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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: began with Gods and ancestors, and the legendary history of Athens, to
which succeeded an almost equally fictitious account of later times. The
Persian war usually formed the centre of the narrative; in the age of
Isocrates and Demosthenes the Athenians were still living on the glories of
Marathon and Salamis. The Menexenus veils in panegyric the weak places of
Athenian history. The war of Athens and Boeotia is a war of liberation;
the Athenians gave back the Spartans taken at Sphacteria out of kindness--
indeed, the only fault of the city was too great kindness to their enemies,
who were more honoured than the friends of others (compare Thucyd., which
seems to contain the germ of the idea); we democrats are the aristocracy of
virtue, and the like. These are the platitudes and falsehoods in which
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