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forgiveness of what we have done and suffered. After this there was perfect
peace, and the city had rest; and her feeling was that she forgave the
barbarians, who had severely suffered at her hands and severely retaliated, but
that she was indignant at the ingratitude of the Hellenes, when she
remembered how they had received good from her and returned evil, having
made common cause with the barbarians, depriving her of the ships which
had once been their salvation, and dismantling our walls, which had preserved
their own from falling. She thought that she would no longer defend the
Hellenes, when enslaved either by one another or by the barbarians, and did
accordingly. This was our feeling, while the Lacedaemonians were thinking
that we who were the champions of liberty had fallen, and that their business
was to subject the remaining Hellenes. And why should I say more? for the
events of which I am speaking happened not long ago and we can all of us
remember how the chief peoples of Hellas, Argives and Boeotians and
Corinthians, came to feel the need of us, and, what is the greatest miracle of
all, the Persian king himself was driven to such extremity as to come round to
the opinion, that from this city, of which he was the destroyer, and from no
other, his salvation would proceed.
And if a person desired to bring a deserved accusation against our city, he
would find only one charge which he could justly urge—that she was too
compassionate and too favourable to the weaker side. And in this instance she
was not able to hold out or keep her resolution of refusing aid to her injurers
when they were being enslaved, but she was softened, and did in fact send out
aid, and delivered the Hellenes from slavery, and they were free until they
afterwards enslaved themselves. Whereas, to the great king she refused to
give the assistance of the state, for she could not forget the trophies of
Marathon and Salamis and Plataea; but she allowed exiles and volunteers to
assist him, and they were his salvation. And she herself, when she was
compelled, entered into the war, and built walls and ships, and fought with the
Lacedaemonians on behalf of the Parians. Now the king fearing this city and
wanting to stand aloof, when he saw the Lacedaemonians growing weary of
the war at sea, asked of us, as the price of his alliance with us and the other
allies, to give up the Hellenes in Asia, whom the Lacedaemonians had
previously handed over to him, he thinking that we should refuse, and that
then he might have a pretence for withdrawing from us. About the other allies
he was mistaken, for the Corinthians and Argives and Boeotians, and the
other states, were quite willing to let them go, and swore and covenanted,
that, if he would pay them money, they would make over to him the Hellenes
of the continent, and we alone refused to give them up and swear. Such was
the natural nobility of this city, so sound and healthy was the spirit of freedom
among us, and the instinctive dislike of the barbarian, because we are pure
139
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The Complete Plato
- Title
- The Complete Plato
- Author
- Plato
- Date
- ~347 B.C.
- Language
- English
- License
- PD
- Size
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Pages
- 1612
- Keywords
- Philosophy, Antique, Philosophie, Antike, Dialogues, Metaphysik, Metaphysics, Ideologie, Ideology, Englisch
- Categories
- Geisteswissenschaften
- International