Post by KG on Aug 30, 2010 18:44:52 GMT
From Pericles' oration at a funeral for those who had died in the Peloponnesian War:
"Fix your eyes on the greatness of Athens as you have it before you day by day. Fall in love with her, and when you feel her great, remember that this greatness was won by men of courage, with knowledge of their duty, and with a sense of honour in action ... They gave their lives for the commonwealth and received, each for his own memory, praise that will never die, and with it the grandest of all monuments, not that in which their mortal bones are laid, but a home in the minds of men, where their glory remains ... For the whole earth is the monument of famous men; and their story is not carved only on stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives. For you now it remains to rival what they have done and, knowing the secret of happiness to be freedom, and the secret of freedom a brave heart, not idly to stand aside from the enemy's onset."
KG
"Fix your eyes on the greatness of Athens as you have it before you day by day. Fall in love with her, and when you feel her great, remember that this greatness was won by men of courage, with knowledge of their duty, and with a sense of honour in action ... They gave their lives for the commonwealth and received, each for his own memory, praise that will never die, and with it the grandest of all monuments, not that in which their mortal bones are laid, but a home in the minds of men, where their glory remains ... For the whole earth is the monument of famous men; and their story is not carved only on stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives. For you now it remains to rival what they have done and, knowing the secret of happiness to be freedom, and the secret of freedom a brave heart, not idly to stand aside from the enemy's onset."
KG