Instead, survivors looked for already burning funeral pyres, adding friends and relatives to the blaze. One can recognize this dichotomy by analyzing the utilization of foils in Pericles. Pericles therefore asserts that we conduct our public life as free men [eleuthero.i] (2.37.2). In the following speech, Pericles made these points about democracy: Baird, Forrest E., editor. In Athenians society, one of the important custom is their funeral. If they ever failed in some attempt, they were determined that, at least, their city should not be deprived of their courage [arete] and gave her the most beautiful of all offerings. He says that Athens's democracy ensures justice for all its citizens but also encourages excellence in individuals. To approach a question 400 million years in the making, researchers turned to mudskippers, blinking fish that live partially out of water. We continue to admire Athenss architectural splendor, stage its tragedies and comedies, and marvel, especially, at much that its democracy (the worlds first) wrought: participatory government, equal treatment before the law in private disputes, a distaste for class consciousness, juries made up of citizens, and tolerance about others personal lives. Some time in the eighth century the polis emerged, and its needs at once came into conflict with the old heroic ethos. "Pericles' Funeral Oration - Thucydides' Version." His selection as public orator was thus a tribute to his stature, reputation, and political power. Democracys critics also pointed to a perverted individualism that was called liberty but was really license and lawlessness. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. For the first time in history a Greek state could conduct its life and plan for the future in the expectation of a lasting peace. The bones were kept for the funeral at the end of the year. How do we reverse the trend? 6th ed., vol. Cleon's rhetoric resembles that of Herodotus' Sosicles, the Corinthian delegate to the Peloponnesian assembly after the Peisistratids' fall, who uses images of An even greater substitution for the glories of war could be found in the exercise by each Athenian of his political duties. In a democracy . 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. The arts and philosophy also flourished during Pericles reign, when Socrates and the playwrights Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes produced some of their finest works. He maneuvered Athens to primacy over other league members, first by transferring the leagues treasury to Athens in 454 B.C. In a democracy, there is equal justice for all in private disputes. Approaching 50, he began a relationship withAspasiaofMiletus. The more immediate challenge to the democratic vision came from Sparta. left his mark on the world in far more ways than the iconic Acropolis that still defines the skyline of Athens. ", "Louis Warren, "Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: An Evaluation" (Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co. 1946), p. 18", "The New York Review of Books: The Art of Abraham Lincoln", An English translation of Pericles's Funeral Oration, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pericles%27_Funeral_Oration&oldid=1145831230, Begins with an acknowledgement of revered predecessors: "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent", Praises the uniqueness of the State's commitment to, Addresses the difficulties faced by a speaker on such an occasion, "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground", 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", 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 detractThe world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. [6] He enabled civic participation by subsidizing service on juries and also for other civil roles. 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. In early Athens, as in most of the Greek cities, political participation came to represent a crucial distinction between a free man and gentleman on the one hand, and a slave or churl on the other. It was still open to each man to seek satisfaction in the pursuit of his own interests and those of his family, if necessary at the expense of the polis. But I should have preferred that, when men's . Instead, we put our trust not in secret weapons, but in our own courage when we are called upon to act. But the Funeral Oration was intended to inspire the Athenians with a vision of excellence that justified their current efforts. . Pericles was a famous Greek general. He wasnt wrong. We thought we knew turtles. On the contrary, we have forced every sea and land to become an entrance for our daring, and we have everywhere established permanent monuments of the harm we have done our enemies and the good we have done for our friends (2.4l.4). Under the hands of Pericles, Thucydides thought democracy could be controlled, but without him, it could be dangerous. [21], 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. When tested, the Athenians behaved with the required devotion, wisdom, and moderation in large part because they had been inspired by the lofty democratic vision and example that Pericles had so effectively communicated to them. Under his leadership Atheniandemocracyand the Athenian empire flourished, makingAthensthe political and cultural focus of Greece between the Greco-Persian and Peloponnesian wars. .he may not wander about comfortably acting like someone with a clean reputation or else he is beaten by his betters. Pericles stirring funeral oration is among the most famous passages