Athens Should be Admired According to Funeral Oration Speech How did Cleisthenes reform Athenian democracy? The model of how democracy began is also a study in how it can founder and fall. THUCYDIDES gives Pericles very little to say in his Funeral Oration about the political institutions of Athenian democracy. What is the overarching theme of the funeral oration of Pericles and what does it tell us about classical Greek culture and ideals? 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. .But in Sparta anyone would be ashamed to dine or to wrestle with a coward. It was given in the 5th-century by Pericles. This is no doubt in keeping with his principle of having the speakers in his history t& 6Eovta Eindtv, that is, speak those things that were suit-able for the occasion.1 For we know that the unwritten rules of the In 461 B.C., he joined the reformer Ephialtes in organizing a vote in the popular assembly that stripped all remaining powers from the Areopagus, the old noble council. 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. The new democracies will, therefore, need leaders in the Periclean mold, leaders who know that the aim and character of true democracy should be to elevate their citizens to the highest attainable level, and that cutting down the greatest to assuage the envy of the least is the way of tyranny. Thucydides fervently supported Periclesbut was less enthusiastic about the institution of democracy. Pericles was born into an aristocratic family in Athens in 495 BC. Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Thucydides (c. 460/455c. At the same time, he intended to create a quality of life never before known, one that would allow men to pursue their private interests but also enable them to seek the highest goals by placing their interests at the service of a city that fostered and relied upon reason for its greatness. Democracy favors the many instead of the few and Pericles believes justice is achieved when citizens follow those laws in which they have the freedom to participate in public life. Such a vision and such leadership are not readily available in our era. Pericles believed these should be the goals for every Athenian to live and die for. Pericles Funeral Oration in Depth - PBS In a democracy, citizens behave lawfully while doing what they like without fear of prying eyes. was the sight of people dying like sheep through having caught the disease as a result of nursing others. Neither medicine nor quackery helped. In what does happiness lie? Death is the end; beyond it is silence and darkness. The Funeral Oration was delivered during a war that was clearly going to continue for some time. Neither rich man nor poor is prevented from taking part in politics by the pursuit of his economic interests, and the same people are concerned both with their own private business and with political matters; even those who turn their attention chiefly to their own affairs do not lack judgment about politics. The Persian War, begun as an ill-considered gesture in 499, could be considered ultimately successful. Whereas, Lysias supports the restoration of democracy because he believes that fighting for equality and rising up in rebellion is worthwhile. In the speech he honoured the fallen and held up Athenian democracy as an example to the rest of Greece. Greek noblemen lived by the ideal of the accomplished amateur: good at a variety of skillsmusic, athletics, warfare, among othersbut professionally devoted to none. Pericles was a leader and lawmaker in ancient Athens. While Athens was Updates? The Athenians gave him a public burial on the spot where he fell [only the men who died at Marathon received the same extraordinary honor] (1.30). Pericles was first to honour Athens' dead in his Funeral Oration after the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC. And it is right to judge those most courageous who understand both the pleasures and the terrors involved most clearly and yet do not turn away from dangers as a result (2.40.3). For their food, the Spartans relied on the helots slaves of the Spartan state who out-numbered the Spartans by at least seven to one, bitterly hated their masters, and, in the words of the fourth-century writer Xenophon would gladly eat them raw (Hellenica 3.3.6). In a book packed with battle, conquest, and massacre, Thucydides account of the plague is especially horrifying. Pericles stirring funeral oration is among the most famous passages of Thucydides. We have no need of a Homer to praise us or of anyone else whose words will delight us for the moment but whose account of the facts will be discredited by the truth. It depends. Above all, Pericles helped the Athenians to understand that their private needs, both moral and material, required the kind of community Athens had become. Had he quoted the speech verbatim, he would have written "" ("this", or "these words") instead of "" ("like this" or "words like these"). In 451 or 450 Pericles carried a law confining Athenian citizenship to those of Athenian parentage on both sides. 86 Copy quote. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Pericles' Funeral Oration can be compared to several more modern speeches, most notably Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. 