PERICLES’ FUNERAL ORATION (Speech)
430BC – 1 year into the Peloponnesian War
The citizens of Athens held the first funeral for those who had died in the
Peloponnesian War in 430BC. Pericles was chosen to speak after the proper
burial customs were completed. The historian Thucydides recorded the
event.
“…Most of those who have stood in this place before me have commended
the institution of this closing address. It is good, they have felt, that solemn
words should be spoken over our fallen soldiers. I do not share this feeling.
Acts deserve acts, not words, in their honor, and to me a burial at the
State’s charges, such as you see before you, would have appeared
sufficient…”
SUM IT UP: ______________________________________________________________
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“My first words shall be for our ancestors; for it is both just to them and
seemly that on occasion such as this our tribute of memory should be paid
them. For, dwelling always in this country, generation after generation in
unchanging and unbroken succession, they have handed it down to us free
by their exertions. So they are worthy of our praise; and still more so our
fathers. For they enlarged the ancestral inheritance by the Empire which we
hold today…”
Who does Pericles thank? ________________________
And for what? ___________________________________________________________
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“For our government is not copied from those of our neighbors: we are an
example to them rather than they to us. Our constitution is named a
democracy, because IT is in the hands not of the few but of the many.”
What is the “IT” Pericles refers to? ___________________________
“Our military training too is different from our opponent…For our trust is
not in the devices of material equipment, but in our own good spirits for
battle….”
What does Pericles think counts for more than armor in battle?
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 “We are admirers of beauty without extravagance and wisdom
without unmanliness. Wealth to us is not merely for vanity but an
opportunity for achievement; and poverty we think it no disgrace to
acknowledge but a real degradation to make no effort to overcome…”
What does Pericles think is a shameful thing for a civilization to do?
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 “In a word I claim that Athens is the school of Greece…”
What form of figurative language is this? ______________________
SUM IT UP: ______________________________________________________________
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THINK ABOUT IT: How do we honor fallen soldiers in the United
States?
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