We are lovers of beauty without extravagance, and lovers of wisdom without unmanliness. Wealth to us is not mere material for vainglory but an opportunity for achievement; and poverty we think it no disgrace to acknowledge but a real degradation to make no effort to overcome.

This line comes from Thucydides’ account of Pericles’ Funeral Oration, delivered early in the Peloponnesian War (traditionally dated to the winter of 431/430 BCE) to honor the first Athenian war dead. In the speech, Pericles offers an idealized portrait of Athenian civic character—its balance of refinement and restraint, intellectual seriousness and courage, and a public ethic that prizes achievement over display. Thucydides presents the oration as part of his larger historical narrative in the History of the Peloponnesian War, using Pericles’ voice to articulate what Athenians believed (or wished to believe) about their democracy at its height.

The passage defines a civic ideal of moderation: Athenians, Pericles claims, cultivate beauty without wasteful luxury and pursue wisdom without softness or cowardice. Material resources are framed as instruments for public and personal accomplishment rather than for boasting, while poverty is treated as morally neutral in itself—shame lies not in lacking wealth but in refusing to strive. The rhetoric links aesthetic taste, intellectual life, and economic conduct to a shared standard of virtue, presenting Athens as a community where freedom and culture coexist with discipline and ambition. In Thucydides’ history, this ideal also functions poignantly, as later events test and erode the very balance the speech celebrates.

1) “We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy.”
2) “We are lovers of the beautiful without being extravagant, and lovers of wisdom without being soft.”
3) “We use wealth as an opportunity for action rather than for boastful talk; and poverty we do not think disgraceful to admit—only disgraceful not to try to escape it.”