadership of Greece.

As they were blockading Egypt and Aegina at the same time, and their men of serviceable age were absent either in their ships or in their land army, the Corinthians and their allies, conceiving that if they invaded our land they would either find it unprotected or draw off our forces from Aegina, marched out in full strength and seized Geranea.[*]

But the Athenians, though their men were away and the enemy close at hand, would not deign to summon anyone. Trusting in their own spirit, and despising the invaders, the elderly and those below the age of service thought fit to take the risk upon themselves alone; the former had acquired their valor by experience, the latter by nature;