This passage, from a lost drama by Euripides , was quoted as an example of women's heroism by the fourth-century Athenian orator Lycurgus . According to the myth, when the Thracian army, led by Eumolpus, threatens Athens, Erechtheus , king of Athens , consults the oracle at Delphi and learns that the city can be saved only if he agrees to sacrifice one of his three daughters. In this speech his wife Praxithea gives her assent to her husband, arguing that if her daughter were a son, she would have sent him forth to war. Her daughters meanwhile have taken an oath that if one of them is sacrificed, the others will die as well. The Thracians attack, and Erechtheus is killed, but he and his daughters are honored in cult, and Praxithea becomes the first priestess of the goddess Athena .
People are better pleased when one grants a favor nobly and generously.
To grant the favor, but to delay in doing so, that I say is less noble. I will offer my daughter to be sacrificed. I have many reasons. First I could not have a better city than this, whose people were not brought in from outside, but rather, we were born from this very soil. Other cities are divided as if by throws of the dice, and some are colonized from others.