[79]
not that we can have any just complaint against the latter for being obdurate towards us; for they were not aggressors but on the defensive, and came to have this feeling after suffering many grievous wrongs at our hands. For who could have brooked the insolence of our fathers? Gathering together from all Hellas men who were the worst of idlers and men who had a part in every form of depravity and manning their triremes with them,1 they made themselves odious to the Hellenes,2 driving into exile the best of the citizens in the other states3 and distributing their property among the most depraved of the Hellenes!
1 Mercenaries made up the crews at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. See Thuc. 1.121.
3 The aristocratic families, in order to make room for the democratic faction. Isocrates evidently means that their property was confiscated and used to pay the mercenaries. See Thuc. 8.21. The rhetorical point is the same as in 46.
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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