Funeral Oration

For what woe could be more incurable than to bring forth and rear and bury one’s own children, and then in old age to be disabled in body and, having lost every hope, to find oneself friendless and resourceless? to have the very cause of former envy turned now to a matter of pity, and to regard death as more desirable than life? For the more they excelled in manhood, the greater the grief to those who are left behind.