330 THUCYDIDES
youth are always undergoing laborious exercises which are to make them brave, we live at ease, and yet are equally ready to face the perils which they face. And here is the proof. The Lacedaemonians come into Attica not by themselves, but with their whole con- federacy following ; we go alone into a neighbor's country ; and although our opponents are fighting for their homes and we on a foreign soil, we have seldom any difficidty in overcoming them. Our enemies have never yet felt our united strength ; the care of a navy divides our attention, and on land we are obliged to send our own citizens everywhere. But they, if they meet and defeat a part of our array, are as proud as if they had routed us all, and when de- feated they pretend to have been vanquished by us aU.
" If then we prefer to meet danger with a light heart, but without laborious training, and with a cour- age which is gained by habit and enforced by law, are we not greatly the gainers ? Since we do not anticipate the pain, although when the hour comes we can be as brave as those who never allow them- selves to rest ; and thus too our city is equally ad- mirable in peace and in war. For we are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we culti- vate the mind without loss of manliness. Wealth we employ, not for talk and ostentation, but when there is a real use for it. To avow poverty with us is no disgrace ; the true disgrace is in doing nothing *to avoid it. An Athenian citizen does not neglect the state because he takes care of his own household ; and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harm-
