Status Updates From История

I'm a terrible reader of history. I perk up when something novelistic crops up--not even anecdotes, just, a letter that says to kill the bearer, or the grisly slo-mo comedy of hostile rampart construction duel, but otherwise, the slew of names and the hardnosed insights wash over me and past. I wish this book were not timely.

From Pericles’ funeral oration for the war dead:

“He who is a stranger to the matter may be led by envy to suspect exaggeration if he hears anything above his own nature. For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity.”