οὔτε λυσιτελέστερον οὔτε ἀδικώτερον εἴη τι τοῦ βουλεύματος· καὶ ἡ πόλις ἀπεψηφίσατο παραχρῆμα καὶ παρῃτήσατο, πάνυ γε νὴ Δία μεγαλοψύχως καὶ ὃν ἐχρῆν τρόπον ἄνδρας [D] ὑπὸ μάρτυρι τῇ φρονιμωτάτῃ θεῷ τρεφομένους. (Many were the achievements of your forefathers of which you are still justly proud, even as they were of old; many were the trophies for victories raised by them, now for all Greece in common, now separately for Athens herself, in those days when she contended single‐handed against all the rest of Greece as well as against the barbarian: but there was no achievement and no display of courage on your part so prodigious that other cities cannot in their turn rival it. For they too wrought some such deeds in alliance with you, and some on their own account. And that I may not by recalling these and then balancing them be thought either to pay more honour to one state than to another in the matters in which they are your rivals, or to praise less than they deserve those who proved inferior, in order to gain an advantage, after the manner of rhetoricians, I desire to bring forward on your behalf only this fact to which I can discover nothing that can be set against it on the part of the other Greek states, and which has been assigned to you by ancient tradition. When the Lacedaemonians were in power you took that power away from them not by violence but by your reputation for justice; and it was your laws that nurtured Aristides the Just. Moreover, brilliant as were these proofs of your virtue, you confirmed them by still more brilliant actions. For to be reputed just might perhaps happen to any individual even though it were not true; perhaps it would not be surprising that among many worthless citizens there should be found one virtuous man. For even among the Medes is not a certain Deioces(426) celebrated, and Abaris(427) too among the Hyperboreans, and Anacharsis(428) among the Scythians? And in their case the surprising thing was that, born as they were among nations who knew nothing of justice, they nevertheless prized justice, two of them sincerely, though the third only pretended to do so out of self‐interest. But it would be hard to find a whole people and city enamoured of just deeds and just words except your own. And I wish to remind you of one out of very many such deeds done in your city. After the Persian war Themistocles(429) was planning to introduce a resolution to set fire secretly to the naval arsenals of the Greeks, and then did not dare to propose it to the assembly; but he agreed to confide the secret to any one man whom the people should elect by vote; and the people chose Aristides to represent them. But he when he heard the scheme did not reveal what he had been told, but reported to the people that there could be nothing more profitable or more dishonest than that advice. Whereupon the city at once voted against it and rejected it, very nobly, by Zeus, and as it behoved