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for we did not become dwellers in this land by driving others out of it,1 nor by finding it uninhabited, nor by coming together here a motley horde composed of many races; but we are of a lineage so noble and so pure that throughout our history we have continued in possession of the very land which gave us birth, since we are sprung from its very soil2 and are able to address our city by the very names which we apply to our nearest kin;
1 In contrast particularly to the ancestors of the Spartans when they established themselves in the Peloponnesus.
2 The “autochthony” of the Athenians was a common theme of Athenian orators and poets: Isoc. 8.49, Isoc. 12.124-125; Thuc. 1.2.5; Eur. Ion 589 ff.; Aristoph. Wasps 1076.
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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