Laudator Temporis Acti

Agathias, Histories 2.1.10 (tr. Joseph D. Frendo):

It is both a sacred and a noble duty to fight for the preservation of one's country and one's national identity and to do one's utmost to repel all those who seek to destroy these things.

πατρίδι μὲν γὰρ ἐπαρήγειν καὶ νόμοις πατρίοις καὶ τοῖς ταῦτα λυμαινομένοις ἥκιστα ἐφιέναι, ἀλλὰ παντὶ σθένει ἀμύνεσθαι, ὅσιόν τι ἂν εἴη καὶ μάλα γενναῖον.

ἥκιστα puzzles me, and Frendo doesn't seem to translate it. Maybe I'm missing something. Also, I might translate νόμοις πατρίοις as "traditions" or "ancestral customs," rather than as "national identity."

I don't have access to Rudolf Keydell's 1967 Greek text in Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae (used by Frendo), only Dindorf's outdated text in Historici Graeci Minores, unfortunately.

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Thanks very much to Joel Eidsath for correcting a misprint in the Greek and for his version of the sentence:

For to come to the aid of the fatherland and its customs, and to least permit the ones harming these [to do so], but to defend with every strength: this would be a pious act and very noble.

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From Eric Thomson:

Apropos Agathias, there's another instance of ἥκιστα ἐφιέναι in book 1, chapter 12, which Frendo translates as 'non-cooperation':

Μόνοι δὲ οἱ ἐν Λούκᾳ τῇ πόλει διαμέλλειν ἐπειρῶντο καὶ ἥκιστα ἐφιέναι, καίτοι πρότερον ἐτύγχανον οἵδε ξυνθήκας θέμενοι πρὸς Ναρσῆν, ὁμήρους τε παρασχόντες καὶ ἐπομοσάμενοι ὡς εἴ γε τριάκοντα παραδράμοιεν ἡμέραι ...

Only the people of Lucca tried to adopt a policy of temporizing and non-cooperation. And yet it was they who had previously come to terms with Narses, giving him hostages and a sworn undertaking to the effect that, if thirty days elapsed ...