In Plato's dialogue Meno, Socrates and his friend Meno discuss the question What is virtue? They name a number of men known as virtuous, including the Athenian statesman Pericles, who was held as the very paragon of virtue in the way George Washington was in the early days of our own republic. In the case of Washington, this can be seen in all of the Smithsonian objects below. Horatio Greenough's rather colossal statue is not so much a classically idealized Washington as a classical treatment of a figure considered already ideal in his virtue. In the print to the right, Virtue herself (whoever she is) leaves flowers on Washington's tomb. The "apotheosis" print, to her right, might make us wonder if anyone is lying in that tomb. Washington does not die like a mere mortal but ascends into the heavens—by virtue, we suppose, of his virtue. But to say that Pericles or George Washington is a virtuous man is not to define virtue, is it? Click.