The most important thing to remember about the Funeral Oration is that it is a speech, intended to persuade its listeners.
A month after 9/11, Congressman Major Owens offered a rap eulogy: “Defiant orations of Pericles / Must now rise / Out of the ashes.” Special editions of the Funeral Oration were published in Britain in the First World War, and quotations from it appear on many war memorials and are used in memorial services. It has been argued that Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address in 1863 was influenced by it that is very uncertain, but the other speech on that occasion, a mammoth two-hour effort by one Edward Everett, constantly referred to it. Pericles’ speech has also played an important role, as you would expect, in commemorating those who have died in war. In books of quotations, the Funeral Oration always provides most of the entries for Thucydides these are the lines he is most famous for, and politicians – especially in the United States – regularly quote these lines in speeches. In the First World War, for example, quotes from the speech were posted as advertisements in London buses, to inspire the reader with patriotic spirit. Thereafter, however, especially through the influence of the British historian George Grote and his friend the philosopher John Stuart Mill, democracy was seen as a good thing, and Pericles’ speech became its most powerful celebration. Before the nineteenth century, ‘democracy’ was regarded by most people as mob rule, and so a speech in praise of democracy was of little use one French translation at the time of the Revolution used phrases like “our constitution is called ‘popular’” rather than “our constitution is called a democracy” to avoid the negative overtones of the word. The Funeral Oration was recognised as a rhetorical masterpiece, and so from the sixteenth century onwards it was often included in collections of ancient speeches that were used to teach students the principles of rhetoric. Thucydides used this opportunity to recreate the experience of listening to the greatest orator of his time, and at the same time to give his reader a sense of Pericles’ own ideas and of the ideals that inspired the Athenians and, as always, he wanted his readers to think about those ideas and ideals, and to compare them to the reality of events. Thucydides had to rely on memory, his own and others’, and said himself that the speeches in his work were not exact records of what was said but presented the speaker’s main points and what was appropriate to the situation (see I.22). How far Thucydides recorded Pericles’ exact words, and how far he offers rather paraphrase or even invention, is as always a matter of dispute.
The Funeral Oration has become one of the most famous and influential passages in Thucydides’ work it offers a stirring tribute to the culture of Athens, to democracy and freedom, and it celebrates the men who are willing to die for their 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. In 431 BCE, at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War, held their traditional public funeral for all those who had been killed. Understanding the Passage (Key Questions)
0 kommentar(er)
