He gave a speech in Athens, a public speech, honoring the many warriors who were killed in battle after the first year of the Peloponnesian War. Only in ancient Athens and in the United States so far has democracy lasted for as much as two hundred years. In the speech he honoured the fallen and held up Athenian democracy as an example to the rest of Greece. In a democracy, there is equal justice for all in private disputes. [21] He regards the soldiers who gave their lives as truly worth of merit. Pericles therefore asserts that we conduct our public life as free men [eleuthero.i] (2.37.2). 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 valour 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. But archaeology is confirming that Persia's engineering triumph was real. 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 . That development transformed the character of Athenian democracy and society; lower-class Athenians (called thetes) could now participate as fully as citizens with property. The Spartans, from their earliest childhood, seek to acquire courage by painfully harsh training, but we, living our unrestricted life, are no less ready to meet the same dangers they do. Pericles was born in 495 BCE in Athens, Greece. Most died after about a week. And we decide public questions ourselves, or at least come to a sound understanding of them (2.40.2). And when such philosophers as Plato modeled their utopian regimes on Sparta, they were building on a tradition that viewed its constitution as a standing rebuke to Athenian democracy. Pericles, a great supporter of democracy, was a Greek leader and statesman during the Peloponnesian War. 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". How did Cleisthenes reform Athenian democracy? 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. She was also niece to the father of Athenian democracy, Cleisthenes. 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. Both of them heavily promote a sense of nationalism in the surviving listeners, both commend the brave sacrifices of soldiers living and dead, and both invoke a deep sense of sorrow while simultaneously setting up feelings of national pride and faith in the societies . [11] The speech glorifies Athens' achievements, designed to stir the spirits of a state still at war. Therefore, they were willing to run risks in its defense, make sacrifices on its behalf, and restrain their passions and desires to preserve it. The Funeral Oration was delivered during a war that was clearly going to continue for some time. Near the start of the Peloponnesian War, a plague swept the city. After the dead had been buried in a public grave, one of the leading citizens, chosen by the city, would offer a suitable speech, and on this occasion Pericles was chosen. Thucydides, Pericles' Funeral Oration. Courage, strength, military prowess, persuasiveness, cunning, beauty, wealth: these were examples of arete, the excellent qualities of the good, the fortunate, the happy man. While Pericles chooses to praise the Athenian citizen, Socrates criticizes Athens . As Thucydides recorded with clinical detail, people suddenly felt their heads begin to burn, their eyes redden, their tongues and mouths bleed. Most of Pericles answers to these questions can be found in the Funeral Oration that he delivered in the winter of 431/30, less than two years before his death, at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War. But the most original aspect of Pericles vision for Athens was its expectation of an enduring peace. Spartas system appealed especially to aristocrats, such as the young men who conversed with Socrates in the gymnasia. As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it: the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it. The more immediate challenge to the democratic vision came from Sparta. Monarchy and different forms of despotism, on the other hand, have gone on for millennia. 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. In the first year of the Peloponnesian War, Pericles gave speech . Men gathered frequently at three public gymnasia to prepare for the (naked) athletic competitions in the Panathenaic Stadium. The Athenian democracy, Pericles asserts, far from reducing all to a low common level, raises all its citizens to the level of noblemen by asking them to take part in political life and so to. Pericles. The Athenian democracy would encourage merit in its traditional form and reward it with victory, glory, and immortality. Thucydides fervently supported Periclesbut was less enthusiastic about the institution of democracy. He perceives Athens as a city with virtue, modesty, and modernization. [10] David Cartwright describes it as "a eulogy of Athens itself". Plato recognized that the freedom afforded by the Athenian democracy seemed pleasant to many people, but his own judgment was less friendly: Democracy is an agreeable, anarchic form of society, with plenty of variety, which treats all men as equal, whether they are equal or not (Republic 558C). The only name associated with his early education is that of the musical theorist Damon, whose influence, it is said, was not just confined to music. The poorest Athenian serving on a jury, voting in the assembly, or allotted to an office was thereby called upon to use his intelligence and experience on behalf of his polis. 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. In Minneapolis, Protesters Confront the Policeand One Another. . Athens is called a democracy because the many rule, not the few; everyone knew that in Sparta a small minority dominated the vast majority. Politics soon took priority over the arts for Pericles. In the realm of private disputes everyone is equal before the law, but when it is a matter of public honors each man is preferred not on the basis of his class but of his good reputation and his merit [arete]. Men must put aside their petty wants and look at what is best for the state as a whole. Corrections? How this animal can survive is a mystery. "[22], Pericles addresses the widows of the dead only here, telling them that "the greatest glory for a woman is not to be spoken of at all, either for good or ill."