Thucydides Pericles’ Funeral Oration (431 BCE)

• Apology for inadequacy of his words
• It is tough speaking in situations like this because I always disappoint my audience. One listener will argue that I ignored a main detail of the battle, and another will never believe my praise of the dead if he could not have equaled their heroics. BUT I will do my best.

• Honor to Ancestors
• Our forefathers passed down this land to us through their valor.
• Our fathers defeated the Persians and expanded the land we control.
• Our generation too has sacrificed to make our country strong enough to hold its own among nations.
• I am not interested in recounting past glories. We hear that enough. However, I am interested in the customs and habits of our people, the practices of our form of government which have helped produce our society.

• Thesis
• “But what was the road by which we reached our position, what the form of government under which our greatness grew, what the national habits out of which it sprang; these are questions which I may try to solve before I proceed to my panegyric upon these men.”

• The Characteristics of Democratic Society
• Our government favors the many rather than the few.
• Our laws offer equal justice for all.
• Class considerations do not affect our judgment of merit, and poverty does not bar advancement in our government.
• We value our own freedom, but we safeguard freedom by not judging those who live differently than we do. Tolerance is at the core of our conception of freedom.
• Our freedom enables us to pursue happiness via the many forms of recreation available in Athens, and our wealth allows us to select from a wide array of commodities from all around the Mediterranean that are traded in our port.
• We live in an open society, unafraid of exposing our defenses to the eyes of potential enemies because we recognize that the true secret to our strength is the energy and commitment to duty of our citizens themselves.
  
• The Characteristics of the Citizen in a Democracy
• We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy.
• Wealth we employ more for use than for show.
• We place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it.
• Our public men have, besides politics, their private business affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters.
• Because our citizens have only themselves to depend upon to earn a living, they prove equal to many emergencies and are graced with versatility which proves highly useful when they are called upon for public service.
• Instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all
• We also acquire friendship by conferring, not by receiving, favours. We do so not from calculations of expediency, but in the confidence of liberality.

• The Advantages of a Democracy in War: Citizen Soldiers
• Our citizens are free to do whatever they please with their lives unlike the Spartans who are required to train for war from birth.
• Therefore, our stake in the struggle is not the same as those who do not have the blessings of freedom to lose.
• We regard victory in any excursion as a victory for our whole people instead of an opportunity for private gain.

• Honor to the Fallen
• the Athens that I have celebrated is only what the heroism of these [fallen dead] and their like have made her

• The Obligation of the Living to the Dead: Love of Country