[51]
for it was they who led on our youth to this spirit of heedlessness and destroyed the power of the Areopagus. For while this Council maintained its authority, Athens was not rife with law-suits,1 or accusations,2 or tax-levies,3 or poverty,4 or war; on the contrary, her citizens lived in accord with each other and at peace with mankind, enjoying the good will of the Hellenes and inspiring fear in the barbarians;
1 It was not yet the “litigious Athens,” ridiculed in Aristophanes' Wasps.
2 By the sycophants especially. See Isoc. 15.8, note.
3 Special taxes levied for war purposes on the well-to-do citizens.
4 Athens was impoverished by her wars, Isoc. 8.19.
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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