The Funeral Oration of Pericles

伯里克利 / Pericles

伯里克利（公元前495—公元前429），古雅典最伟大的政治家，贵族出身，却是民主派领袖，实行奴隶主民主政治。当政期间完成了奴隶主民主宪法，发展工商业，奖励文化，大兴土木。从公元前443年到公元前429年，他任将军委员会的首席将军，成为雅典的最高统治者。在他任职期间，雅典文化和国势都发展到巅峰状态。

Practicing for Better Learning

Read the following article carefully, and answer thequestions below.

1.What makes the Athenian happy and satisfied?

2.What does “the double advantage”refer to in the last paragraph?

...

Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves.Its administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy.If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if to social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way; if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition.The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life.There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbor for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty.But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens.Against this fear is our chief safeguard teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws particularly such as regards the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.

Further we provide plenty of means for the mind to refresh itself from business.We celebrate games and sacrifices all year round and the elegance of our private establishments forms a daily source of pleasure and helps to banish the spleen; while the magnitude of our city draws the produce of the world into our harbor, so that to the Athenian the fruits of other countries are as familiar a luxury as those of his own.

If we turn to our military policy, there also we differ from our antagonists.We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of any enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality; trusting less in system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens; while in education, where our rivals from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger.In proof of this it may be noticed that the Lacedaemonians do not invade our country alone, but bring with them all their confederates; while we Athenians advance unsupported into the territory of a neighbor, and fighting upon a foreign soil usually vanquish with ease men who are defending their homes.Our united force was never yet encountered by any enemy, because we have at once to attend to our marine and to dispatch our citizens by land upon a hundred different services; so that, wherever they engage with some such fraction of our strength, a success against a detachment is magnified into a victory over the nation, and a defeat into a reverse suffered at the hands of the entire people.And yet if with habits not of labor but of ease, and courage not of art but of nature we are still willing to encounter danger we have the double advantage of escaping the experience of hardships in anticipation and of facing them in the hour of need as fearlessly as those who are never free from them.