‘Hearing these lines and emulating such actions, our ancestors were so disposed towards manly courage that they were content to die not only for their own fatherland but for all Greece, as their common fatherland. Those, at any rate, who faced the barbarians at Marathon, conquered the armament of all Asia, by their individual sacrifice gaining security for all the Greeks in common, priding themselves not upon their fame but on doing deeds worthy of their country, setting themselves up as champions of the Greeks and masters of the barbarians; for they made no nominal profession of courage, but gave an actual display of it to all the world.’[421] Here Lycurgus has reverted to the antithetical style of Antiphon, the opposition of ‘word’ and ‘deed,’ ‘private’ and ‘public,’ and the like. We are also from time to time reminded of Antiphon by the prominence given in the _Leocrates_ to religious considerations. The digressions may be partly explained by the speaker’s avowed motive in introducing some of them—his wish to be an educator. He introduces a very moral tale of a young Sicilian who, tarrying behind to save his father, on the occasion of an eruption of Etna, was providentially saved while all the others perished. This is his excuse—‘The story may be legendary, but it will be appropriate for all the younger men to hear it now’;[422] and the manner of the lecturer is evident elsewhere—‘There are three influences above all which guard and protect the democracy and the welfare of the city,’ etc. ‘There are two things which educate our youth:—the punishment of evil-doers and the rewards bestowed on good men.’[423] Quite apart iron these decorative digressions, Lycurgus admits into his ordinary discourse poetical phrases and metaphors which the stricter taste of Isocrates would have excluded. The bold personifications in his epilogue and elsewhere are cases in point: ‘So imagine, Athenians, that the land and its trees are supplicating you; that the harbours, the dockyards, and the walls of the city are imploring you; that the temples and holy places are urging you to come to their help.’[424]