[79]
So public-spirited were they that even in their party struggles they opposed one another, not to see which faction should destroy the other and rule over the remnant, but which should outstrip the other in doing something good for the state; and they organized their political clubs, not for personal advantage, but for the benefit of the people.1
1 Political parties and clubs of that day are here no doubt idealized to point the contrast to the selfish intrigues of the present. Cf. Isoc. 4.168 and Thucydides' picture of the evils of faction, Thuc. 3.82. These clubs, whatever they may have been in the Golden Age, were later sworn enemies of popular government and the centers of oligarchical conspiracies. See Thuc. 8.54; and Aristot. Ath. Pol. 34.
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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