Pericles' Funeral Speech, Thucydides

Today's Lesson:

"We are seekers of beauty, but avoid extravagance, of learning, but without unmanliness. For us wealth is an aim for its value in use and not as an empty boast, and the disgrace of poverty rests not in the admission of it, but more in the failure to avoid it in practice."

Thucydides (Thuc.II, 35-46), from Greek Political Oratory, translated by  A.N.W.Saunders, Penguin Classics, 1970.

XL. φιλοκαλοῦμέν τε γὰρ μετ' εὐτελείας καὶ φιλοσοφοῦμεν ἄνευ μαλακίας· πλούτῳ τε ἔργου μᾶλλον καιρῷ ἢ λόγου κόμπῳ χρώμεθα, καὶ τὸ πένεσθαι οὐχ ὁμολογεῖν τινὶ αἰσχρόν, ἀλλὰ μὴ διαφεύγειν ἔργῳ αἴσχιον.

Another significant passage:

XXXVI. Αρξομαι δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν προγόνων πρῶτον. Δίκαιον γὰρ αὐτοῖς καὶ πρέπον δὲ ἅμα ἐν τῷ τοιῷδε τὴν τιμὴν ταύτην τῆς μνήμης δίδοσθαι. Τὴν γὰρ χώραν οἱ αὐτοὶ αἰεὶ οἰκοῦντες διαδοχῇ τῶν ἐπιγιγνομένων μέχρι τοῦδε ἐλευθέραν δι' ἀρετὴν παρέδοσαν