of Thucydides. Axolotls and capybaras are TikTok famousis that a problem? It might have been smallpox, a fungal poisoning called ergotism, or something worse. Persuasive Oratory: Pericles was known for his eloquent speeches and persuasive oratory skills. In his speech, he talked about Athenian democracy. For they gave their lives for the common good. Pericles begins by praising the dead, as the other Athenian funeral orations do, by regard the ancestors of present-day Athenians (2.36.12.36.3), touching briefly on the acquisition of the empire. Politicians in search of scapegoats would be wise to recall Pericles, who said, before the plague, What I fear is not the enemys strength, but our own mistakes.. [b] Another confusing factor is that Pericles is known to have delivered another funeral oration in 440BCE during the Samian War. Thucydides, Pericles' Funeral Oration. 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. Unfortunately, the 27-year-long Peloponnesian War resulted in great losses for Athens. Nobody knows what the plague was, although classically minded epidemiologists still debate its cause. How to see the Lyrid meteor shower at its peak, 6 unforgettable Italy hotels, from Lake Como to Rome, A taste of Rioja, from crispy croquettas to piquillo peppers, Trek through this stunning European wilderness, Land of the lemurs: the race to save Madagascar's sacred forests, See how life evolved at Australias new national park. Please select which sections you would like to print: Professor of Ancient History, University of Oxford, 198594. Nothing further is known until 463, when he unsuccessfully prosecuted Cimon, the leading general and statesman of the day, on a charge of having neglected a chance to conquer Macedonia; this implies that Pericles advocated an aggressive policy of expansion for Athens. The outbreak of war among the Greek states in 459 put a premium on military talent, and Pericles only recorded campaign in the next few years was a naval expedition in the Corinthian Gulf in 454, in which Athens defeated Achaea but failed to win more important objectives. 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. 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. In the few of his speeches we have, Pericles spoke chiefly of the empire and military glory, and these were certainly important values to him and the Athenians. The world has been astounded to see thin shoots of democracy trying to break through the hard surface of oppression. The highest reward is the kind of immortality that was once reserved for epic heroes but which now has come to the Athenian soldiers who have died in the service of their city, and which Pericles urges the living to earn for themselves: They gave their lives for the common good and thereby won for themselves the praise that never grows old and the most distinguished of all graves, not those in which they lie, but where their glory remains in eternal memory, always there at the right time to inspire speech and action. Business, Men, Mind. Pericles, a great supporter of democracy, was a Greek leader and statesman during the Peloponnesian War. He stated that the soldiers who died gave their lives to protect the city of Athens, its citizens, and its freedom. 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. Knowledge of the life of Pericles derives largely from two sources. . By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. From time to time the helots would break out in revolt, threatening the very existence of Sparta. Wars were frequent, and in order to survive and flourish each polis required devotion and sacrifice from its citizens. This new faith will be especially hard to instill in societies that have learned to be cynical about the use of political idealism. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. They would have been appalled by Platos notion that each man should do the one thing for which he was best suited, and so would the Athenians described by Pericles. They excluded money, the arts and sciences, philosophy, aesthetic pleasures, and the life of the mind in general, for all these things might foster individualism and detract from devotion to the polis. Many Athenians blamed the calamity on their Spartan enemies, spreading dark rumors of poisoned reservoirs. In these ways our city deserves to be admired (2.39). Why was Pericles talking about democracy during this speech? Gill is a Latinist, writer, and teacher of ancient history and Latin. 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. How could the ordinary man achieve kleos? ThoughtCo. [a], The Funeral Oration was recorded by Thucydides in book two of his famous History of the Peloponnesian War. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes"[15] These lines form the roots of the famous phrase "equal justice under law." Nor did they believe in personal immortality, in which death is a blessing, a release from a painful and wretched life and admission to paradise. Only in ancient Athens and in the United States so far has democracy lasted for as much as two hundred years. It is from the greatest dangers that the greatest glories are to be won, he stated in front of the assembly. It was a vision that exalted the individual within the political community not by what it gave him but by what it expected of him. "Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now." - Pericles. That if anyone should ask, they should look at their final moments when they gave their lives to their country and that should leave no doubt in the mind of the doubtful. Pericles (l. 495-429 BCE) was a prominent Greek statesman, orator, and general during the Golden Age of Athens. By sharing in the common responsibility he was able to develop powers and aspects of himself that allowed him to become more fully human than he could have on his own. According to Lincoln, democracy means " Government of the people, by the people and for the people," (Nicolay, 209). Men must put aside their petty wants and look at what is best for the state as a whole. 