189
And they have been manifestly of this mind both in their government of the state in other respects and in the conduct of the greatest affairs. For in the three wars,Three “wars,” with no attention to chronology: (1) that against Xerxes; (2) the warfare connected with the Ionian Colonization; (3) four campaigns summarized as one, all dealing with invasions: (a) that against Eumolpus and the Thracians; (b) that against the Scythians; (c) that against Eurystheus; (d) that against Dareius. apart from the Trojan war, which were fought by the Hellenes against the barbarians—in all these they placed our city in the forefront of the fighting. Of these wars, one was the struggle against Xerxes,See Isoc. 12.49 ff. in which they were as much superior to the Lacedaemonians in every crisis as were the latter to the rest of the Hellenes.
190
Another was the war connected with the founding of the colonies,See Isoc. 12.42 ff. and Isoc. 12.164 ff. in which none of the Dorians came to help them, but in which Athens, having been made the leader of those who were lacking in the means of subsistence and of all others who desired to join with her, so completely reversed the state of affairs that, whereas the barbarians had been wont in times past to seize and hold the greatest cities of Hellas, she placed the Hellenes in a position where they were able to do what they had formerly suffered.