pericles speech on democracy

To honor the gods for the victory and to glorify Athens, Pericles proposed using the Delian Leagues treasury to mount an unprecedented building campaign. Many are now confronting long-suppressed ethnic divisions that threaten to destroy the needed unity and harmony. These aristocratic values never lost their powerful attraction to all Greeks, and Pericles claimed them for the Athenian democracy. References. ThoughtCo, Jul. But the reward of these virtues was kleos, the fame and glory that alone held out the hope of victory over death. 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. In a democracy . Pericles allowed all people to participate in government which also made Athens more of a direct democracy. 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. The history of book bansand their changing targetsin the U.S. Thucydides maintained a rationalists sensibility even in wartime and plague. [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 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 Millennia later, the plague reminds us that the legacy of the eternal wonder of Athens contains within it a cautionary tale: the failure of democratic society to cope with a lethal epidemic. Pericles, a prominent and influential Politian in Athens, has argued that democracy is the best form of government because it fairly produces the most educated and excellent citizens, through freedom to act as they please, which will eventually shape there soul into a great person (Warner 145). 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. Such a vision and such leadership are not readily available in our era. As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it: the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it. Thucydides' funeral speech about democracy delivered by Pericles. The French and American revolutions extended citizenship more generously than in Greece, ultimately excluding only children from political participation. . Beyond those advantages, its early champions tried to show that the polis was necessary for civilized life, and therefore deserved the highest sacrifice. Pericles delivered a rousing speech lauding democracy on the occasion of funerals, shortly after the start of the war. Most of those who have spoken here before me have commended the lawgiver who added this oration to our other funeral customs. 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]. Here Pericles has identified a critical element of his vision for Athens: its commitment to reason and intelligence. We say he has no business being here at all. 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. 86 Copy quote. 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 . In the speech he honoured the fallen and held up Athenian democracy as an example to the rest of Greece. Its ideas are still important for people living in democractic nations today. Next came coughing, stomach pain, diarrhea, and vomiting of every kind of bile that has been given a name by the medical profession. The skin turned reddish with pustules and ulcers, while the stricken plunged into the citys water tanks trying to slake an unquenchable thirstpossibly contaminating the water supply. In a battle between the Athenians and their neighbors near Eleusis, he came to the aid of his fellow-citizens, turned the enemy to rout, and died most nobly. Given Pericles' family's wealth and influence in Athens, he received a very good . It was a great center of cultural and intellectual development, and thus home to philosophers. Pericles. The basic ideologies of democracy were described by Pericles in his funeral oration. Please select which sections you would like to print: Professor of Ancient History, University of Oxford, 198594. To save chestnut trees, we may have to play God, Why you should add native plants to your garden, What you can do right now to advocate for the planet, Why poison ivy is an unlikely climate change winner. .he must support his unmarried sisters at home and explain to them why they are still spinsters, he must live without a wife at his fireside. Their national poet, Tyrtaeus, specifically rejected the Homeric values and replaced them with a single definition of arete: the courage to stand bravely in the ranks of a hoplite phalanx fighting for Sparta. Herodotus tells a story, metaphorically true even if historically dubious, in which Solon gave some answers. Pericles was widely seen as the leader of Athens. "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'. 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. 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. My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, he wrote, with zero modesty, but was done to last forever.. 29, 2021, thoughtco.com/pericles-funeral-oration-thucydides-version-111998. Pericles was among its victims. The theory of democracy Democratic ideas from Pericles to Rawls Pericles. Athens was one of the most important and powerful cities in the ancient world. In a democracy, there is equal justice for all in private disputes. The style is deliberately elaborate, in accord with the stylistic preference associated with the sophists. In our time democracy is taken for granted, but it is one of the rarest, most delicate, and fragile flowers in the jungle of human experience. If, therefore, we are prepared to meet danger after leading a relaxed life instead of one filled with burdensome training, with our courage emerging naturally from our way of life instead of imposed by law, the advantage is ours. In Athens, all citizens were equal before the law. 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". 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. 