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. They need leaders who understand that individual freedom, self-government, and equality before the law are of the highest value in themselves. The polis was a political community and a sovereign entity competing in a world of similar communities. The speech that Pericles delivers is such a dramatic departure from the customary oration that it is often considered a eulogy of Athens itself. He was too scrupulous to blame the epidemic on the Spartansan ancient reproach to those today who try to pin blame on foreign rivals. Yet an Athenian reared in the Homeric tradition could also ask, How can I achieve kleos and thereby a chance at immortality? To honor the gods for the victory and to glorify Athens, Pericles proposed using the Delian Leagues treasury to mount an unprecedented building campaign. The law also may have passed because of a general wish to restrict access to the benefits of office and public distributions, but there was never any disposition on the part of Athenians to restrict economic opportunities for foreignerswho served in the fleet, worked on public buildings, and had freedom of trade and investment, with the crucial, but normal, exception of land and houses. He perceives Athens as a city with virtue, modesty, and modernization. Bequeathed, too, was his innovative approach of conducting an orderly, thorough examination of the past to explain the causesand outcomesof past events. Thought is not a barrier to the achievement of heroic goals. . Pericles ends with a short epilogue, reminding the audience of the difficulty of the task of speaking over the dead. The satisfaction of these passions normally implies extraordinary inequality; yet Pericles believed it could be achieved by the citizens of a democracy based on legal and political equality. The policy of war with Persia was abandoned and a formal peace probably made. 476 Words. 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. In the speech he honoured the fallen and held up Athenian democracy as an example to the rest of Greece. When a plague broke out, an estimated 20,000 people diedincluding Pericles and his two legitimate sons. Book 2, chapter 63: Pericles' third speech. Thucydides' funeral speech about democracy delivered by Pericles. She was also niece to the father of Athenian democracy, Cleisthenes. We say he has no business being here at all. He was seen as encouraging and enabling the participation of ordinary citizens in the democratic process, not only as electors but as active participants. The Spartans were famous for their piety and reverence for law, and their blind obedience to it was thought to be the source of their great military prowess. Where their system of democracy allowed them to have a voice amongst those who made important decisions that would affect them. 399 BCE): Pericles's Funeral Oration from the Peloponnesian War (Book 2.3446)", "What new music are you singing these days? Even more simply, it is a democracy because while Athenians "are free and tolerant in our private lives, in public affairs we keep to the law. But they are won by and for all the citizens of democratic Athens, and Pericles does not hesitate to assert the superiority of this collective achievement, going so far as to reject the need for an epic poet to guarantee its renown: We have provided great evidences of our power, and it is not without witnesses; we are the objects of wonder today and will be in the future. Many are now confronting long-suppressed ethnic divisions that threaten to destroy the needed unity and harmony. According to Pericles speech, Athenians had great respect for their warrior class and they were proud of their city and its customs. Such a vision and such leadership are not readily available in our era. But a free and democratic people, one not constantly fearful of deadly rebellions by furious helots, cannot simply be told permanently to subordinate their personal pursuits to the needs of society. "If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differencesif a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The image and example of the prosperous, free nations of the world, conveyed to their people by modern technology, has meanwhile raised material expectations to unrealistic levels. democracy the best source is the series of panegyrics on Athens. In the face of this reputation, and in the teeth of its critics, who charged democracy especially with indiscipline and lawlessness, Pericles makes the claim for a higher obedience to law than was characteristic of the Spartans. It was translated into English in 1628 by Thomas Hobbes, and has since been cited by heads of state from Woodrow Wilson to Xi Jinping. was the sight of people dying like sheep through having caught the disease as a result of nursing others. Neither medicine nor quackery helped. The average citizen could not look even to his polis for the satisfaction of his greatest spiritual needs. It was a great center of cultural and intellectual development, and thus home to philosophers. Our educations are different, too. We regard wealth as something to be properly used, rather than as something to boast about. That conception ran counter to Greek experience, which had always been full of turbulence and warfare. Welcome as this prospect was, it nonetheless presented a problem. The new and emerging democracies of our time are very fragile, and they all face serious challenges. