Pericles' Funeral Oration
Encyclopedia
Pericles' Funeral Oration is a famous speech from Thucydides
' History of the Peloponnesian War
. The speech was delivered
, an eminent Athenian politician, at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War
(431 - 404 BC) as a part of the annual public funeral
for the war dead.
. The procession led to a public grave (the Kerameikos), where they were buried. The last part of the ceremony was a speech delivered by a prominent Athenian citizen.
Several funeral orations from classical Athens are still extant, which seem to corroborate Thucydides
' evidence that this was a regular feature of Athenian funerary custom in wartime.
Funeral Oration was recorded by Thucydides
in book two of his History of the Peloponnesian War
. Although Thucydides records the speech in the first person as if it were a word for word record of what Pericles
said, there can be little doubt that Thucydides has edited the speech at the very least. Thucydides says early in his History that the speeches presented are not verbatim records, but are intended to represent the main ideas of what was said and what was, according to Thucydides, "called for in the situation". Pericles
likely delivered a speech at the end of the first year of the war, but there is no consensus as to what degree Thucydides' record resembles Pericles' actual speech. Another confusing factor is that Pericles is known to have delivered another funeral oration in 440 BC
during the Samian War
. It is possible that elements of both speeches are represented in Thucydides' version. Nevertheless Thucydides was extremely meticulous in his documentation, and records the varied certainty of his sources each time. Significantly he begins recounting the speech by saying: "Περικλῆς ὁ Ξανθίππου ... ἔλεγε τοιάδε", i.e. "Pericles, son of Xanthippos, spoke like this". Had he quoted the speech verbatim, he would have written "τάδε" ("this", or "these words") instead of "τοιάδε" ("like this" or "words like these"). The most likely possibility therefore is that Thucydides writes from his own memory of the event, in which case verbatim quotation is doubtful, though it is likely that Pericles' emblematic points have been faithfully recorded.
.
At this point, however, Pericles departs most dramatically from the example of other Athenian funeral orations and skips over the great martial achievements of Athens' past: "That part of our history which tells of the military achievements which gave us our several possessions, or of the ready valor with which either we or our fathers stemmed the tide of Hellenic or foreign aggression, is a theme too familiar to my hearers for me to dwell upon, and I shall therefore pass it by." Instead, Pericles proposes to focus on "the road by which we reached our position, the form of government under which our greatness grew, and the national habits out of which it sprang". This amounts to a focus on present day Athens; Thucydides' Pericles thus decides to praise the war dead by glorifying the city for which they died.
." The liberality of which Pericles spoke also extended to Athens' foreign policy: "We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality..." Yet Athens' values of equality and openness do not, according to Pericles, hinder Athens' greatness, indeed, they enhance it, "...advancement in public life falls to reputations for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit...our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters...at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger."
Pericles rises to crescendo in his praise of Athens, "In short, I say that as a city we are the school of Hellas; while I doubt if the world can produce a man, who where he has only himself to depend upon, is equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility as the Athenian." Finally, Pericles links his praise of the city to the dead Athenians for whom he is speaking, "...for the Athens that I have celebrated is only what the heroism of these and their like have made her...none of these men allowed either wealth with its prospect of future enjoyment to unnerve his spirit, or poverty with its hope of a day of freedom and riches to tempt him to shrink from danger. No, holding that vengeance upon their enemies was more to be desired than any personal blessings, and reckoning this to be the most glorious of hazards, they joyfully determined to accept the risk... Thus, choosing to die resisting, rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonor..." The conclusion seems inevitable: "Therefore, having judged that to be happy means to be free, and to be free means to be brave, do not shy away from the risks of war". With the linkage of Athens' greatness complete, Pericles moves to addressing his audience.
The audience is then dismissed.
