1
If I believed it possible, friends who are attending this burial, to set forth in speech the valor of the men who lie here, I should have reproved those who gave me but a few days’ notice of having to speak over them. But as all mankind would find all time insufficient for preparing a speech to match their deeds, the city itself therefore, as I think, taking forethought for those who speak here, makes the appointment at short notice, in the belief that on such terms they will most readily obtain indulgence from their hearers.
2
However, while my speech is about these men, my contest is not with their deeds, but with the speakers who have preceded me in praising them. For their valor has provided matter in such abundance, alike for those who are able to compose in verse and for those who have chosen to make a speech, that, although many fair things have been spoken by those who preceded me, there are many that even they have omitted, and plenty more remain to be said by those who succeed them; since nowhere is there any land or sea on which they did not venture, and in every place and every nation the people, is lamenting their own disasters, glorify the valorous deeds of these men.
3
So now, in the first place, I shall recount the ancient ordeals of our ancestors, drawing remembrance thereof from their renown. For they also are events which all men ought to remember, glorifying them in their songs, and describing them in the sage sayings of worthy minds; honoring them on such occasions as this, and finding in the achievements of the dead so many lessons for the living.
