In this our human life, with halting hopes, It is not glittering gold that rarest is

In this our human life, with halting hopes,
It is not glittering gold that rarest is:
Not diamond nor couches silver-wrought
Appear so brilliant in the eyes of men:
Nor do the fertile fields of earth's broad breast,
Laden with crops, so all-sufficing seem
As gallant men's unanimous resolve.

Fragment of a Greek Lyric Poem quoted by Plato in Letter 1 page 310a (Adesp. 138 translated by Bergk)

Image: Roman silver appliqué for a wooden couch, from the Marengo Hoard, Roman imperial period. Part of a hoard found in 1928 on the Pederbona farm at Marengo (AL) in Piemonte. The pieces of the hoard date between the late 2nd and early 3rd c. CE. The group may have been looted from a shrine of the imperial cult and concealed at some point between the mid 3rd and early 5th century CE. Photographed at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale del Piemonte, Torino, Italy courtesy of Flickr photographer Dan Diffendale (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)