[23] This passage is often cited as characteristic of Athenian attitudes to women's role in public life,[24] but is also connected to the standard behaviour of women as mourners at private funerals.[25]. Surviving the disease, he carefully set down the symptoms, knowledge of which will enable it to be recognized, if it should ever break out again. His ancient empirical analysis of catastrophe offers a jot of hope, if not wonder: for as long as there have been plagues, there have been people, scared but tenacious, using reason to try to learn from them. These sources are not all ascertainable, but they certainly preserve an invaluable amount of fact and contemporary gossip, which is sometimes nearly as useful. . Updates? He goes on to talk about Athenian lifestyle and recreation, as to further position Athens as the height of civilization. Pericles met the challenge of the heroic tradition by showing that democracy would bring to all the citizens of Athens the advantages heretofore reserved for the well-born few. Pericles (l. 495-429 BCE) was a prominent Greek statesman, orator, and general during the Golden Age of Athens. The hostile descriptions emphasize its excessive commitment to equality, complaining of the absurdity of distributing offices by lot and the evils of payment for public service, but even more of the flaws in the democratic principle itself. Only someone of Pericles intelligence and integrity, Thucydides wrote, could respect the liberty of the people and at the same time hold them in check. His death left Athenian democracy in the hands of self-serving scoundrels such as Alcibiades, who later promoted an oligarchic coup, and bellicose demagogues such as Cleon, whom Thucydides scorned as remarkable among the Athenians for the violence of his character.. In the decade before 500 B.C., the Athenians established the worlds first democratic constitution. (Athens was only a democracy for adult, male citizens of Athenian descent, not for women or slaves, or for foreigners living under imperial rule.) Pericles is perhaps best remembered for a building program centred on theAcropolis which included the Parthenon and for a funeral oration he gave early in the Peloponnesian War, as recorded by Thucydides. Democracy is now the largest form of government to exist in today's society. 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. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). It might have been smallpox, a fungal poisoning called ergotism, or something worse. Pericles lifted Athens into a golden age through his support of the arts, architecture, philosophy, and democracy building. The Spartan way of life inspired admiration in many other Greeks, though none went so far as to adopt the Spartan system. He would not be surprised to find his book being read today, during the coronavirus lockdown. Pericles was a famous Greek general. The French and American revolutions extended citizenship more generously than in Greece, ultimately excluding only children from political participation. In contrast, Pericles, via his funeral oration speech, believes that democracy is better ruled by many rather than few. 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 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. He even asks the gods to aid the enemy so that he may gain vengeance against Agamemnon because, as Achilles himself says, he did no honor to the best of the Achaeans.. Pericles long tenure as a political leader, more than thirty years, permitted him to aim at goals that went far beyond the immediate concerns that fully occupy most politicians and statesmen. A reconstruction of Pericles' house from The Greeks documentary. Most of what we know about the plague comes from the brilliant Athenian historian Thucydides, widely viewed by classicists as the single best source on Athens in the age of Pericles. "Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now." - Pericles. Whereas, Lysias supports the restoration of democracy because he believes that fighting for equality and rising up in rebellion is worthwhile. Yet this tolerant, easygoing way of life does not entail a disrespect for law or an invitation to licentious behavior. Gill, N.S. Twenty-five hundred years later we remember him and his fellow-Athenians precisely because of their devotion to this great civic endeavor. In the streets around the Fifth Precinct police station, protesters battle law enforcement, chastise looters, and fight to be heard. When wealthy aristocrats won victories in athletic contests, they could pay poets like Pindar to preserve their memories in verse; they could sponsor public monuments by great architects and sculptors; the richest of them could even erect temples to the gods, dedicated in their own names. But soon after Pericles gave that prideful speech, the original democracy got sick. The first known date in his life is 472 bce, when he paid for the production of the playwright Aeschylus Persian trilogy. Thucydides, who wrote his Periclean speech for his History of the Peloponnesian War, readily admitted that his speeches were only loosely based on memory and shouldn't be taken as a verbatim report. It limited the scope and power of the state, leaving enough space for individual freedom, privacy, and the human dignity of which they are a crucial part. All rights reserved. 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. And with the spectre of mortality looming at all times, they lived only for the pleasure of the moment and everything that might conceivably contribute to that pleasure. The newer image, provided by Sparta, took shape no earlier than the seventh century but immediately captured the imagination of many and continued to fascinate Greek thinkers for centuries. 