The Athenian State/People

With much better reason, men of Athens, would you commend the members of the tribe Leontis, who compelled Theocrines to pay the seven minae, than this fellow himself.

I, therefore, beg you all, men of Athens, and beseech you to listen to me with goodwill, first, because I am engaging in this contest to help my father and in obedience to his wishes;

That the State seriously concerns itself with those who die in battle it is possible to infer both from these rites in general and, in particular, from this law in accordance with which it chooses the speaker at our public funerals.

After the State decreed that those who repose in this tomb, having acquitted themselves as brave men in the war, should have a public funeral, and appointed me to the duty of delivering over them the customary speech, I began straightway to study how they might receive their due tribute of praise;

How, then, since the whole country unites in according them a public burial, and they alone receive the words of universal praise, while their kinsmen and fellow-citizens are not alone in mourning them, but every land that has the right to be called Hellas and the greater part of the whole world mourns with them, how can we do otherwise than consider them blessed of fortune?