An education to Greece

"Then there is a great difference between us and our opponents, in our attitude towards military security... Our city is open to the world... This is because we rely, not on secret weapons, but on our own real courage and loyalty...

We make friends by doing good to others, not by receiving good from them. This makes our friendship all the more reliable, since we want to keep alive the gratitude of those who are in our debt by showing continued goodwill to them: whereas the feelings of one who owes us something lack the same enthusiasm, since he knows that, when he repays our kindness, it will be more like paying back a debt than giving something spontaneously. We are unique in this. When we do kindnesses to others, we do not do them out of any calculations of profit or loss: we do them without afterthought, relying on our free liberality.
                 
Taking everything together then, I declare that our city is an education to Greece."

Pericles' Funeral Oration 490 BC
from Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War

Acropolis of Athens by Leo von Klonze