, anacoluthon
, asyndeton
, anastrophe
, hyperbaton
, and others; most famously the rapid succession of proparoxytone
words beginning with e ("το εύδαιμον το ελεύθερον το δ' ελεύθερον το εύψυχον") at the climax of the speech. The style is deliberately elaborate, in accord with the stylistical preference associated with the sophists. There are several different English translations of the speech available.
scholar Garry Wills
addresses the parallels of Pericles' funeral oration to Abraham Lincoln
's famous speech the Gettysburg Address
. Lincoln's speech, like Pericles', begins with an acknowledgment of revered predecessors: "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent..."; Lincoln, like Pericles, then praises the uniqueness of the State's commitment to democracy
: "..a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal...government of the people, by the people, and for the people..."; Lincoln, like Pericles, addresses the difficulties faced by a speaker on such an occasion, "...we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground"; Lincoln, like Pericles, exhorts the survivors to emulate the deeds of the dead, "It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the great task remaining before us"; and finally, Lincoln, like Pericles, contrasts the efficacy of words and deeds, "The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract...The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here." It is uncertain to what degree Lincoln was directly influenced by Pericles' Funeral Oration. Wills never claims that Lincoln drew on it as a source, though Edward Everett
, who delivered a lengthy oration at the same ceremony at Gettysburg, began by describing the "Athenian example".
Thucydides
Thucydides was a Greek historian and author from Alimos. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC...
' History of the Peloponnesian War
History of the Peloponnesian War
The History of the Peloponnesian War is an account of the Peloponnesian War in Ancient Greece, fought between the Peloponnesian League and the Delian League . It was written by Thucydides, an Athenian general who served in the war. It is widely considered a classic and regarded as one of the...
. The speech was delivered
Pericles
Pericles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of Athens during the city's Golden Age—specifically, the time between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars...
, an eminent Athenian politician, at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War
Peloponnesian War
The Peloponnesian War, 431 to 404 BC, was an ancient Greek war fought by Athens and its empire against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases...
(431 - 404 BC) as a part of the annual public funeral
Funeral
A funeral is a ceremony for celebrating, sanctifying, or remembering the life of a person who has died. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from interment itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honor...
for the war dead.
Background
It was an established Athenian practice by the late fifth century to hold a public funeral in honor of all those who had died in war. The remains of the dead were left out for three days in a tent, where offerings could be made for the dead. Then a funeral procession was held, with ten cypress coffins carrying the remains, one for each of the Athenian tribesPhyle
Phyle is an ancient Greek term for clan or tribe. They were usually ruled by a basileus...
. The procession led to a public grave (the Kerameikos), where they were buried. The last part of the ceremony was a speech delivered by a prominent Athenian citizen.
Several funeral orations from classical Athens are still extant, which seem to corroborate Thucydides
Thucydides
Thucydides was a Greek historian and author from Alimos. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC...
' evidence that this was a regular feature of Athenian funerary custom in wartime.
Funeral Oration was recorded by Thucydides
Thucydides
Thucydides was a Greek historian and author from Alimos. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC...
in book two of his History of the Peloponnesian War
History of the Peloponnesian War
The History of the Peloponnesian War is an account of the Peloponnesian War in Ancient Greece, fought between the Peloponnesian League and the Delian League . It was written by Thucydides, an Athenian general who served in the war. It is widely considered a classic and regarded as one of the...
. Although Thucydides records the speech in the first person as if it were a word for word record of what Pericles
Pericles
Pericles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of Athens during the city's Golden Age—specifically, the time between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars...
said, there can be little doubt that Thucydides has edited the speech at the very least. Thucydides says early in his History that the speeches presented are not verbatim records, but are intended to represent the main ideas of what was said and what was, according to Thucydides, "called for in the situation". Pericles
Pericles
Pericles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of Athens during the city's Golden Age—specifically, the time between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars...
likely delivered a speech at the end of the first year of the war, but there is no consensus as to what degree Thucydides' record resembles Pericles' actual speech. Another confusing factor is that Pericles is known to have delivered another funeral oration in 440 BC
440 BC
Year 440 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Macerinus and Lanatus...
during the Samian War
Samian War
The Samian War was an Ancient Greek military conflict between Athens and Samos. The war was initiated by Athens' intervention in a dispute between Samos and Miletus...
