[62]
Moreover, if we will examine into the history of the most illustrious and the greatest of the other states, we shall find that democratic forms of government are more advantageous for them than oligarchies. For if we compare our own government—which is criticized by everyone1—not with the old democracy which I have described, but with the rule which was instituted by the Thirty,2 there is no one who would not consider our present democracy a divine creation.
1 See Isoc. 7.15.
2 The oligarchy of the thirty “Tyrants,” instituted with the help of the Spartans at the end of the Peloponnesian War, 404 B.C.
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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