[106]
It was because we had these objections, and others besides, to oligarchies that we established the same polity1 in the other states as in Athens itself—a polity which I see no need to extol at greater length, since I can tell the truth about it in a word: They continued to live under this regime for seventy years,2 and, during this time, they experienced no tyrannies, they were free from the domination of the barbarians, they were untroubled by internal factions, and they were at peace with all the world.
1 A democratic government. Cf. Isoc. 12.54 ff.
2 A round number. So Lys. 2.55. Demosthenes reckons the period of supremacy more accurately at 73 years, 477-404. In Isoc. 12.56 Isocrates reckons it at 65 years—roughly from the Confederacy of Delos to the Athenian disaster in Sicily, which was really the beginning of the end of the Athenian supremacy.
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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