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. Tens of thousands of people died, perhaps as many as one-third of Athenians. 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. 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. 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. Ancient Philosophy. [21] He praises the soldiers for not faltering in their execution during the war. 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 431 B.C., Pericles urged the popular assembly to declare war against Sparta. Prior to the plague's devastation, Athenians were already dying as a result of the war. Why did Pericles think Athens could live in peace after so many years of continuous fighting? Many historians consider that event to have marked the birth of Athenian democracy. Details about the nature and name of this disease are unknown, but a recent best guess is Typhoid Fever. Pericles. 2 Pages. Gill is a Latinist, writer, and teacher of ancient history and Latin. Whatever it was, it was a horror. If we had access to Pericles inner thoughts and to the many other speeches he delivered in his long career, we would possibly discover that he took no less pride in Athenians peaceful achievements of mind and spirit. It was the custom at the time to honor the dead each year who had died defending their city-state, the city-state of Athens. 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. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. . Thucydides' Greek is notoriously difficult, but the language of Pericles Funeral Oration is considered by many to be the most difficult and virtuosic passage in the History of the Peloponnesian War. It was written by the Greek philosopher Thucydides (460-395 B.C.E. Pericles (l. 495-429 BCE) was a prominent Greek statesman, orator, and general during the Golden Age of Athens. At the Dionysia Festival in 472 B.C. The bones were kept for the funeral at the end of the year. The rewards conferred by these aristocratic virtues are precisely those sought by the epic heroes: greatness, power, honor, fame. THUCYDIDES gives Pericles very little to say in his Funeral Oration about the political institutions of Athenian democracy. 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. 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. A few days before Pericles birth, according to the Greek historian Herodotus, Agariste dreamed she bore a lion. 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. Ad Choices. His achievements included the construction of the Acropolis, begun in 447. In the Athens of Pericles, however, the general prosperity and payment for public service gave the average man a degree of leisure unknown in other states. [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. 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. Pericles' funeral oration is considered to be a valuable speech on the importance of democracy and a sneak peek into the way the people of Athens lived. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. His father,Xanthippus, began his political career by a dynastic marriage to Agariste of the controversial Alcmaeonid family. Silence and Democracy: Athenian Politics in Thucydides' History. More fully, and therefore at greater length, Pericles did the same thing. "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. 208p. 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. For they gave their lives for the common good. To me, at least, they still seem to indicate some of the important ways in which democracy is likely to go astray. The symbolism, although ambiguous, is most likely to be unfavourable. He also said that the ability to govern and participate in government was more important than one's class. . 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. Men gathered frequently at three public gymnasia to prepare for the (naked) athletic competitions in the Panathenaic Stadium. Thinking, Levels. 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). Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). https://www.thoughtco.com/pericles-funeral-oration-thucydides-version-111998 (accessed May 1, 2023). Athens is called a democracy because the many rule, not the few; everyone knew that in Sparta a small minority dominated the vast majority. Pericles incorporates obviously corrupt characters that contrast . Instead, we put our trust not in secret weapons, but in our own courage when we are called upon to act. In 430429 B.C.E., Athens was devastated by a mysterious epidemic, which reared its head again a few years later. He goes on to talk about Athenian lifestyle and recreation, as to further position Athens as the height of civilization. Greek noblemen lived by the ideal of the accomplished amateur: good at a variety of skillsmusic, athletics, warfare, among othersbut professionally devoted to none. Despite Thucydides' divided attitude towards democracy, the speech he put in Pericles' mouth supports the democratic form of government. "Pericles, son of Xanthippos, spoke like this". He stated that the soldiers who died gave their lives to protect the city of Athens, its citizens, and its freedom. In it, Pericles (or Thucydides) extols the values of democracy. He speaks of the ancestors with great honor and valor and that it was them who gave birth to Athens. He rejected the notion that democracy turned its back on excellence, reducing all to equality at a low level. Welcome as this prospect was, it nonetheless presented a problem. That development transformed the character of Athenian democracy and society; lower-class Athenians (called thetes) could now participate as fully as citizens with property. Photograph by James P. Blair, Nat Geo Image Collection. [14] This amounts to a focus on present-day Athens; Thucydides' Pericles thus decides to praise the war dead by glorifying the city for which they died. The model of how democracy began is also a study in how it can founder and fall. 