Plato Menexenus 243

This peace was followed by a third war, as formidable as it was unexpected, wherein many brave men lost their lives and now lie here. Many of these reared up numerous trophies of victory in Sicily , ¹ fighting for the freedom 243a of Leontini, to succour which city, and to honor their pledges, they sailed to those regions; but inasmuch as our city was in a helpless, situation and unable to reinforce them owing to the length of the voyage, fortune was against them and they renounced their design; yet for their prudence and their valor they have received more praise from their foes of the opposite army than the rest of men am their friends. Many others of them fought in the sea-fights in the Hellespont , where in one single day they captured all the enemy’s ships, ² 243b besides winning many other engagements. But what I have termed the formidable and unexpected character of the war lay in this, that the rest of the Greeks had arrived at such a pitch of jealousy towards this city that they even brought themselves to solicit privately the aid of their deadliest foe, the very king whom they had publicly expelled with our assistance, inviting a barbarian as their ally against Greeks; and dared to range against our city the united forces of all the Greeks 243c and barbarians. ³ And then it was that the strength and valor of our State shone out conspicuously. For when men fancied that she was already reduced by war, with her ships cut off at Mytilene , her citizens sent sixty ships to the rescue, manning the ships themselves and proving themselves disputably to be men of valor by conquering their foes and setting free their friends; ⁴ albeit they met with undeserved misfortune, and were not recovered from the sea to find their burial here. ⁵ And for these reasons it behoves us to have them in remembrance 243d and to praise them always; for it was owing to their valor that we were conquerors not only in the sea-fight on that day but in all the rest of the war; and it was due to them that men formed the conviction regarding our city (and it was a true conviction) that she could never be warred down, not even by all the world. And in truth it was by our own dissensions that we were brought down and not by the hands of other men; for by them we are still to this day undefeated, and it is we ourselves who have both defeated and been defeated by ourselves. 243e After these happenings, when we were at peace and amity with other States, our civil war at home was waged in such a way that—if men are fated to engage in civil strife—there is no man but would pray for his own State that its sickness might resemble ours.