[36]
What
then is the cause of this? For not without reason, not without just cause, the
Greeks of old were as eager for freedom as their descendants today are for
slavery. There was something, men of Athens, something which animated the mass of the Greeks but
which is lacking now, something which triumphed over the wealth of Persia, which upheld the liberties of
Hellas, which never lost a single
battle by sea or land, something the decay of which has ruined everything and
brought our affairs to a state of chaos. And what was that?
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