pericles speech on democracy

More than 20,000 tons of marble were used, producing the iconic Parthenon and the imposing colonnade of the Propylaea, the entrance gateway. In war and in peace, the Athenian people showed themselves eager to accept the responsibilities that allowed them to share in their citys glory. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. 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. The last part of the ceremony was a speech delivered by a prominent Athenian citizen chosen by the state. The play lacks moral ambiguity within many of the central characters. 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." Pericles lifted Athens into a golden age through his support of the arts, architecture, philosophy, and democracy building. . The model of how democracy began is also a study in how it can founder and fall. In the speech, Pericles, the first great statesman of the ancient world, says that he wished to focus on "the road by which we reached our position, the form of government under which our greatness grew, and the national habits out of which it sprang" in addition to praising the dead. 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. He goes on to talk about Athenian lifestyle and recreation, as to further position Athens as the height of civilization. Bomber Command was engraved with a quote from it. That is why Pericles could make this extraordinary demand on them when the great war came: You must every day look upon the power of your city and become her lovers [erastai] and when you have understood her greatness consider that the men who achieved it were brave and honorable and knew what was necessary when the time came for action. . Pericles was not the founder or inventor of democracy, but he came to its leadership only a half-century after its invention, when it was still fragile. 399 BCE): Pericles's Funeral Oration from the Peloponnesian War (Book 2.3446)", "What new music are you singing these days? In contrast, Pericles points to the limited jurisdiction of the Athenian regime, which leaves a considerable space for individualism and privacy, free from public scrutiny: Not only do we conduct our public life as free men but we are also free of suspicion of one another as we go about our every-day lives. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Pericles married in his late 20s but divorced some 10 years later. In a democracy, there is equal justice for all in private disputes. But even in Herodotus tale such glory is for the rare individual who had both the ability and the opportunity to perform a great deed. 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). The citizen of a free society has the right to ask, Why should I risk my life for my city? Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/pericles-funeral-oration-thucydides-version-111998. . 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. The bustling main thoroughfare was the Panathenaic Way. Pericles therefore asserts that we conduct our public life as free men [eleuthero.i] (2.37.2). The Funeral Oration is significant because it differs from the usual form of Athenian funeral speeches. This text is an excerpt from the National Geographic special issue, The little-known history of the Florida panther. 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. Governor Pericles' speech, captured by the Athenian historian General Thucydides and known as "The Funeral Oration," serves as a model for how a leader in an executive role may raise the spirit of his or her people during a time of crisis. Only rumour associates him directly with the political convulsion of the next two years, which drove Cimon into exile, swung Athens away from its alignment with Sparta, and decisively strengthened the democratic elements in the Athenian constitution; but he probably did support the democratic leader Ephialtes in this period, and his introduction of pay for juries, unfortunately undatable, is a logical consequence of Ephialtes reforms. Unfortunately, the 27-year-long Peloponnesian War resulted in great losses for Athens. 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. These aristocratic values never lost their powerful attraction to all Greeks, and Pericles claimed them for the Athenian democracy. 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.. The statesman praised Athens for its freedom and democratic deliberations, while defending its increasingly oppressive empire. Pericles delivered the oration not only to bury the dead but to praise democracy. His life has neither law nor order; and this distracted existence he terms joy and bliss and freedom; and so he goes on (Republic 56lC). They also complained of the lack of uniform good character in the citizens, who were unpredictably involved in various activities and masters of none, with negative consequences for their military ability and moral quality. A new discovery raises a mystery. The ancient Greek statesman Pericles (ca 495429 B.C.) Democracy favors the many instead of the few and Pericles believes justice is achieved when citizens follow those laws in which they have the freedom to participate in public life. But soon after Pericles gave that prideful speech, the original democracy got sick. We alone regard the man who takes no part in politics not as someone who minds his own business but as useless. Perhaps outbid in his search for popular support, Xanthippus was ostracized in 484 bce, though he returned in 480 to command the Athenian force at Mycale in 479, probably dying soon after. The history of book bansand their changing targetsin the U.S. Book 2, chapter 63: Pericles' third speech. 