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Updates? The city was blanketed with corpses. His position rested on his continual reelection to the generalship and on hisprestige, based, according to Thucydides, on his intelligence and incorruptibility. He speaks of the ancestors with great honor and valor and that it was them who gave birth to Athens. Photograph by James P. Blair, Nat Geo Image Collection. Therefore, he proceeds to point out that the greatest honour and act of valour in Athens is to live and die for freedom of the state Pericles believed was different and more special than any other neighbouring city. Alcohol-free bars, no-booze cruises, and other tools can help you enjoy travel without the hangover. Author of. In fact, Pericles sees Athens as having the ultimate possible government; the one best conducive to freedom, liberty, courage, honor, and justice - the values most honored by the Athenians. Pericles' funeral oration has exercised a permanent fascination on the political imagination of the West. The theory of democracy Democratic ideas from Pericles to Rawls Pericles. 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. They were a very small minority of the total population over which they ruled. The Athenians, on the other hand, respected a broader and fairer concept of the law, with no less reverence: While we are tolerant in our private lives, in public affairs we do not break the law chiefly because of our respect for it. Although all the men of the Spartiate class were called homoioi (peers), the kings had special privileges, and there was a class of noblemen distinct from the others. They followed a written code that was exclusively in the interest of the ruling class. Pericles's speech first gave praise to the ancestors, for which they are the people who built the city from the ground up and fought for democracy. 86 Copy quote. (Athens was only a democracy for adult, male citizens of Athenian descent, not for women or slaves, or for foreigners living under imperial rule.) 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). Pericles married in his late 20s but divorced some 10 years later. 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. https://www.thoughtco.com/pericles-funeral-oration-thucydides-version-111998 (accessed May 1, 2023). A woman's greatest glory is to be little talked about by men, whether for good or ill. Solon, an Athenian lawmaker of the early sixth century, went further, arguing that a well-governed polis was the best defense against injustice, faction, and turmoil: It makes all things wise and perfect in the world of men.. He goes on to talk about Athenian lifestyle and recreation, as to further position Athens as the height of civilization. . He had made the strategic judgment that the empire as it stood was large enough to meet all the citys needs. The citizen of a free society has the right to ask, Why should I risk my life for my city? Athens was one of the most important and powerful cities in the ancient world. 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. Here is that speech: Rats invaded paradise. .But in Sparta anyone would be ashamed to dine or to wrestle with a coward. Pericles. Plato and Aristotle wrote long after the death of Pericles, and it is by no means clear that these descriptions fit the real Athenian democracy at any time. Twenty-five hundred years later we remember him and his fellow-Athenians precisely because of their devotion to this great civic endeavor. Pericles attitude towards life and death as an Athenian citizen was to preserve the freedoms that they have developed through the formation of a democracy. They did not believe that man was entirely trivial, a mere bit of dust in the vast Cosmic order, such that his passing was a thing of no account. The oration articulates ancient democratic theory, and the picture of democracy it describes serves as a model for democratic states even today.1 In a seminal piece of work, Clifford Orwin has argued in his book, The Humanity of Thucydides that Pericles' third speech, delivered to the Athenian populace after the outbreak of the plague represents Why Was Athens Defeated? In 1985, a New England Journal of Medicine article argued that it was a combination of influenza and staphylococcus, dubbed the Thucydides syndrome. A 1994 article in the American Journal of Epidemiology rejected that diagnosis, proposing, instead, typhus, anthrax, or perhaps a potentially explosive respiratory agent.. The gaps are partly filled by the Greek writer Plutarch, who, 500 years later, began writing the life of Pericles to illustrate a man of unchallengeable virtue and greatness at grips with the fickleness of the mob and finished rather puzzled by the picture he found in his sources of Pericles responsibility for a needless war. In contrast, Pericles, via his funeral oration speech, believes that democracy is better ruled by many rather than few. The older was the aristocratic image that emerged from the epic poems of Homer and dominated Greek society for hundreds of years. The Spartan way of life inspired admiration in many other Greeks, though none went so far as to adopt the Spartan system.
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pericles speech on democracy