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After this Greece ceased to bear good men. For Miltiades, the son of Kimon, overcame in battle the barbarian invaders who had landed at Marathon, stayed the advance of the Persian army,1 and so became the first benefactor of all Greece, just as Philopoimen, the son of Kraugis, was the last. Those who before Miltiades accomplished brilliant deeds, Kodros, the son of Melanthos, Polydoros the Spartan, Aristomenes the Messenian, and all the rest, will be seen to have helped each his own country and not Greece as a whole.

Footnotes

  1. 490 BCE.

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Later than Miltiades, Leonidas, the son of Anaxandrides, and Themistocles, the son of Neokles, repulsed Xerxes from Greece,1 Themistocles by the two sea-fights, Leonidas by the action at Thermopylae. But Aristeides the son of Lysimakhos, and Pausanias, the son of Kleombrotos,2 commanders at Plataea, were debarred from being called benefactors of Greece, Pausanias by his subsequent sins, Aristeides by his imposition of tribute on the island Greeks; for before Aristeides all the Greeks were immune from tribute.

Footnotes

  1. 480 BCE.

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  2. 479 BCE.

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Xanthippos, the son of Ariphron, with Leotykhides the king of Sparta destroyed the Persian fleet at Mykale,1 and with Kimon accomplished many enviable achievements on behalf of the Greeks. But those who took part in the Peloponnesian war against Athens, especially the most distinguished of them, might be said to be murderers, almost wreckers, of Greece.

Footnotes

  1. 479 BCE.

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When the Greek nation was reduced to a miserable condition, it recovered under the efforts of Konon,1 the son of Timotheus, and of Epameinondas, the son of Polymnis, who drove out the Lacedaemonian garrisons and governors, and put down the boards of ten,2 Konon from the islands and coasts, Epameinondas from the cities of the interior. By founding cities too, of no small fame, Messene and Arcadian Megalopolis, Epameinondas made Greece more famous.

Footnotes

  1. 394 BCE.

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  2. 370–369 BCE.

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I reckon Leosthenes also and Aratos benefactors of all the Greeks. Leosthenes, in spite of Alexander’s opposition, brought back safe by sea to Greece the force of Greek mercenaries in Persia [en Persais], about fifty thousand in number, who had descended to the coast. As for Aratos, I have related his exploits in my history of Sikyon.1

Footnotes

  1. Pausanias 2.8.1.

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The inscription on the statue of Philopoimen at Tegea runs thus:

“The valor and glory of this man are famed throughout Greece, who worked

Many achievements by might and many by his counsels,

Philopoimen, the Arcadian spearman, whom great renown attended,

When he commanded the lances in war.

Witness are two trophies, won from the despots

Of Sparta; the swelling flood of slavery he stayed.

Wherefore did Tegea set up in stone the great-hearted son of Kraugis,

Author of blameless freedom.”