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. With brilliant brevity Lincoln answered some questions by pointing to the greatness of the cause at issue. https://www.thoughtco.com/pericles-funeral-oration-thucydides-version-111998 (accessed May 1, 2023). But the heart of daily life was the agora, or marketplace, a sprawling complex of more than 200,000 square feet that featured trade in everyday items but also sported brothels, bars, and bathhouses. Pericles. To speak of this legislation as a move toward creating a master race is thus partly misleading, but the demagogic nature of the law seems clear. . Pericles. By recognizing only individuals, not separate groups, its laws preserved the unity needed by all healthy societies and avoided the shattering rivalries that destroy them. 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. Least of all did it suit the open, democratic society that Athens had already become by the time Pericles was born. [21] He regards the soldiers who gave their lives as truly worth of merit. 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 Persuasive Oratory: Pericles was known for his eloquent speeches and persuasive oratory skills. At the same time, he intended to create a quality of life never before known, one that would allow men to pursue their private interests but also enable them to seek the highest goals by placing their interests at the service of a city that fostered and relied upon reason for its greatness. Through such a display he hoped to win the kind of fame that would gain him immortality as the memory of his great deeds passed on through the generations, sung and embellished by bards like Homer. After all, Athens was a naval power, an imperial capital, and a trading city whose fleets ranged across the ancient world; the contagion, he wrote, probably spread from Ethiopia to Libya to Persia before finally reaching Greece, where Athensa global port for commercial shipswas its first stop. At the begining of the war, Athens and Sparta both thought they knew how to win. A woman's greatest glory is to be little talked about by men, whether for good or ill. Beyond those advantages, its early champions tried to show that the polis was necessary for civilized life, and therefore deserved the highest sacrifice. "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. Optimists may believe that democracy is the inevitable and final form of human society, but the historical record shows that up to now it has been the rare exception. Pericles ushered in what is considered radical democracy. This meant that ordinary Athenian citizens were paid by the state to participate in public affairs. This past spring, Richard Bernstein investigated the questions hed been asking his whole careerabout right, wrong, and what we owe one anotherone last time. 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 . But the Funeral Oration was intended to inspire the Athenians with a vision of excellence that justified their current efforts. Only one ancient account mentions the existence of Xerxes Canal, long thought to be a tall tale. The policy of war with Persia was abandoned and a formal peace probably made. (2021, July 29). ), who said he was quoting Pericles himself. Among those who died from this plague were Pericles and two of his sons. They lived without the comfort of the two major devices that other cultures have used to evade that terrible truth. In a democracy, citizens behave lawfully while doing what they like without fear of prying eyes. A reconstruction of Pericles' house from The Greeks documentary. Twenty-five hundred years later we remember him and his fellow-Athenians precisely because of their devotion to this great civic endeavor. 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. American Civil War scholars Louis Warren and Garry Wills have addressed the parallels of Pericles's funeral oration to Abraham Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address. The symbolism, although ambiguous, is most likely to be unfavourable. Pericles took a different view: We believe, he said,that words are no barrier to deeds, but rather that harm comes from not taking instruction from discussion before the time has come for action. [2] The speech was supposed to have been delivered by Pericles, an eminent Athenian politician, at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War (431404BCE) as a part of the annual public funeral for the war dead. 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. From the first, the Greeks faced the great truth of mans mortality squarely. But the peace of Athens was not to last. 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. Yet an Athenian reared in the Homeric tradition could also ask, How can I achieve kleos and thereby a chance at immortality? Had he quoted the speech verbatim, he would have written "" ("this", or "these words") instead of "" ("like this" or "words like these"). .In the streets he must get out of the way. Bequeathed, too, was his innovative approach of conducting an orderly, thorough examination of the past to explain the causesand outcomesof past events. Pericles was a leading figure from the Greek Peloponnesian War. While the rest of the world continued to be characterized by monarchical, rigidly hierarchical, command societies, democracy in Athens was carried as far as it would go before modern times, perhaps further than at any other place and time. When the Mytilenean poet Alcaeus was sent into exile the loss he complained of was not his house and fields but the scenes of political life: I yearn, Agesilaidas, to hear the herald summon the assembly and the council (Alcaeus, fragment 130). Whatever it was, it was a horror. 