[62]
then, if they dare, let them compare their dignity with that of these
men.
Athenians are here, citizens of that city from which civilization, learning, religion, corn,
laws, and institutions are supposed to have arisen, and to have been disseminated over the
whole earth—that city, for the possession of which there is said to have been, by
reason of its beauty, a contest even among the gods: a city which is of that antiquity that
she is said to have produced her citizens from her own womb, so that the same land is called
the parent, and nurse, and country of her people. And she is of such authority that the name
of Greece, now enfeebled and almost broken, rests upon the glory of this city.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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