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. All rights reserved. ", "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. 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 He used his speeches to articulate a compelling vision for Athens and its citizens, inspiring them to come together around common goals. Critics also saw it as a special failure of the Athenian constitution that it did not put a common stamp of virtue on all the citizens, as the Spartan constitution tried to do, and as many Greeks thought proper. There are several different English translations of the speech available. They followed a written code that was exclusively in the interest of the ruling class. The liberality of which Pericles spoke also extended to Athens' foreign policy: "We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality"[16] Yet Athens' values of equality and openness do not, according to Pericles, hinder Athens' greatness, indeed, they enhance it, "advancement in public life falls to reputations for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with meritour ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public mattersat Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger."[17]. Our educations are different, too. Monarchy and different forms of despotism, on the other hand, have gone on for millennia. 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. 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. 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. The first known date in his life is 472 bce, when he paid for the production of the playwright Aeschylus Persian trilogy. Pericles, a great supporter of democracy, was a Greek leader and statesman during the Peloponnesian War. The aristocrat believed that the poor were not free, because their poverty deprived them of leisure and, therefore, of the opportunity to take part in public life. Instead, survivors looked for already burning funeral pyres, adding friends and relatives to the blaze. 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. He would not be surprised to find his book being read today, during the coronavirus lockdown. First, he said, I shall make clear through what practices we have come to our present position and with what political constitution and way of life our city has become great. The institutions are democratic, but Pericles explanation of what that means is a refutation of the attacks made by the enemies of democracy. To approach a question 400 million years in the making, researchers turned to mudskippers, blinking fish that live partially out of water. Pericles lifted Athens into a golden age through his support of the arts, architecture, philosophy, and democracy building. .In the streets he must get out of the way. This is a sobering history, but, reading Thucydides account of the plague while under lockdown, I sometimes found the frosty old historian oddly heartening. As Plato knew, political regimes are as fragile as any other human structure, and all fall in time. Author of. How this animal can survive is a mystery. But Thucydides chronicle of what happened just after Pericles funeral oration is unsparingand should be as enduring as the speech itself. After Ephialtes was assassinated in 461 B.C., Pericles emerged as Athenss foremost politician, and he would lead the popular assembly and the city until his death three decades later. The play lacks moral ambiguity within many of the central characters. The following excerpt is from a speech known as "The Funeral Oration," delivered by the Athenian general and politician Pericles in 431 BCE. This text is an excerpt from the National Geographic special issue, The little-known history of the Florida panther. 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. The Athenian statesman Pericles defined democracy as a system which protects the interests of all the people, not just a minority. was the sight of people dying like sheep through having caught the disease as a result of nursing others. Neither medicine nor quackery helped. An Aerial View of New York City During a Pandemic. The thousands of citizens who participated in Athenss fledgling democracy attended the popular assembly at the Pnyx, a rise in the center of the city. Pericles (left) and Pheidias consult about creation of statue of Athena in this painting. [32], , ' . . Nevertheless, Thucydides was extremely meticulous in his documentation, and records the varied certainty of his sources each time. 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." Often regarded as the greatest ruler of Athens and even all of Greece, Pericles fostered the famous democracy of Greece and supervised countless theater, statue, and infrastructure building projects. The book, although unfinished, established him as the founder of the systematic study of international relations. Democracy of today can be traced back to the Funeral Oration speech of Pericles'. 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. He had made the strategic judgment that the empire as it stood was large enough to meet all the citys needs. Therefore, they were willing to run risks in its defense, make sacrifices on its behalf, and restrain their passions and desires to preserve it. Pericles also elevated Athenss role within the Delian League, a naval alliance of Greek city-states unified to fight the Persians. 2 hours of sleep? The speech that Pericles delivers is such a dramatic departure from the customary oration that it is often considered a eulogy of Athens itself. How do we reverse the trend? 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.

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