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. We thought we knew turtles. 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. A seasoned, hard-bitten warrior, he was, for once, at a loss: Words indeed fail one when one tries to give a general picture of this disease; and as for the suffering of individuals, they seemed almost beyond the capacity of human nature to endure. Thucydides himself got the plague but survived, as he coolly notes in passing. The first is to have a set of good institutions; the second is to have a body of citizens who possess a good understanding of the principles of democracy, or who at least have developed a character consistent with the democratic way of life; the third is to have a high quality of leadership, at least at critical moments. Athens is a major Greek city-state in European history. Silence and Democracy: Athenian Politics in Thucydides' History. He gave this speech during a funeral for Athenian soldiers that died in the first year of the brutal Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE) against Sparta . The Athenians prized thought, deliberation, and discussion. 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 Athenian democracy would encourage merit in its traditional form and reward it with victory, glory, and immortality. . (2 43. l-2). 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. Near the start of the Peloponnesian War, a plague swept the city. . Because of a law he supported restricting Atheniancitizenshipto those of Athenian parentage on both sides, marriage was impossible. For the whole world is the burial place for famous men; not only does the epitaph inscribed on monuments in their native country commemorate them, but in lands not their own the unwritten memory, more of their spirit even than of what they have done, lives on within each person. Business, Men, Mind. Details about the nature and name of this disease are unknown, but a recent best guess is Typhoid Fever. 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. In the following speech, Pericles made these points about democracy: Democracy allows men to advance because of merit rather than wealth or inherited class. . His selection as public orator was thus a tribute to his stature, reputation, and political power. 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). The new and emerging democracies of our time are very fragile, and they all face serious challenges. 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. He was so important to Athens that his name defines the Periclean age ("The Age of Pericles"), a period when Athens rebuilt what had been destroyed during the recent war with Persia (the Greco-Persian or Persian Wars). As Thucydides recorded with clinical detail, people suddenly felt their heads begin to burn, their eyes redden, their tongues and mouths bleed. Judgment was rendered according to their laws, once again, by courts made up of citizens. [b] Another confusing factor is that Pericles is known to have delivered another funeral oration in 440BCE during the Samian War. 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. Thucydides, Pericles' Funeral Oration. "Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now." - Pericles. Why Was Athens Defeated? His father,Xanthippus, began his political career by a dynastic marriage to Agariste of the controversial Alcmaeonid family. Here are popular Pericles quotes about that time. Above all, Pericles helped the Athenians to understand that their private needs, both moral and material, required the kind of community Athens had become. Gill, N.S. 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. To succeed, they need a vision of the future that is powerful enough to sustain them through bad times as well as good and to inspire the many difficult sacrifices that will be required of them. As Plato knew, political regimes are as fragile as any other human structure, and all fall in time. Far from eulogizing Pericles in the Funeral Oration, Pericles is subtly depicted as a tyrant, a demagogue, a despot who became a despot by his exploitation of the erotic character of humansan erotic character which the Athenians unleashed in the Persian Wars and then unleashed over the Mediterranean in a vain and tyrannical bid for an empire. The polis was a political community and a sovereign entity competing in a world of similar communities. THUCYDIDES gives Pericles very little to say in his Funeral Oration about the political institutions of Athenian democracy. In these ways our city deserves to be admired (2.39). 12. He rejected the notion that democracy turned its back on excellence, reducing all to equality at a low level. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. 