1, Routledge, 2016. In 430-429 B.C.E., Athens was devastated by a mysterious epidemic, which reared its head again a few years. There are several different English translations of the speech available. America was a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Victory would mean a new birth of freedom, and would ensure that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. The fallen soldiers purpose was to preserve a Constitution and a way of life that was unique and worthy of sacrifice. He saw the opportunity to create the greatest political community the world had ever known, one that would fulfill mans strongest and deepest passionsfor glory and immortality. Many are now confronting long-suppressed ethnic divisions that threaten to destroy the needed unity and harmony. He was the son of the politician Xanthippus and Agariste. . Pericles believed these should be the goals for every Athenian to live and die for. 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. That conception ran counter to Greek experience, which had always been full of turbulence and warfare. Pericles begins by mentioning the struggles of the Athenian ancestors whom "after many a struggle transmitted to us their sons this great empire." . Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. In the second year of the Peloponnesian War a plague struck Athens, which was crowded with evacuees from the countryside, killing perhaps a quarter of the citys inhabitants. The city was blanketed with corpses. Excerpt from Funeral Speech for Athenian War Dead Given in the first year of the Peloponnesian War 431/430 B.C. Beyond those advantages, its early champions tried to show that the polis was necessary for civilized life, and therefore deserved the highest sacrifice. The characteristics of Athenian democracy as presented by Pericles in his funeral oration are that it is an ideal democracy, that it is animated by a shared sense of civic virtue, and that in it . . Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Thucydides (c. 460/455c. "Pericles's Funeral Oration" (Ancient Greek: ) is a famous speech from Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. It existed for only two centuries in Athens and less than that in a small number of Greek states. 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. In moderate material comfort, good health, long life, virtuous offspring, and an opportunity for kleosthe last two representing mans hopes for immortality preserved in the memory of his family and his polis. In it, Pericles (or Thucydides) extols the values of democracy. Translation and the establishment of liberal democracy in nineteenth-century England. The Athenian historian Thucydides included the speech in his book the History of the Peloponnesian War. Most of those who have spoken here before me have commended the lawgiver who added this oration to our other funeral customs. 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. The tale tells us much about Greek values. 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. Thinking, Levels. . Plus: each Wednesday, exclusively for subscribers, the best books of the week. Nobody knows what the plague was, although classically minded epidemiologists still debate its cause. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Unfortunately, the 27-year-long Peloponnesian War resulted in great losses for Athens. The basic ideologies of democracy were described by Pericles in his funeral oration. Pericles vision was the culmination of a long process whereby the polis had tried to impose its communal, civic values on a society that had always been organized by family, clan, and tribe. [28][29][30] Lincoln's speech, like Pericles': It is uncertain to what degree, if any, Lincoln was directly influenced by Pericles's funeral oration. More than 20,000 tons of marble were used, producing the iconic Parthenon and the imposing colonnade of the Propylaea, the entrance gateway. Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. This newfound behavior may offer a clue to how these reptiles will respond to a warming planet. At an early date they had abandoned the normal means whereby men provide for themselves and their families, including all economic activity: farming, pasturing, trade, craft, and industry. Pericles. The speech that Pericles delivers is such a dramatic departure from the customary oration that it is often considered a eulogy of Athens itself. 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. [3] The remains of the dead[4] were left in a tent for three days so that offerings could be made. And after a life spent in what among our people passes for comfort, he died most gloriously. In war and in peace, the Athenian people showed themselves eager to accept the responsibilities that allowed them to share in their citys glory. Pericles (/ p r k l i z /; Greek: ; c. 495 - 429 BC) was a Greek politician and general during the Golden Age of Athens.He was prominent and influential in Athenian politics, particularly between the Greco-Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War, and was acclaimed by Thucydides, a contemporary historian, as "the first citizen of Athens". Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. The Lydian ruler Croesus, the richest man in the world, expecting to hear his own name, asked the Athenian sage, Who was the happiest of mortals? 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. 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. 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. Part of the answer lay in a quality of life unknown elsewhere, a range of activities that brought the pleasures of prosperity to the appetite, joy and wonder to the spirit, stimulation to the intellect, and pride to the soul. The statesman praised Athens for its freedom and democratic deliberations, while defending its increasingly oppressive empire. The Funeral Oration is significant because it differs from the usual form of Athenian funeral speeches. 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. All rights reserved, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. The bodies of the dead were cremated soon after death. He says that Athens's democracy ensures justice for all its citizens but also encourages excellence in individuals. He gave a speech in Athens, a public speech, honoring the many warriors who were killed in battle after the first year of the Peloponnesian War. The catastrophe contributed to Athenss shattering defeat, in 404 B.C.E., by the loutish Spartans, who tore down the citys walls and imposed a short-lived but murderous oligarchy. ThoughtCo, Jul. Nor does Pericles concede that the strict discipline of Spartan training and the secrecy of its closed society produce better soldiers than the Athenian democracy: There is a difference between us and our opponents in how we prepare for our military responsibilities in the following ways: we open our city for everyone and do not exclude anyone for fear that he might learn or see something that would be useful to an enemy if it were not concealed. 