48
What, think you, is our state of mind when we see our own parents unworthily cared for in their old age, and our children, instead of being educated as we had hoped when we begat them, often because of petty debts reduced to slavery,Cf. Lys. 12.98. others working for hire, and the rest procuring their daily livelihood as best each one can, in a manner that accords with neither the deeds of their ancestors, nor their own youth, nor our own self-respect?
49
But our greatest anguish of all is when one sees separated from each other, not only citizens from citizens, but also wives from husbands, daughters from mothers, and every tie of kinship severed; and this has befallen many of our fellow-citizens because of poverty. For the destruction of our communal life has compelled each of us to cherish hopes for himself alone.
50
I presume that you yourselves are not ignorant of the other causes of shame that poverty and exile bring in their train,The unhappy lot of the exile is a commonplace in Greek poetry and prose; cf. Tyrtaeus, frag. 10. and although we in our hearts bear these with greater difficulty than all the rest, yet we forbear to speak of them since we are ashamed to enumerate one by one our own misfortunes.
51
All these things we ask you to bear in mind and to take some measure of consideration for us. For indeed we are not aliens to you; on the contrary, all of us are akin to you in our loyalty and most of us in blood also; for by the right of intermarriageThe Plataeans were granted Athenian citizenship after the destruction of their city in 427 B.C. This honor included the right of intermarriage. granted to us we are born of mothers who were of your city. You cannot, therefore, be indifferent to the pleas we have come to make.
