we have so many sorrows to assuage and so many deaths to honour, I
wished merely to recall a page written over two thousand years ago, to
the glory of the Athenian heroes who fell for their country in the
first battles of that war. According to the custom of the Greeks, the
bones of the dead that had been burnt on the battlefield were
solemnly brought back to Athens at the end of the year; and the people
chose the greatest speaker in the city to deliver the funeral oration.
This honour fell to Pericles, son of Xanthippus, the Pericles of the
golden age of human beauty. After pronouncing a well-merited and
magnificent eulogium on the Athenian nation and institutions, he
concluded with the following words:

"Indeed, if I have dwelt at some length upon the character
of our country, it has been to show that our stake in the
struggle is not the same as theirs who have no such blessing
to lose and also that the panegyric of the men over whom I
am now speaking might be by definite proofs established.
That panegyric is now in a great measure complete; for the
Athens that I have celebrated is only what the heroism of
these and their like have made her, men whose fame, unlike
that of most Hellenes, will be found to be only commensurate
with their deserts. And, if a test of worth be wanted, it is
to be found in their closing scene; and this not only in the
cases in which it set the final seal upon their merit, but
also in those in which it gave the first intimation of their
having any. For there is justice in the claim that
steadfastness in his country's battles should be as a cloak
to cover a man's other imperfections, since the good action
has blotted out the bad and his merit as a citizen more than
outweighed his demerits as an individual. But none of these