Thucydides (c.460-400 BCE)
“What we should lament is not the loss of houses or of land, but the loss of men’s lives. Men come first; the rest is the fruit of their labour.”
- History of the Peloponnesian War (Book I, section 143) by Thucydides, translated by Rex Warner (Penguin Classics, 1972). The quote comes from a speech that Thucydides wrote while in the character of Pericles.
