[11] The speech glorifies Athens' achievements, designed to stir the spirits of a state still at war. In contrast, Pericles, via his funeral oration speech, believes that democracy is better ruled by many rather than few. They lived without the comfort of the two major devices that other cultures have used to evade that terrible truth. Throughout Pericles, Prince of Tyre, there exists a blatant dichotomy between good and evil. One hundred years later, an orator argued for firm distinctions of status on the ground that the law provided even the poorest Athenian girl with a dowry in the form of her citizenship. According to Thucydides, Pericles' funeral oration said that democracy makes it so people can better themselves through merit rather than class or money. to turn the rocky hill known as the Acropolis into a breathtaking temple complex. Support for Democratic Institutions: Pericles was a strong advocate for democracy and supported the . Pericles. Here Pericles has identified a critical element of his vision for Athens: its commitment to reason and intelligence. Pericles was among its victims. Athens is called a democracy because the many rule, not the few; everyone knew that in Sparta a small minority dominated the vast majority. During the war, even in its darkest moments, Pericles could count on a strong response when he reminded the people that they were right to love their city and even to risk their lives for it, because it was uniquely great, and because only by preserving and enhancing it could the ordinary man share in its glory and so achieve a degree of fame and immortality. The most famous of these, Pericles' Funeral Speech, as recorded by Thucydides, is also the most instructive; its peculiarities of diction and its general tone, which is in conflict with Thucydides' own outlook, suggest that it is a fairly faithful reproduction of what Pericles . She has been featured by NPR and National Geographic for her ancient history expertise. To win the necessary devotion, the cityor rather its leaders, poets, and teachersmust show that its demands are compatible with the needs of the citizen, and even better, that the city is needed to achieve his own goals. And in his last recorded speech in 430, although its intention was to persuade the Athenians to keep fighting, he said: For those who are prospering and who have a choice, going to war is folly (2.61.1). The kind of man formed by such a constitution reflects its shortcomings: He lives from day to day indulging the appetite of the hour; and sometimes he is lapped in drink and strains of the flute; then he becomes a water-drinker and tries to get thin; then he takes a turn at gymnastics; sometimes idling and neglecting everything, then once more living the life of a philosopher; often he is busy with politics, and starts to his feet and says and does whatever comes into his head; and, if he is emulous of anyone who is a warrior, off he is in that direction, or men of business, once more in that. "Pericles's Funeral Oration" (Ancient Greek: ) is a famous speech from Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. The rewards conferred by these aristocratic virtues are precisely those sought by the epic heroes: greatness, power, honor, fame. Plato, in his Menexenus, ascribes authorship to Pericles's companion, Aspasia.[9]. Death is the end; beyond it is silence and darkness. Near the start of the Peloponnesian War, a plague swept the city. We regard wealth as something to be properly used, rather than as something to boast about. Previously, only the wealthy could afford the time to participate in politics. You, their survivors, must determine to have as unfaltering a resolution in the field, though you may pray that it may have a happier outcome. Repeated failures had taught the Persians they could not challenge Athenian naval power, while adherence to the right strategya refusal to fight a large land battledeprived Sparta and its allies of any hope for victory. Some were acquired by effort; others were simply a gift of irrational fate. The average citizen could not look even to his polis for the satisfaction of his greatest spiritual needs. Pericles' mother was related to the controversial noble family of Alcmaeniode. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Gill, N.S. Although limited to adult males of native parentage, Athenian citizenship granted full and active participation in every decision of the state without regard to wealth or class. Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility. Pericles ends with a short epilogue, reminding the audience of the difficulty of the task of speaking over the dead. In his speech, Pericles states that he had been emphasising the greatness of Athens in order to convey that the citizens of Athens must continue to support the war, to show them that what they were fighting for was of the utmost importance. While the rest of the world continued to be characterized by monarchical, rigidly hierarchical, command societies, democracy in Athens was carried as far as it would go before modern times, perhaps further than at any other place and time. Because as they are described by Pericles, Athenian citizens were distinct from the citizens of other nations they were open minded, tolerant, and ready to understand and follow orders. A dynasty or tyranny or clique may be deposed, but it is invariably replaced by another or by a chaotic anarchy that ends in the establishment of some kind of command society. 