What sort of a word will this be, and how shall we rightly
begin the praises of these brave men? In their life they rejoiced their
own friends with their valour, and their death they gave in exchange for
the salvation of the living. And I think that we should praise them in the
order in which nature made them good, for they were good because they were
sprung from good fathers. Wherefore let us first of all praise the
goodness of their birth; secondly, their nurture and education; and then
let us set forth how noble their actions were, and how worthy of the
education which they had received.
And first as to their birth. Their ancestors were not strangers, nor are
these their descendants sojourners only, whose fathers have come from
another country; but they are the children of the soil, dwelling and living
in their own land. And the country which brought them up is not like other
countries, a stepmother to her children, but their own true mother; she
bore them and nourished them and received them, and in her bosom they now
repose. It is meet and right, therefore, that we should begin by praising
the land which is their mother, and that will be a way of praising their
noble birth.
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