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The leadership was taken by others, and a people who had never before embarked upon the sea defeated the Greeks in a naval action; they sailed to Europe and enslaved cities of the Greeks, in which despots were established, some after our disaster, and others after the victory of the barbarians.The Persian fleet under Conon defeated the Lacedaemonians under Peisander at Cnidus in Cilicia, 394 B.C. In the preceding years Sparta, relying on the support of Persia, had placed her governors in many Greek cities: after Cnidus the Greeks of Asia Minor were abandoned to Persian rule.
60
So it would have been fitting for Greece to come then and mourn over this tomb, and lament those who lie here, seeing that her own freedom was interred together with their valor. Unhappy Greece, to be bereft of such men, and happy King of Asia, to be at grips with other leaders! For Greece, deprived of these men, is sunk in slavery, while he, finding others in command, is moved to emulate the designs of his ancestors.
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But though I have been led to utter this lament over Greece as a whole, it behoves us to remember, in public as in private, those menThe speaker returns to the story of Athens after Aegospotami—the tyranny of the Thirty and the democratic opposition in the Peiraeus, 404-403 B.C. For the whole series of events see the General Introduction and Chronological Summary. who, shunning slavery, fighting for the right, and rallying to the cause of democracy, incurred the hostility of all and returned to the Peiraeus; compelled by no law, but induced by their nature; imitating in fresh encounters the ancient valor of their ancestors;
