Pericles was widely seen as the leader of Athens. . Socrates and Pericles, two of these philosophers, had polarizing opinions about the city-state and its citizens. was the sight of people dying like sheep through having caught the disease as a result of nursing others. Neither medicine nor quackery helped. The bibliography on this topic is enormous. Pericles. As Thucydides recorded with clinical detail, people suddenly felt their heads begin to burn, their eyes redden, their tongues and mouths bleed. 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. Part of the speech met the challenge posed by the heroic tradition that emphasized competition, excellence, or merit and the undying glory that rewarded it. The kind of man formed by such a constitution reflects its shortcomings: He lives from day to day indulging the appetite of the hour; and sometimes he is lapped in drink and strains of the flute; then he becomes a water-drinker and tries to get thin; then he takes a turn at gymnastics; sometimes idling and neglecting everything, then once more living the life of a philosopher; often he is busy with politics, and starts to his feet and says and does whatever comes into his head; and, if he is emulous of anyone who is a warrior, off he is in that direction, or men of business, once more in that. It is clear that Pericles views democracy as the best form of government and having adopted it, he views Athens as superior to their fellow city-states. In a democracy, there is equal justice for all in private disputes. His Alcmaeonid mother, Agariste, provided him with relationships of sharply diminishing political value and her family curse, a religious defilement that was occasionally used against him by his enemies. The Athenians prized thought, deliberation, and discussion. Most of Pericles answers to these questions can be found in the Funeral Oration that he delivered in the winter of 431/30, less than two years before his death, at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War. Open Document. Athenian doctors bore the brunt: Terrible . 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. 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). left his mark on the world in far more ways than the iconic Acropolis that still defines the skyline of Athens. Gill, N.S. In his oration, he made democracy, freedom, and justice the main rationale for citizens . The basic ideologies of democracy were described by Pericles in his funeral oration. Our love of what is beautiful does not lead to extravagance; our love of the things of the mind does not make us soft. Thought is not a barrier to the achievement of heroic goals. Unfortunately, the 27-year-long Peloponnesian War resulted in great losses for Athens. Repeated failures had taught the Persians they could not challenge Athenian naval power, while adherence to the right strategya refusal to fight a large land battledeprived Sparta and its allies of any hope for victory. And when such philosophers as Plato modeled their utopian regimes on Sparta, they were building on a tradition that viewed its constitution as a standing rebuke to Athenian democracy. [a], The Funeral Oration was recorded by Thucydides in book two of his famous History of the Peloponnesian War. In the speech he honoured the fallen and held up Athenian democracy as an example to the rest of Greece. That Pericles skull was of unusual shape seems well attested, but one can hardly speculate about the possible psychological consequences. 105 Copy quote. Thucydides maintained a rationalists sensibility even in wartime and plague. All rights reserved. In Platos Republic, written several decades after the plague, Socrates warned that democracy would decay into tyranny; Thucydides recorded it sliding into discord, folly, and demagoguery. .In the streets he must get out of the way. He saw the opportunity to create the greatest political community the world had ever known, one that would fulfill mans strongest and deepest passionsfor glory and immortality. Pericles vision was the culmination of a long process whereby the polis had tried to impose its communal, civic values on a society that had always been organized by family, clan, and tribe. More than 20,000 tons of marble were used, producing the iconic Parthenon and the imposing colonnade of the Propylaea, the entrance gateway. Tens of thousands of people died, perhaps as many as one-third of Athenians. The Athenians gave him a public burial on the spot where he fell [only the men who died at Marathon received the same extraordinary honor] (1.30). 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). In the following speech Pericles made these points about democracy: Democracy allows men to advance because of merit rather than wealth or inherited class. 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. In 451 or 450 Pericles carried a law confining Athenian citizenship to those of Athenian parentage on both sides. In the following speech, Pericles made these points about democracy: Democracy allows men to advance because of merit rather than wealth or inherited class. Pericles' funeral oration was a speech written by Thucydides and delivered by Pericles for his history of the Peloponnesian War. He even asks the gods to aid the enemy so that he may gain vengeance against Agamemnon because, as Achilles himself says, he did no honor to the best of the Achaeans.. Thucydides says early in his History that the speeches presented are not verbatim records, but are intended to represent the main ideas of what was said and what was, according to Thucydides, "called for in the situation". . Nor did consulting the oracles or praying in the temples, futile pieties which Thucydides dismissively noted were soon discarded. 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. Thucydides was a worldly Athenian general, whose History of the Peloponnesian War is a cold-eyed account of the ruinous conflict between democratic Athens and militaristic Sparta. In these ways our city deserves to be admired (2.39). Athenians were already packed into the city as a wartime measure, and frightened people fleeing the countryside crowded it even further, creating conditions we now know are ripe for contagion. he sponsored the play Persians by the great tragic playwright Aeschylus. He also said that the ability to govern and participate in government was more important than one's class. Pericles was a famous Greek general. ", "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. 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. The speech begins by praising the custom of the public funeral for the dead, but criticises the inclusion of the speech, arguing that the "reputations of many brave men" should "not be imperilled in the mouth of a single individual". "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'. 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. 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". Pericles. During the war, even in its darkest moments, Pericles could count on a strong response when he reminded the people that they were right to love their city and even to risk their lives for it, because it was uniquely great, and because only by preserving and enhancing it could the ordinary man share in its glory and so achieve a degree of fame and immortality. His selection as public orator was thus a tribute to his stature, reputation, and political power. Spartas system appealed especially to aristocrats, such as the young men who conversed with Socrates in the gymnasia. Only one ancient account mentions the existence of Xerxes Canal, long thought to be a tall tale. Nobody knows what the plague was, although classically minded epidemiologists still debate its cause. Among those who died from this plague were Pericles and two of his sons. Our educations are different, too. Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic Society, Copyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. 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. 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. For them, nothing could interfere with the claims of the polis to their loyalty and devotion, so they rejected privacy, imposed a rigid economic equality on the members of the Spartiate class, attenuated the independence of the family and its control of its offspring, and made individual goals entirely subordinate to those of the state. The Spartan way of life inspired admiration in many other Greeks, though none went so far as to adopt the Spartan system. As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it: the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it. Plato, in his Menexenus, ascribes authorship to Pericles's companion, Aspasia.[9]. Pericles was born into the Athenian aristocracy. Thinking, Levels. At the begining of the war, Athens and Sparta both thought they knew how to win. Pericles first made a name for himself in the city-state during his 20s as a wealthy aristocratic arts patron. One can recognize this dichotomy by analyzing the utilization of foils in Pericles. The French and American revolutions extended citizenship more generously than in Greece, ultimately excluding only children from political participation.