50
I presume that you yourselves are not ignorant of the other causes of shame that poverty and exile bring in their train,The unhappy lot of the exile is a commonplace in Greek poetry and prose; cf. Tyrtaeus, frag. 10. and although we in our hearts bear these with greater difficulty than all the rest, yet we forbear to speak of them since we are ashamed to enumerate one by one our own misfortunes.
51
All these things we ask you to bear in mind and to take some measure of consideration for us. For indeed we are not aliens to you; on the contrary, all of us are akin to you in our loyalty and most of us in blood also; for by the right of intermarriageThe Plataeans were granted Athenian citizenship after the destruction of their city in 427 B.C. This honor included the right of intermarriage. granted to us we are born of mothers who were of your city. You cannot, therefore, be indifferent to the pleas we have come to make.
52
For it would be the cruellest blow of all, if you, having long ago bestowed upon us the right of a common citizenship with yourselves, should now decide not even to restore to us our own. Furthermore, it is not reasonable that, while every individual who is the victim of injustice receives pity at your hands, yet an entire city so lawlessly destroyed should be unable in the slightest degree to win commiseration from you, especially when it has taken refuge with you who in former times incurred neither shame nor infamy when you showed pity for suppliants.
