best if they bear their loss lightly and
temperately. For our life will have the noblest end which is vouchsafed
to man, and should be glorified rather than lamented. And if they will
direct their minds to the care and nurture of our wives and children,
they will soonest forget their misfortunes, and live in a better and
nobler way, and be dearer to us.

'This is all that we have to say to our families: and to the state we
would say--Take care of our parents and of our sons: let her worthily
cherish the old age of our parents, and bring up our sons in the right
way. But we know that she will of her own accord take care of them, and
does not need any exhortation of ours.'

This, O ye children and parents of the dead, is the message which
they bid us deliver to you, and which I do deliver with the utmost
seriousness. And in their name I beseech you, the children, to imitate
your fathers, and you, parents, to be of good cheer about yourselves;
for we will nourish your age, and take care of you both publicly and
privately in any place in which one of us may meet one of you who are
the parents of the dead. And the care of you which the city shows,
you know yourselves; for she has made provision by law concerning the
parents and children of those who die in war; the highest authority is
specially entrusted with the duty of watching over them above all other
citizens, and they will see that your fathers and mothers have no wrong
done to them. The city herself shares in the education of the children,
desiring as far as it is possible that their orphanhood may not be felt
by them; while they are children she is a parent to them, and when they
have arrived at man's estate she sends them to their several duties, in
full armour clad; and bringing freshly to their minds the ways of their
fathers, she places in their hands the instruments of their fathers'
virtues; for the sake of the omen, she would have them from the first
begin to rule over their own houses arrayed in the strength and arms
of their fathers. And as for the dead, she never ceases honouring them,
celebrating in common for all rites which become the property of each;
and in addition to this, holding gymnastic and equestrian contests, and
musical festivals of every sort. She is to the dead in the place of a
son and heir, and to their sons in the place of a father, and to their
parents and elder kindred in the place of a guardian--ever and always
caring for them. Cons