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. Pericles was an Athenian statesman. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. An Aerial View of New York City During a Pandemic. They followed a written code that was exclusively in the interest of the ruling class. It was written by the Greek philosopher Thucydides (460-395 B.C.E. His achievements included the construction of the Acropolis, begun in 447. [21] He praises the soldiers for not faltering in their execution during the war. 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. Orderly Athenians, no longer expecting to live long enough to face punishment for crimes, plunged into a state of unprecedented lawlessness. They could not even bother to lay their dead to rest respectably. Pericles was born into the first generation able to use the new weapon of the popular vote against the old power of family politics. Pericles (left) and Pheidias consult about creation of statue of Athena in this painting. From him Pericles may have inherited a leaning toward the people, along with landed property just north of Athens, which made him quite wealthy by Athenian standards. [5] We can be reasonably sure that Pericles delivered a speech at the end of the first year of the war, but there is no consensus as to what degree Thucydides's record resembles Pericles's actual speech. 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. To help make his point he stated that the soldiers whom he was speaking of gave their lives to a cause to protect the city of Athens, and its freedom. Learn why Greek and Roman gods share so many similarities, how the alphabet got its name, and how the legacy of ancient Greece has evolved over thousands of years. Many historians consider that event to have marked the birth of Athenian democracy. They lived without the comfort of the two major devices that other cultures have used to evade that terrible truth. Cleon's rhetoric resembles that of Herodotus' Sosicles, the Corinthian delegate to the Peloponnesian assembly after the Peisistratids' fall, who uses images of [8] It is possible that elements of both speeches are represented in Thucydides's version. The crisis had only just begun. [citation needed] The speech is full of rhetorical devices, such as antithesis, anacoluthon, asyndeton, anastrophe, hyperbaton, and others; most famously the rapid succession of proparoxytone words beginning with e (" , ' " [judging courage freedom and freedom happiness]) at the climax of the speech (43.4). 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. Above all, Pericles helped the Athenians to understand that their private needs, both moral and material, required the kind of community Athens had become. Instead, survivors looked for already burning funeral pyres, adding friends and relatives to the blaze. 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. With the linkage of Athens' greatness complete, Pericles moves to addressing his audience. 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. We thought we knew turtles. Modified by time and circumstance, his vision has proven peculiarly powerful. https://www.thoughtco.com/pericles-funeral-oration-thucydides-version-111998 (accessed May 1, 2023). In these ways our city deserves to be admired (2.39). Pericles notes, "We alone do good to our neighbors not upon a calculation of interest, but in the confidence of freedom and in a frank and fearless spirit." [20] He praised Athens for its attributes that stood out amongst their neighbours such as its democracy when he elaborates that trust is justly placed on the citizens rather than relying only on the system and the policy of the city. Its ideas are still important for people living in democractic nations today. We regard wealth as something to be properly used, rather than as something to boast about. Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility. In 430429 B.C.E., Athens was devastated by a mysterious epidemic, which reared its head again a few years later. In the real world, however, no one would adopt that demanding and perverse way of life except in the unique circumstances that brought it to Sparta. . 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). Silence and Democracy: Athenian Politics in Thucydides' History. Pericles, the author of the speech, was a general of Athens in the fifth century BCE. He speaks of the ancestors with great honor and valor and that it was them who gave birth to Athens. Prior to the plague's devastation, Athenians were already dying as a result of the war. The stakes of our own vulnerability are no different. We can outline the ideology behind democracy from his speech. One way that it gained the needed commitment was by creating, for the first time in history, a true political life which allowed its active citizens to exercise human capacity previously employed by very few. 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. Inside South Africas skeleton trade. Business, Men, Mind. 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). left his mark on the world in far more ways than the iconic Acropolis that still defines the skyline of Athens. For the annual summer birthday celebration of Athena (the Greek goddess of wisdom for whom the city is named), a procession started at the Dipylon Gatethe largest of 15 gates in the cityand marched more than a mile to the Altar of Athena on the Acropolis. Political Aspects of the Classical Age of Greece, Most Important Figures in Ancient History, The Thirty Tyrants After the Peloponnesian War, M.A., Linguistics, University of Minnesota. 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 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.

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