[205]
These things being so, if you speak the truth when you assert that they were the discoverers of the best ways of life, then it must follow that those who lived many generations before the Spartans settled there had no part in them—neither those who made the expedition against Troy nor those who were of the generation of Heracles and Theseus or of Minos, son of Zeus, or Rhadamanthus or Aeacus1 or any of the others who are celebrated in song for the virtues which I have mentioned, but that all of them have in this respect a reputation which is false.
1 Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus are half-legendary kings famed for their virtues, and especially their justice. they are sometimes pictured as dispensing justice in the world of the dead. See Plat. Gorg. 523.
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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