If we could save one word from Greek civilization, it would have to be aretē, excellence. The aristocrats gave themselves their name, the aristoi (th… - Thomas Cahill

Pericles' words are echoed in other critical speeches of later Western history... Lincoln at Gettysburg... Churchill's... repeated promise to the British people... of "blood, toil, tears, and sweat." And no wonder, for both orator's knew their Thucydides and knew this speech [Funeral Oration over the Athenian dead in the first year of the Peloponnesian War]. ...the most obvious later parallel is the 1961 presidential address of John F. Kennedy. ...When he told of the sacrifices yet to come, like Pericles he pulled no punches. ...In neither case is there a confession of atheism, just an implied acknowledgement that a politician is no oracle and has no business speaking on behalf of heaven.

For a century and a half—from the middle of the fifth century to the end of the sixth—there had been... no formal communication between Rome and the Christians of Britain, nor had there been any between Rome and Ireland...

It is... ironic that, given its subsequent history of Jew-hatred, Christianity should become the vehicle by which Jewish values entered the mainstream.