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 an established Athenian practice by the late 5th centuryBCE to hold a public funeral in honour of all those who had died in war. The surge in mail-in voting this year has protected people from the coronavirus, but it has also highlighted problems in the nations patchwork, underfunded election system. Yet this tolerant, easygoing way of life does not entail a disrespect for law or an invitation to licentious behavior. 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. They respected the warrior class and placed them among the top member of the society. 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. He believed that mans capacities and desires could be fulfilled at the highest level only through participation in the life of a community governed by reasoned discussion and guided by intelligence. The older was the aristocratic image that emerged from the epic poems of Homer and dominated Greek society for hundreds of years. Pericles (left) and Pheidias consult about creation of statue of Athena in this painting. Now it is for you to emulate them; knowing that happiness requires freedom and freedom requires courage, do not shrink from the dangers of war (2.43.2-4). When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. A Rhetorical Analysis Of Pericles's Speech. Does eating close to bedtime make you gain weight? His achievements included the construction of the Acropolis, begun in 447. Alcohol-free bars, no-booze cruises, and other tools can help you enjoy travel without the hangover. Pericles ends with a short epilogue, reminding the audience of the difficulty of the task of speaking over the dead. To honor the gods for the victory and to glorify Athens, Pericles proposed using the Delian Leagues treasury to mount an unprecedented building campaign. An even greater substitution for the glories of war could be found in the exercise by each Athenian of his political duties. Homeric virtues and values, therefore, were worldly and personal. I dont wonder that where such a load of dishonor burdens the coward death seems preferable instead of a dishonored and shameful life (Constitution of the Spartans 9.4-6). 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 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. Finally they were buried at a public grave (at Kerameikos). For they gave their lives for the common good. Pericles begins by mentioning the struggles of the Athenian ancestors whom "after many a struggle transmitted to us their sons this great empire." . We are superior in this way, too, that we are the most daring in what we undertake at the same time as we are the most thoughtful before going about it, while with others it is ignorance that brings boldness and thought that makes them hesitate. Where citizens boast a freedom that differs from their enemies' the Lacedaemonians. "Pericles' Funeral Oration from the Peloponnesian War (Book 2.34-46)." Internet He advanced the foundations of democracy and governed during Athenss Golden Age, when the arts, architecture, and philosophyas well as Athens itselfreached new heights. These sources are not all ascertainable, but they certainly preserve an invaluable amount of fact and contemporary gossip, which is sometimes nearly as useful. Pericles' funeral oration has exercised a permanent fascination on the political imagination of the West. But we have these speeches because Thucydides reported them, and his subject was war. 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. These solemn commemorations, apparently unique to the Athenian democracy, had a political dimension, for the speaker was someone chosen by the polis as the man who seemed wisest in judgment and foremost in reputation (Thucydides 2.34.6). The rewards conferred by these aristocratic virtues are precisely those sought by the epic heroes: greatness, power, honor, fame. Pericles Pericles expands on his earlier point about Athenian democracy to establish that it is not just a system of government; it is the whole way of life for Athenians. The Spartans were famous for their brevity and distrust of subtle reasoning, but Pericles praises the democracys fondness for debate and discussion. 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. That Pericles immediately succeeded the assassinated Ephialtes as head of the democratic party in 461 is an ancient oversimplification; there were other men of considerable weight in Athens in the next 15 years. But Thucydides chronicle of what happened just after Pericles funeral oration is unsparingand should be as enduring as the speech itself. Thucydides fervently supported Periclesbut was less enthusiastic about the institution of democracy. The Spartans believed in deeds, not words. "[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]. The city was blanketed with corpses. More fully, and therefore at greater length, Pericles did the same thing. 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.. [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). Gill, N.S. Pericles stirring funeral oration is among the most famous passages of Thucydides. 3.38.4. 1, Routledge, 2016. One can recognize this dichotomy by analyzing the utilization of foils in Pericles. That conception ran counter to Greek experience, which had always been full of turbulence and warfare. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
Santa Monica Low Income Housing Waiting List, Throggs Neck St Patrick's Parade 2021, Stanford Swimming Recruiting Questionnaire, Jason Knight Knives For Sale, Articles P