45.
"As for you that are the children or brethren of these men, I see you shall have a difficult task of emulation.
For every man useth to praise the dead, so that with odds of virtue you will hardly get an equal reputation but still be thought a little short.
For men envy their competitors in glory while they live, but to stand out of their way is a thing honoured with an affection free from opposition.
[2]
And since I must say somewhat also of feminine virtue for you that are now widows, I shall express it in this short admonition.
It will be much for your honour not to recede from your sex and to give as little occasion of rumour amongst the men, whether of good or evil, as you can.
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
This text was converted to electronic form by optical character recognition and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.