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And with what results? We have been plunged into war1; we have seen many of our fellow-countrymen suffer, some of them dying in battle, some made prisoners of war, and others reduced to the last extremities of want; we have seen the democracy twice overthrown,2 the walls which defended our country torn down3; and, worst of all, we have seen the whole city in peril of being enslaved,4 and our enemy encamped on the Acropolis.5
1 The Peloponnesian War.
2 First by the oligarchy of the Four Hundred in 411 B.C., secondly by the oligarchy of the Thirty Tyrants in 404 B.C., after the downfall of the Athenian Empire.
3 One of the terms of peace at the end of the war was that the “long walls” connecting Athens with the Piraeus should be torn down.
4 After her surrender to Sparta and the allies of Sparta at the close of the Peloponnesian War. See Isoc. 7.6 and note; Xen. Hell. 2.2.19-20. Cf. Isoc. 8.78, 105; Isoc. 14.23.
5 A Spartan garrison occupied the Acropolis during the reign of the Thirty.
Isocrates. Isocrates with an English Translation in three volumes, by George Norlin, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1980.
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