Read the excerpt from Pericles’s funeral oration by Thucydides.
The Spartans, from their earliest boyhood, are submitted to the most laborious training in courage; we pass our lives without all these restrictions, and yet are just as ready to face the same dangers as they are. Here is a proof of this: When the Spartans invade our land, they do not come by themselves, but bring all their allies with them; whereas we, when we launch an attack abroad, do the job by ourselves, and, though fighting on foreign soil, do not often fail to defeat opponents who are fighting for their own hearths and homes.
What is the speaker’s main point in this excerpt?
The training that the Spartans undergo does more harm than good.
The Spartans will only fight alongside their allies.
Freedom helps his people to be better soldiers than the Spartans are.
His people have a larger army than the Spartans.