c. 495-429 BC
Pericles
Statesman and general who led Athens at the height of its power. His funeral oration for the first dead of the Peloponnesian War, as recorded by Thucydides, is the classic portrait of a free city.
Every line we carry
Each one links to its source, what it means, and the shirt in any of our looks.
- Poverty is no disgrace. Refusing to fight it is.
In his funeral speech for the Athenian dead, Pericles describes a city where no one is ashamed to admit being poor, only of doing nothing about it. Circumstances are not character; effort is. Never be embarrassed by where you start, only by staying there without a fight.
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.40.1 (Funeral Oration), our translation from the Greek