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What are the reasons that the Thessalians, who inherited very great wealth and possess a very rich and abundant territory,1 have been reduced to poverty, while the Megarians, who had small and insignificant resources2 to begin with and who possess neither land nor harbors3 nor mines but are compelled to farm mere rocks, own estates which are the greatest4 among the Hellenes?
1 See Isoc. 15.155; Thuc. 1.2.
2 The Megarians were mere “nobodies” among the Greeks. Cf. Aristoph. Ach. 519, and the saying: τῶν Μεγαρέων οὐδεὶς λόγος. Isocrates could have ventured no more astounding paradox than in holding up the Megarians as an example to follow.
3 He means no lands or harbors to speak of, for the Megarians had both, though very little land.
4 Through commerce.
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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