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And yet it is the duty of men who are proud because of natural gifts and not merely because of fortune to undertake such deeds much rather than to levy tribute1 on the islanders,2 who are deserving of their pity, seeing that because of the scarcity of land they are compelled to till mountains, while the people of the mainland,3 because of the abundance of their territory, allow most of it to lie waste, and have, nevertheless, from that part of it which they do harvest, grown immensely rich.
1 For tribute levied by Sparta see Xen. Hell. 6.2.16.
2 The Cyclades, hilly and comparatively barren.
3 The “mainlanders”—Persian subjects in Asia Minor.
Isocrates. Isocrates with an English Translation in three volumes, by George Norlin, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1980.
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