. It is possible that elements of both speeches are represented in Thucydides' version. Nevertheless Thucydides was extremely meticulous in his documentation, and records the varied certainty of his sources each time. Significantly he begins recounting the speech by saying: "Περικλῆς ὁ Ξανθίππου ... ἔλεγε τοιάδε", i.e. "Pericles, son of Xanthippos, spoke like this". Had he quoted the speech verbatim, he would have written "τάδε" ("this", or "these words") instead of "τοιάδε" ("like this" or "words like these"). The most likely possibility therefore is that Thucydides writes from his own memory of the event, in which case verbatim quotation is doubtful, though it is likely that Pericles' emblematic points have been faithfully recorded.
Content of the speech
The Funeral Oration is significant because the speech departs from the typical formula of Athenian funeral speeches. David Cartwright describes it as "a eulogy of Athens itself...". The speech is a glorification of Athens' achievements, designed to stir the spirits of a state still at war.Proemium (2.35)
The speech begins by praising the custom of the public funeral for the war dead, but criticizes the inclusion of the speech, arguing that the "reputations of many brave men" should "not be imperiled in the mouth of a single individual". Pericles argues that the speaker of the oration has the impossible task of satisfying the associates of the dead, who would wish that their deeds be magnified, while everyone else might feel jealous and suspect exaggeration.Praise of the Dead (2.36-2.42)
Pericles begins his praise of the war dead, as the other Athenian funeral orations do, by praising the ancestors of present day Athenians (2.36.1-2.36.3), touching briefly on the acquisition of the empireDelian League
The Delian League, founded in circa 477 BC, was an association of Greek city-states, members numbering between 150 to 173, under the leadership of Athens, whose purpose was to continue fighting the Persian Empire after the Greek victory in the Battle of Plataea at the end of the Greco–Persian Wars...
.
At this point, however, Pericles departs most dramatically from the example of other Athenian funeral orations and skips over the great martial achievements of Athens' past: "That part of our history which tells of the military achievements which gave us our several possessions, or of the ready valor with which either we or our fathers stemmed the tide of Hellenic or foreign aggression, is a theme too familiar to my hearers for me to dwell upon, and I shall therefore pass it by." Instead, Pericles proposes to focus on "the road by which we reached our position, the form of government under which our greatness grew, and the national habits out of which it sprang". This amounts to a focus on present day Athens; Thucydides' Pericles thus decides to praise the war dead by glorifying the city for which they died.
The Greatness of Athens
"If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences...if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbor for doing what he likes..." These lines form the roots of the famous phrase "equal justice under lawEqual justice under law
"Equal justice under law" is a phrase engraved on the front of the United States Supreme Court building in Washington D.C. This phrase was apparently first written in 1915 by the architectural firm that designed the building...
." The liberality of which Pericles spoke also extended to Athens' foreign policy: "We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality..." Yet Athens' values of equality and openness do not, according to Pericles, hinder Athens' greatness, indeed, they enhance it, "...advancement in public life falls to reputations for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit...our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters...at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger."
Pericles rises to crescendo in his praise of Athens, "In short, I say that as a city we are the school of Hellas; while I doubt if the world can produce a man, who where he has only himself to depend upon, is equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility as the Athenian." Finally, Pericles links his praise of the city to the dead Athenians for whom he is speaking, "...for the Athens that I have celebrated is only what the heroism of these and their like have made her...none of these men allowed either wealth with its prospect of future enjoyment to unnerve his spirit, or poverty with its hope of a day of freedom and riches to tempt him to shrink from danger. No, holding that vengeance upon their enemies was more to be desired than any personal blessings, and reckoning this to be the most glorious of hazards, they joyfully determined to accept the risk... Thus, choosing to die resisting, rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonor..." The conclusion seems inevitable: "Therefore, having judged that to be happy means to be free, and to be free means to be brave, do not shy away from the risks of war". With the linkage of Athens' greatness complete, Pericles moves to addressing his audience.
