her feet as the most glorious contribution that they could
offer. For by this offering of their lives made in common by
them all they each of them individually received that renown
which never grows old and, for a sepulchre, not so much that
in which their bones have been deposited, but that noblest
of shrines wherein their glory is laid up to be eternally
remembered upon every occasion on which deed or story shall
call for its commemoration. For heroes have the whole earth
for their tomb; and in lands far from their own, where the
column with its epitaph declares it, there is enshrined in
every breast a record unwritten with no tablet to preserve
it, except that of the heart. These take as your model and,
judging happiness to be the fruit of freedom and freedom of
valour, never decline the dangers of war. For it is not the
miserable that would most justly be unsparing of their
lives: these have nothing to hope for; it is rather they to
whom continued life may bring reverses as yet unknown and to
whom a fall, if it came, would be most tremendous in its
consequences. And surely, to a man of spirit, the
degradation of cowardice must be immeasurably more grievous
than the unfelt death which strikes him in the midst of his
strength and patriotism!

"Comfort, therefore, not condolence, is what I have to offer
to the parents of the dead who may be here. Numberless are
the chances to which, as they know, the life of man is
subject; but fortunate indeed are they who draw for their
lot a death so glorious as that which has caused your
mourning and to whom life has been so exactly measured as to
terminate in the happiness in which it has been passed.