Understanding the deeds of the past

For the deeds of the past are, indeed, an inheritance common to us all. But the ability to make proper use of them at the appropriate time, to conceive the right sentiments about them in each instance, and to set them forth in finished phrase, is the peculiar gift of the wise. Isocrates. Panegyricus. Book 4. Section 9.

Fragment of a gold wreath Greek 320-300 BCE from a tomb at Zaneskaya Gora in the region of the Crimea on the northern shore of the Black Sea photographed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.