When ye have reached the ships, fight onward, ceaselessly striving:
What though the stroke of fate shall call some man to his glory?
Where is the sting of death when a hero falls for his country?
Wife and child and home are safe in the hour that the Argives
Take to the ships once more and sail for the land of their fathers.
With strains like these, men of Athens, ringing in the ears of your sires, they could emulate the deeds of old; rising to such heights of valor that not for their own native State alone, but for all Hellas as a common fatherland, they stood ready to offer up their lives. There on Marathon they went into line in the face of the barbarians, bore down all Asia in arms, the stake their lives alone, winning security for Greece at large; not puffed up with the pride of renown, but glad their work was worthy of its fame; of Greece the champions, masters of the heathen worlds; letting their deeds proclaim aloud with glory. Such was the strenuous life they led in Athens in the great days of old that once when the Lacedaemonians, valiant of men, were at war with the Messinians, the god vouchsafed them a response that bade them take a leader from our people, and then they should conquer their enemies. If then divine judgment declared in favor of our leadership, even for the children of Hercules, lords for all time in Sparta, are we not justified in our faith that once Athenian valor was peerless? Who that is Greek does not know that they took one Tyrtaeus for their general? And with him they overthrew their enemies. And when the immediate peril was past, they (with an admirable wisdom) turned the episode to the advantage of their youth for all time. For when Tyrtaeus left them, his elegiacs were still theirs. While other poets have had no vogue among them, for him their enthusiasm has been so great that they passed a law that whenever a campaign was to open, all the man should be called to the tent of the king to hear the strains of Tyrtaeus. Nothing else, they thought, could make their men so ready to lay down their lives for their country. And now the day is come when we ourselves may need the sound of those elegiacs which could make their way to the souls of Spartans:
Blest is the brave: how glorious is his prize,
When at his country’s call he dares and dies.
And sad the sight when, envious of the dead,
The man without a country begs his bread.
His poor old parents feebly toil along,
And little children who have done no wrong.
Spurned by the glance he meets at every turn,
He learns how hot the beggar’s brand can burn.
His name is shame: the human form divine
Shows in its fall the soul’s dishonored shrine.
Deeds in the dust of ages swiftly root,
And children’s children reap the bitter fruit.
Strike for our country, comrades: on, ye brave!
Where is the man that dreads a patriot grave?
And ye, my younger brethren, side by side,
Shoulder to shoulder stand, whate’er betide.
The surging thrill ye feel before your foe
Swept o’er your father’s heart-strings long ago.
To those whose days are longer in the land
Lend in the pride of youth the helping hand.
For shame to see an old man fall in front
When young men leave him there to bear the brunt:
Low in the dust the hoary hair is trailed;
And last is quenched a soul that never quailed,
Youth in its bloom should pluck the glowing bough
Whose leaves in glory wreathe a hero’s brow.
Welcome to man, and fair in woman’s eye,
The manly form that living dares to die.
Fate hangs apoise, with gloom and triumph fraught:
Up, hearts! and in the balance count we our lives as naught.
Noble sentiments, gentlemen, that sway the soul of him that hath ears to hear. The Spartans could hear them, and receive such an impulse into manhood that they engaged with us in a struggle for the hegemony. It was nature’s rivalry; for the noblest achievements have been wrought on either side. Our ancestors had overthrown the barbarian who had set the first hostile foot upon Attic soil; in them was made manifest a manhood that no money could corrupt, a valor no host countervail. In Thermopylae the Lacedaemonians made their stand; and though the fate they met was not like ours, yet there the ideals of human devotion became reality.
And thus on the borne of life we can see the memorials of the valor of our race graven with the chisel of truth unto all Greek blood:
For Theirs:
Go stranger, tell the Spartans where we lie,
True to the land that taught her sons to die.
For Yours:
On Marathon when Athens fought alone,
Down to the dust the golden East was thrown.
These great memories, Athenians, are the glory of the men who bequeathed them and of Athens the undying renown. Not in this wise was Leocrates wrought. The fair fame of the city, flower of the ages, deliberately hath he defiled. If then he meet death at your hands, all Greece will feel the abhorrence in which you hold such acts. If not, then are the fathers of their ancient fame bereft by the same fell stroke that wounds your brothers in citizenship. They who revere not the men of old will follow the footsteps of this man, quick to descry the path that shall lead them to favor with our enemies, quick to perceive that shamelessness, treachery, cowardice, need only a verdict from you to prove their native worth.