[26]
But reflect on what
might be named as the outstanding achievements of your ancestors and of
yourselves, if haply the comparison may yet enable you to become your own
masters. For five and forty years1 they commanded the willing obedience
of the Greeks; more than ten thousand talents did they accumulate in our
Acropolis; many honorable trophies for victories on sea and on land did they
erect, in which even yet we take a pride. Yet remember that they erected them,
not that we might wonder as we gaze at them, but that we might also imitate the
virtues of the dedicators.
1 Between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by C. A. Vince, M. A. and J. H. Vince, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1926.
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