Who else would write this? It is like a blog on the occasion of the funeral oration. I would append it to my blog on Theseus. But here is a democratic republic most similar to ours- minus a Sicilian expedition!
Then as now, our government was an aristocracy or government of the best which has the approval of the many. For kings we have always had, first hereditary then elected, and authority is mostly in the hands of the people, who dispense offices and power to those who appear to be most deserving of them Neither is a man rejected from weakness or poverty or obscurity of origin, nor honored by reason of the opposite, as in other cities, but there is one principle- he who appears to be wise and good is a governor and ruler. The basis of this our government is equality of birth, for other cities are made up of all sorts and unequal conditions of men, and therefore their governments are unequal- there are tyrannies and there are oligarchies, in which the one party are slaves and the others masters. But we and our citizens are brethren, the children all of one mother, and we do not think it right to be one another’s masters or servants, but the natural equality of birth compels us to seek for natural equality, and to recognize no superiority except in the reputation of virtue and wisdom.
Plato, Menexenus (Jowett), 238c- 239a
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