39
For, finding the Hellenes living without laws and in scattered abodes, some oppressed by tyrannies, others perishing through anarchy, she delivered them from these evils by taking some under her protection and by setting to others her own example; for she was the first to lay down laws and establish a polity.The tradition is probably correct that Athens was the first city to set her own house in order and so extended her influence over Greece. The creation of a civilized state out of scattered villages is attributed to King Theseus. See Isoc. 10.35; Isoc. 12.128 ff.. In Isoc. 12.151-4, Isocrates maintains that certain features of the Spartan constitution were borrowed from Athens.
40
This is apparent from the fact that those who in the beginning brought charges of homicide, and desired to settle their mutual differences by reason and not by violence, tried their cases under our laws.There is no evidence to bear out a literal interpretaion of this statement, but the tradition is probably right which regarded the Areopagus in Athens as the first court set up in Greece for the trial of cases of homicide. It was believed that this court was first convened to ty the case of Orestes, an alien. See Aesch. Eum. 684; Dem. 23.65 ff. Yes, and the arts also, both those which are useful in producing the necessities of life and those which have been devised to give us pleasure, she has either invented or stamped with her approval, and has then presented them to the rest of the world to enjoy.So Isoc. 12.202. Pliny Nat. Hist. 7.194, catalogues many Athenian discoveries in art. Cf. Milton, Par. Reg. iv. 240: “Athens the eye of Greece, mother of arts and eloquence.”