Exhortation to the living
Pericles then turns to the audience and exhorts them to live up to the standards set by the deceased, "So died these men as becomes Athenians. You, their survivors, must determine to have as unaltering a resolution in the field, though you may pray that it may have a happier outcome."Epilogue
Pericles ends with a short epilogue, reminding the audience of the difficulty of the task of speaking over the dead.The audience is then dismissed.
Language and translations
Thucydides' Greek is notoriously difficult, but the language of Pericles Funeral Oration is considered by many to be the most difficult and virtuosic passage in the History. The speech is full of rhetorical devices, such as antithesisAntithesis
Antithesis is a counter-proposition and denotes a direct contrast to the original proposition...
, anacoluthon
Anacoluthon
An anacoluthon is a rhetorical device that can be loosely defined as a change of syntax within a sentence. More specifically, anacoluthons are created when a sentence abruptly changes from one structure to another. Grammatically, anacoluthon is an error; however, in rhetoric it is a figure that...
, asyndeton
Asyndeton
Asyndeton is a stylistic scheme in which conjunctions are deliberately omitted from a series of related clauses. Examples are veni, vidi, vici and its English translation "I came, I saw, I conquered." Its use can have the effect of speeding up the rhythm of a passage and making a single idea more...
, anastrophe
Anastrophe
Anastrophe is a figure of speech in which a language's usual word order is inverted: for example, saying "smart you are" to mean "you are smart"....
, hyperbaton
Hyperbaton
Hyperbaton is a figure of speech in which words that naturally belong together are separated from each other for emphasis or effect. This kind of unnatural or rhetorical separation is possible to a much greater degree in highly inflected languages, where sentence meaning does not depend closely...
, and others; most famously the rapid succession of proparoxytone
Proparoxytone
Proparoxytone is a linguistic term for a word with stress on the antepenultimate syllable, e.g the English words cinema and operational. Related terms are paroxytone and oxytone .In English, most nouns of three or more syllables are proparoxtones...
words beginning with e ("το εύδαιμον το ελεύθερον το δ' ελεύθερον το εύψυχον") at the climax of the speech. The style is deliberately elaborate, in accord with the stylistical preference associated with the sophists. There are several different English translations of the speech available.
Modern parallels of the Pericles' Funeral Oration
American Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
scholar Garry Wills
Garry Wills
Garry Wills is a Pulitzer Prize-winning and prolific author, journalist, and historian, specializing in American politics, American political history and ideology and the Roman Catholic Church. Classically trained at a Jesuit high school and two universities, he is proficient in Greek and Latin...
addresses the parallels of Pericles' funeral oration to Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
's famous speech the Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg Address
The Gettysburg Address is a speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and is one of the most well-known speeches in United States history. It was delivered by Lincoln during the American Civil War, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery...
. Lincoln's speech, like Pericles', begins with an acknowledgment of revered predecessors: "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent..."; Lincoln, like Pericles, then praises the uniqueness of the State's commitment to democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
: "..a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal...government of the people, by the people, and for the people..."; Lincoln, like Pericles, addresses the difficulties faced by a speaker on such an occasion, "...we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground"; Lincoln, like Pericles, exhorts the survivors to emulate the deeds of the dead, "It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the great task remaining before us"; and finally, Lincoln, like Pericles, contrasts the efficacy of words and deeds, "The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract...The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here." It is uncertain to what degree Lincoln was directly influenced by Pericles' Funeral Oration. Wills never claims that Lincoln drew on it as a source, though Edward Everett
Edward Everett
Edward Everett was an American politician and educator from Massachusetts. Everett, a Whig, served as U.S. Representative, and U.S. Senator, the 15th Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to Great Britain, and United States Secretary of State...
, who delivered a lengthy oration at the same ceremony at Gettysburg, began by describing the "Athenian example".