1, Routledge, 2016. As Thucydides recounts Pericles claiming in a famous speech, "Our natural bravery springs from our way of life, not from the compulsion of laws.We are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the arts without loss of manliness." Leading up to this oration, the people of Athens, including those from the countryside whose land was being pillaged by their enemies, were kept in crowded conditions within the walls of Athens. We alone regard the man who takes no part in politics not as someone who minds his own business but as useless. The new and emerging democracies of our time are very fragile, and they all face serious challenges. Achilles came to fight at Troy not for any national, ethnic, or communal cause but for his own purposes: to obtain booty seized from captured cities and to display the heroic excellence that Homer called arete. Where their system of democracy allowed them to have a voice amongst those who made important decisions that would affect them. He speaks of the ancestors with great honor and valor and that it was them who gave birth to Athens. [12] 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.[13]. Pericles, (born c. 495 bce, Athensdied 429, Athens), Athenian statesman largely responsible for the full development, in the later 5th century bce, of both the Athenian democracy and the Athenian empire, making Athens the political and cultural focus of Greece. Plato asserted that democracy unjustly distributes a sort of equality to equal and unequal alike (Republic 55C), and Aristotle later claimed that in democracies justice is the enjoyment of arithmetical equality, and not the enjoyment of proportionate equality on the basis of merit (Politics 1317b). "[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". Previously, only the wealthy could afford the time to participate in politics. But archaeology is confirming that Persia's engineering triumph was real. 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. We thought we knew turtles. He was one of those rare individuals who do not merely accept the conditions of the world they find but try to shape it to an image in their own minds. While the theme of the History was the Greco-Persian Wars, Herodotuss purpose was far broader and enduring: in order that the deeds of men not be erased by time, and that the great and miraculous works not go unrecorded., Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic SocietyCopyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. [8] It is possible that elements of both speeches are represented in Thucydides's version. Why Was Athens Defeated? Prior to the plague's devastation, Athenians were already dying as a result of the war. In a funeral oration in 430 bce for those who had fallen in the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian leader Pericles described democratic Athens as "the school of Hellas." Among the city's many exemplary qualities, he declared, was its constitution, which "favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a . "Pericles, son of Xanthippos, spoke like this". Most poleis had aristocratic or oligarchic governments, but they were ruled by laws arrived at in discussions in the sovereign assemblies, and they were executed by councils and magistrates selected by the citizens from among themselves. [6] He enabled civic participation by subsidizing service on juries and also for other civil roles. Athenians were already packed into the city as a wartime measure, and frightened people fleeing the countryside crowded it even further, creating conditions we now know are ripe for contagion. Those who wish to help them grow and flourish, as well as those who worry for the future of the older democracies, troubled again, strangely enough, by a growing allegiance to family, tribe, and clan at the expense of the commonwealth, could do worse than to turn for inspiration and instruction to the story of Pericles of Athens and his city, where once, against all odds, a noble democracy triumphed. Many of the qualities and characteristics envisioned by Pericles are related to military excellence, as is natural in a speech delivered in wartime to encourage the struggle for victory. Thought is not a barrier to the achievement of heroic goals. Analysis of Pericles Speeches - PHDessay.com He was so important to Athens that his name defines the Periclean age ("The Age of Pericles"), a period when Athens rebuilt what had been destroyed during the recent war with Persia (the Greco-Persian or Persian Wars). In 430429 B.C.E., a mysterious epidemic ravaged Athens, plunging the city into chaos. Finally, Pericles revels in the variety available to the citizens of Athensan object of scorn to Plato, but another quality, we must remember, normally associated with aristocracy. 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. This famous speech was given by the Athenian leader Pericles after the first battles of the Peloponnesian war. That Pericles skull was of unusual shape seems well attested, but one can hardly speculate about the possible psychological consequences. (Athens was only a democracy for adult, male citizens of Athenian descent, not for women or slaves, or for foreigners living under imperial rule.) The stakes of our own vulnerability are no different. . .In the streets he must get out of the way. The first known date in his life is 472 bce, when he paid for the production of the playwright Aeschylus Persian trilogy. The city was blanketed with corpses. At any rate, Pericles eventually succumbed to and died from this plague. From him Pericles may have inherited a leaning toward the people, along with landed property at Cholargus, just north of Athens, which put him high, though not quite at the highest level, on the Athenian pyramid of wealth.
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