Book 3
2.10
I was saying that we have many fair hopes of deliverance. For, in the first place, we are standing true to the oaths we took in the name of the gods, while our enemies have perjured themselves and, in violation of their oaths, have broken the truce. This being so, it is fair to assume that the gods are their foes and our allies—and the gods are able speedily to make the strong weak and, when they so will, easily to deliver the weak, even though they be in dire perils.
2.11
Secondly, I would remind you of the perils of our own forefathers, to show you not only that it is your right to be brave men, but that brave men are delivered, with the help of the gods, even out of most dreadful dangers. For when the Persians and their followers came with a vast array to blot Athens out of existence, the Athenians dared, unaided, to withstand them, and won the victory.In the battle of Marathon, 490 B.C.
2.12
And while they had vowed to Artemis that for every man they might slay of the enemy they would sacrifice a goat to the goddess, they were unable to find goats enough;According to Herodotus (Hdt. 6.117) the Persian dead numbered 6,400. so they resolved to offer five hundred every year, and this sacrifice they are paying even to this day.
2.13
Again, when Xerxes at a later time gathered together that countlessHerodotus (Hdt. 7.185) puts the whole number of fighting men in Xerxes’ armament at 2,641,610. host and came against Greece, then too our forefathers were victorious, both by land and by sea,By sea at Salamis (480 B.C.) and by land at Plataea (479 B.C.). over the forefathers of our enemies. As tokens of these victories we may, indeed, still behold the trophies, but the strongest witness to them is the freedom of the states in which you were born and bred; for to no human creature do you pay homage as master, but to the gods alone.
