87
But of the ships which were lost in fleets of ten or five or more and of the men who were slain in armies of a thousand or two thousand who could tell the tale? In a word, it was at that time a matter of regular routine to hold public funeralsSee Isoc. 4.74, note. every year, which many both of our neighbors and of the other Hellenes used to attend, not to grieve with us for the dead, but to rejoice together at our misfortunes.
88
And at last, before they knew it, they had filled the public burial-groundsThe Ceramicus. with the bodies of their fellow citizens and the registers of the phratries and of the stateCf. Isoc. 8.50. All citizens were duly enrolled in the phratry registers, φρατορικὰ γραμματεῖα and in the state registers, kept in each township, ληξιαρχικὰ γραμματεῖα. with the names of those who had no claim upon the city. And you may judge of the multitude of the slain from this fact: The families of the most illustrious Athenians and our greatest houses, which survived the civil conflicts under the tyrantsPisitratus and his sons, Hippias and Hipparchus. See Aristot. Ath. Pol. 18. and the Persian Wars as well, have been, you will find, entirely wiped outCf. Isoc. 8.4. under this empire upon which we set our hearts.
89
So that if one desired to go into the question of what befell the rest of our citizens, judging by this instance, it would be seen that we have been changed, one might almost say, into a new people. And yet we must not count that state happy which without discrimination recruits from all parts of the world a large number of citizens but rather that state which more than all others preserves the stock of those who in the beginning founded it. And we ought not to emulate those who hold despotic power nor those who have gained a dominion which is greater than is just but rather those who, while worthy of the highest honors, are yet content with the honors which are tendered them by a free people.
