105
guarding the interests of the whole confederacy but leaving each member of it free to direct its own affairs; supporting the people but making war on despotic powers,ταῖς δυναστείαις means simply “powers” in 81, but commonly powers not responsible to the people—oligarchies as here or tyrannies as in 39. considering it an outrage that the many should be subject to the few, that those who were poorer in fortune but not inferior in other respects should be banished from the offices, that, furthermore, in a fatherland which belongs to all in commonA pan-Hellenic sentiment. Cf. 81. some should hold the place of masters, others of aliens,Citizens under oligarchies are without rights; they are like the metics in Athens—residents on sufferance. and that men who are citizens by birthBy φύσις, nature. Cf. “All men are created equal.” The contrast between nature and convention— φύσις and νόμος—was a favorite topic of discussion among the sophists. Cf. an echo of it in Isoc. 1.10. should be robbed by law of their share in the government.
106
It was because we had these objections, and others besides, to oligarchies that we established the same polityA democratic government. Cf. Isoc. 12.54 ff. in the other states as in Athens itself—a polity which I see no need to extol at greater length, since I can tell the truth about it in a word: They continued to live under this regime for seventy years,A round number. So Lys. 2.55. Demosthenes reckons the period of supremacy more accurately at 73 years, 477-404. In Isoc. 12.56 Isocrates reckons it at 65 years—roughly from the Confederacy of Delos to the Athenian disaster in Sicily, which was really the beginning of the end of the Athenian supremacy. and, during this time, they experienced no tyrannies, they were free from the domination of the barbarians, they were untroubled by internal factions, and they were at peace with all the world.
