Pericles Funeral Oration
PERICLES’ FUNERAL ORATION
PERICLES’ FUNERAL ORATION
THUCYDIDES (c. 470–c. 400 BC)
During a twenty-year exile from Athens which he incurred as the leader of a failed military campaign in 423, ucydides spent his time writing a history of the Peloponnesian War. In the first book of his History, he tells us about his method and purpose:
Of the events of the war I have not ventured to speak from any chance information, nor according to any notion of my own; I have described nothing but what I either saw myself, or learned from others of whom I made the most careful and particular inquiry.
e task was a laborious one, because eye-witnesses of the same occurrences gave different accounts of them, as they remembered or were interested in the actions of one side or the other. And very likely the strictly historical character of my narrative may be disappointing to the ear. But if he who desires to have before his eyes a true picture of the events which have happened, and of the like events which may be expected to happen hereafter in the order of human things, shall pronounce what I have written to be useful, then I shall be satisfied. My history is an everlasting possession, not a prize composition which is heard and forgotten.
ucydides looked for rational causes for events because he believed, as he tells us in the paragraph just quoted, that similar events would occur in the future if the same causes were present. He used speeches inserted in his narrative as vehicles for conveying his analysis, as we see in Pericles’ Funeral Oration, in which ucydides had Pericles compare Athens and Sparta. However, as he wrote in Book I, “I have... put into the mouth of each speaker the sentiments proper to the occasion, expressed as I thought he would be likely to express them, while at the same time I endeavored, as nearly as I could, to give the general purport of what was actually said.” e ideals Pericles points to were clearly those of mid-fifth century Athenians.
PERICLES’ FUNERAL ORATION
THUCYDIDES (c. 470–c. 400 BC)
During a twenty-year exile from Athens which he incurred as the leader of a failed military campaign in 423, ucydides spent his time writing a history of the Peloponnesian War. In the first book of his History, he tells us about his method and purpose:
Of the events of the war I have not ventured to speak from any chance information, nor according to any notion of my own; I have described nothing but what I either saw myself, or learned from others of whom I made the most careful and particular inquiry.
e task was a laborious one, because eye-witnesses of the same occurrences gave different accounts of them, as they remembered or were interested in the actions of one side or the other. And very likely the strictly historical character of my narrative may be disappointing to the ear. But if he who desires to have before his eyes a true picture of the events which have happened, and of the like events which may be expected to happen hereafter in the order of human things, shall pronounce what I have written to be useful, then I shall be satisfied. My history is an everlasting possession, not a prize composition which is heard and forgotten.
ucydides looked for rational causes for events because he believed, as he tells us in the paragraph just quoted, that similar events would occur in the future if the same causes were present. He used speeches inserted in his narrative as vehicles for conveying his analysis, as we see in Pericles’ Funeral Oration, in which ucydides had Pericles compare Athens and Sparta. However, as he wrote in Book I, “I have... put into the mouth of each speaker the sentiments proper to the occasion, expressed as I thought he would be likely to express them, while at the same time I endeavored, as nearly as I could, to give the general purport of what was actually said.” e ideals Pericles points to were clearly those of mid-fifth century Athenians.