13. Please select which sections you would like to print: Professor of Ancient History, University of Oxford, 198594. His Alcmaeonid mother, Agariste, provided him with relationships of sharply diminishing political value and her family curse, a religious defilement that was occasionally used against him by his enemies. In the following speech Pericles made these points about democracy: Democracy allows men to advance because of merit rather than wealth or inherited class. Here are popular Pericles quotes about that time. The ancient Greek Herodotus is considered by many to be the father of history. It is from his groundbreaking work, the History, that our modern meaning of the word was handed down through time. In the speech he honoured the fallen and held up Athenian democracy as an example to the rest of Greece. Pericles Quotes - BrainyQuote At any rate, Pericles eventually succumbed to and died from this plague. This text is an excerpt from the National Geographic special issue, The little-known history of the Florida panther. [a], The Funeral Oration was recorded by Thucydides in book two of his famous History of the Peloponnesian War. He stated that the soldiers who died gave their lives to protect the city of Athens, its citizens, and its freedom. "For the love of honor alone is ever young, and not riches, as some say, but honor is the delight of men when they are old and useless." - Pericles, 'Pericles' Funeral Oration'. [2] The speech was supposed to have been delivered by Pericles, an eminent Athenian politician, at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War (431404BCE) as a part of the annual public funeral for the war dead. Pericles, the author of the speech, was a general of Athens in the fifth century BCE. To cope with this threat the Spartans turned their polis into a military academy and an armed camp, giving up the normal pleasures of life and devoting themselves entirely to the state. With the linkage of Athens' greatness complete, Pericles moves to addressing his audience. Several funeral orations from classical Athens are extant, which seem to corroborate Thucydides' assertion that this was a regular feature of Athenian funerary custom in wartime. [8] It is possible that elements of both speeches are represented in Thucydides's version. Pericles was a famous Greek general. In the climax of his praise of Athens, Pericles declares: "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. Monarchy and different forms of despotism, on the other hand, have gone on for millennia. It is clear that Pericles views democracy as the best form of government and having adopted it, he views Athens as superior to their fellow city-states. 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". 29, 2021, thoughtco.com/pericles-funeral-oration-thucydides-version-111998. A reconstruction of Pericles' house from The Greeks documentary. . The stakes of our own vulnerability are no different. Instead, it opened the competition for excellence and honor to all, removing the accidental barriers imposed in other constitutions and societies: Our city is called a democracy because it is governed by the many, not the few. "a Take on the Pericles' and Socrates' Views on - StudyMode According to Pericles, what were the characteristics of Athenian democracy? In fact, it is a prerequisite for them, for the brave deeds performed by enraged heroes who give no thought to danger are, by his definition, not brave at all. Homeric virtues and values, therefore, were worldly and personal. 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 he edited the speech at the very least. The ancient Greek statesman Pericles (ca 495429 B.C.) The arrival of the Sophist philosophers in Athens occurred during his middle life, and he seems to have taken full advantage of the society of Zeno and particularly Anaxagoras, from whom he is said to have learned impassivity in the face of trouble and insult and skepticism about alleged divine phenomena. PDF Political Myth and Action in Pericles' Funeral Oration It existed for only two centuries in Athens and less than that in a small number of Greek states. We are not angry with our neighbor if he does what pleases him, and we dont glare at him which, even if it is harmless, is a painful sight (2.37.2). In the following speech, Pericles made these points about democracy: Democracy allows men to advance because of merit rather than wealth or inherited class. . Politically he is credited with some kind of rapprochement with Cimon, who is said to have been recalled and allowed to resume the war with Persia, much preferred to fighting other Greeks, but the date of Cimons recall is uncertain, and the rumours are hard to disentangle. Spartas great reputation depended on its extraordinary military achievements, and these were attributed in turn to its religious piety, single-minded severe system of training, the tight discipline imposed on all aspects of life, and the ascetic Spartan mores. They followed a written code that was exclusively in the interest of the ruling class. Corrections? American Civil War scholars Louis Warren and Garry Wills have addressed the parallels of Pericles's funeral oration to Abraham Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address. His account suffers from the fact that, 40 years younger, he had no firsthand knowledge of Pericles early career; it suffers also from his approach, which concentrates exclusively on Pericles intellectual capacity and his war leadership, omitting biographical details, which Thucydides thought irrelevant to his theme. "[14] 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". The catastrophe was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what would happen next to them, became indifferent to every rule of religion or of law, Thucydides wrote. Like Pericles' Funeral Oration, Cleon's analysis of democracy becomes most interesting when it gives its author's view of the basis of the 11 Thuc. Far from eulogizing Pericles in the Funeral Oration, Pericles is subtly depicted as a tyrant, a demagogue, a despot who became a despot by his exploitation of the erotic character of humansan erotic character which the Athenians unleashed in the Persian Wars and then unleashed over the Mediterranean in a vain and tyrannical bid for an empire. His political program allowed all Athenian citizens to take part in government, to help guide their own destinies and those of their polis, as befits free men, to pursue their own prosperity and happiness in a broad realm of privacy, free of interference and confiscation by the state yet held to a high standard of ethical behavior in the role of a citizen. [b] Another confusing factor is that Pericles is known to have delivered another funeral oration in 440BCE during the Samian War. He says that Athens's democracy ensures justice for all its citizens but also encourages excellence in individuals. Older, better established democracies have the same needs if they are not to become the aimless, selfish, unstable, and doomed perversions of the Periclean vision described by Plato and Aristotle. Pericles incorporates obviously corrupt characters that contrast . . The Spartan imposed a property qualification for participation in public life; any Athenian citizen could sit on juries or the council and vote and speak in the assembly.