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you on whom I have spent my means should desire to penalize me. It would be even more absurd if, whereas Pindar, the poet, was so highly honored by our forefathers because of a single line of his in which he praises Athens as “the bulwark of Hellas”1 that he was made ”proxenos“2 and given a present of ten thousand drachmas, I, on the other hand, who have glorified Athens and our ancestors with much ampler and nobler encomiums, should not even be privileged to end my days in peace.
1 Of Pindar's encomium on Athens there is preserved a fragment （76 （46））: Ὦ ταὶ λιπαραὶ καὶ ἰοστέφανοι καὶ ἀοίδιμοι, Ἑλλάδος ἔρεισμα, κλειναὶ Ἀθᾶναι, δαιμόνιον πτολίεθρον “O splendid, violet-crowned, famed in song, glorious/ Athens, bulwark of Hellas, a wondrous city.”
2 ”Friend of the city,“an honorary title conferred upon a foreigner by vote of the General Assembly, making him a sort of informal representative of Athens in his own country, and entitling him to special privileges and courtesies in Athens. See Gilbert, Greek Constitutional Antiquities pp. 181-182.
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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