Analysis: Pericles' Funeral Oration

Date: c. 431 BCE

Geographic Region: Greece

Author: Thucydides

Translator: Charles Forster Smith

Summary Overview

One of the best-known passages from Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, Pericles' funeral oration is a celebration of the Athenian spirit and a statement of the city-state's idealized view of its own merits. Delivered by Pericles (c. 495–429 BCE), a long-standing Athenian statesman of immense respect and influence, the speech sought to honor those citizen-soldiers who had died in the early campaigns of what would be the long and bloody Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) with Athens' greatest rival, Sparta. In the speech, Pericles praises Athenians for their commitment to the city-state's overall well-being and values and asserts that Athenians stood above their rivals in cultural and political affairs. Thucydides, an Athenian-born historian, most likely recreated the speech from his own memory and probably shaped the speech's style and content in his interpretation, rather than transcribing Pericles's exact words. In modern times, the speech is recognized as central to historians' understanding of the Athenian psyche, especially at such a pivotal moment.

Defining Moment

Although modern popular opinion tends to regard ancient Greece as a single political and cultural unit, the people who lived in this era saw themselves as members of independent—if loosely allied—city-states connected by a shared Hellenic (Greek) culture. The Peloponnesian War was a lengthy and bloody conflict between the two leading Greek city-states, Athens and Sparta, and their respective allies. Rivalry between these two powers had existed for many years before the formal outbreak of war. Sparta, well known as the peninsula's main military center, had a strictly organized society governed by a political oligarchy. Its citizens—male and female alike—underwent intense physical training from youth, and its adult soldiers were considered the fiercest of their type. These characteristics helped make it the dominant power in the southern Greek peninsula called the Peloponnesus.

In contrast, Athens was a cosmopolitan cultural center with a democratic government, albeit one that was often dominated by a strong personality, such as Pericles. During the wars between the Greek city-states and the powerful Persian Empire that hoped to absorb them, Athens had proven itself a naval and military force capable of overseeing a broad Greek coalition, commonly called the Delian League. Its successes in this regard spurred Athens to further position itself as an imperial force capable of dominating weaker Hellenic city-states and of colonizing parts of the Mediterranean world. Spartan leaders viewed Athenian imperialist tendencies with extreme suspicion.

Even though the Greeks had united in the early 400s BCE to resist invading Persian forces, by 460 BCE, war had begun between Athens and its Peloponnesian rivals in what is sometimes termed the First Peloponnesian War. After some fifteen years of fighting, Athens and Sparta agreed to an uneasy peace. But this treaty failed to end the ongoing tensions that undermined the peninsula's unity. Thucydides considered Sparta's anxiety over Athens' expansionism an inevitable cause of conflict. Indeed, Athens' interference in the battle between the city-states of Corcyra and Corinth led to the beginning of war anew in 431 BCE.

By the time of the Peloponnesian War, it was an established wartime tradition in Athens for a leading voice of the city-state to give a general funeral oration honoring all those who had died in the preceding months. Pericles had long been among Athens' most respected citizens, having become an influential political leader in the mid-400s BCE. In this capacity, he helped the institution of democracy flourish in the city and encouraged the development of some of its best-known architectural achievements, including the Parthenon. The citizens of Athens widely admired him and kept him in power for decades; Thucydides' opinion of Pericles is an unabashedly positive one. Only the devastating effects of Pericles' military strategy of concentrating the region's people within the city-state's walls as Spartan armies plundered the countryside shook Athenians' confidence in the statesman. He became one of many who fell victim to a plague that spread throughout the overcrowded city-state, and he ultimately died in 429 BCE.

Author Biography and Document Information

Thucydides, a native of Athens born around 460 BCE, lived during the time of the Peloponnesian War. He served briefly as an elected military commander responsible for the fleet at the city of Amphipolis, but quickly lost his post after the fleet fell to an unexpected Spartan attack. Exiled from the city, he set about researching and writing a definitive account of the conflict.

In writing this account, however, Thucydides included speeches such as this one, regardless of whether he had been personally present at the time of their delivery. Because he relied on his own memory or the memory of others to recreate the speeches, they are not necessarily precise transcripts of those actually given; in at least some cases, the author is regarded as having combined his own opinions about what should have been said with the overall sense of the speech in order to create the written version. Although the History has survived essentially intact as a primary source since the late 400s BCE, the document should be understood as an interpretation rather than a recording in this regard.

Document Analysis

Speaking to a gathering of Athenians as part of a ceremonial public funeral, Pericles uses his address largely as a persuasive tool to generate popular support for the Athenian cause in the Peloponnesian War. He appeals to listeners' sense of nationalism for their city-state by asserting the superiority of the Athenian way to those elsewhere in Greece and by hailing the sacrifices made by those who have died in the war and, by association, those who are likely to follow. Throughout, his rhetoric seeks to bolster individual pride in the city-state's shared ideals, and to present a vision of Athens as a place worthy of serving as “an education to Greece” in the ways of governance and society.

Pericles briefly reminds his audience of Athens' history of military success in a subtle nod to the city-state's involvement in the earlier Greco-Persian and Peloponnesian Wars before beginning an extended pronouncement of Athenian greatness. Often, he compares the city-state to its rivals to assert its uniqueness and superiority. On the topic of government, he hails Athens as “being a model to others.” He warmly praises Athenians for their democratic spirit and personal tolerance, as well as for their nature as thoughtful and law-abiding citizens. Democracy and open political discussion are noted as especially laudable achievements. The Athenian willingness to embrace foreigners as fellow residents, if not as true citizens, is also held up as a hallmark of the city's idealized nature. Unlike Spartans, Pericles points out, Athenians are not placed into a strict militarized society from youth and expected to conform. Instead, they freely choose to support their home in times of need and so prove themselves to be “just as brave.” Equally, the orator claims that Athenian cultural pursuits are innately better than those of other Greek city-states. Love of contests, celebrations, beauty, art, and architecture is identified as a chief component of the Athenian view of itself, and is presented again as evidence of the city-state's greatness.

The oration concludes with stirring praise of those soldiers honored by the public funeral, asserting that their sacrifice reflected their “courage and gallantry.” Although he claims that his pronouncements on the greatness of Athens are merely to prove that the city-state is one truly worth dying for in order to protect, Pericles surely intended that the fervor and patriotism which his words strove to inspire would shore up Athenian spirits in the face of a devastating conflict.

Bibliography and Additional Reading

Azoulay, Vincent. Pericles of Athens. Trans. Janet Lloyd. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2014. Print.

Connor, W. Robert. Thucydides. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984. Print.

Herrman, Judson, trans. Athenian Funeral Orations: Translation, Introduction and Notes. Newburyport: Focus, 2004. Print.

Rusten, Jeffrey S., ed. Thucydides. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. Print. Oxford Readings in Classical Studies.