pericles speech on democracy

Surviving the disease, he carefully set down the symptoms, knowledge of which will enable it to be recognized, if it should ever break out again. His ancient empirical analysis of catastrophe offers a jot of hope, if not wonder: for as long as there have been plagues, there have been people, scared but tenacious, using reason to try to learn from them. Pericles begins by mentioning the struggles of the Athenian ancestors whom "after many a struggle transmitted to us their sons this great empire." . Athens was one of the most important and powerful cities in the ancient world. He was seen as encouraging and enabling the participation of ordinary citizens in the democratic process, not only as electors but as active participants. We obey those who hold office and the laws themselves, especially those enacted for the protection of the oppressed and those which, although unwritten, it is acknowledged shame to violate (2.37.3). "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'. 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. The liberality of which Pericles spoke also extended to Athens' foreign policy: "We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality"[16] Yet Athens' values of equality and openness do not, according to Pericles, hinder Athens' greatness, indeed, they enhance it, "advancement in public life falls to reputations for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with meritour ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public mattersat Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger."[17]. Pericles was widely seen as the leader of Athens. left his mark on the world in far more ways than the iconic Acropolis that still defines the skyline of Athens. In his oration, he made democracy, freedom, and justice the main rationale for citizens . Monoson, Sara (2002). . 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. Ancient Philosophy. In the process, he presented his vision for Athens and the kind of citizen its unique constitution and way of life would produce. But soon after Pericles gave that prideful speech, the original democracy got sick. A few days before Pericles birth, according to the Greek historian Herodotus, Agariste dreamed she bore a lion. .But in Sparta anyone would be ashamed to dine or to wrestle with a coward. We have no need of a Homer to praise us or of anyone else whose words will delight us for the moment but whose account of the facts will be discredited by the truth. Prior to the plague's devastation, Athenians were already dying as a result of the war. He perceives Athens as a city with virtue, modesty, and modernization. But most of the citizens, even in undemocratic states, had no such opportunities. The catastrophe was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what would happen next to them, became indifferent to every rule of religion or of law, Thucydides wrote. The ancient Greek statesman Pericles (ca 495-429 B.C.) Pericles stirring funeral oration is among the most famous passages of Thucydides. The story of the Athenians in the time of Pericles suggests that the creation and survival of democracy requires leadership of a high order. They respected the warrior class and placed them among the top member of the society. She was also niece to the father of Athenian democracy, Cleisthenes. The French and American revolutions extended citizenship more generously than in Greece, ultimately excluding only children from political participation. 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. Persuasive Oratory: Pericles was known for his eloquent speeches and persuasive oratory skills. . The aristocrat believed that the poor were not free, because their poverty deprived them of leisure and, therefore, of the opportunity to take part in public life. 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. And, once it arrived, its damage knew no bounds, doing terrible harm to democracy itself. He goes on to talk about Athenian lifestyle and recreation, as to further position Athens as the height of civilization. Most of those who have spoken here before me have commended the lawgiver who added this oration to our other funeral customs. To honor the gods for the victory and to glorify Athens, Pericles proposed using the Delian Leagues treasury to mount an unprecedented building campaign. Athens is called a democracy because the many rule, not the few; everyone knew that in Sparta a small minority dominated the vast majority. Alcohol-free bars, no-booze cruises, and other tools can help you enjoy travel without the hangover. This ordinary woman hid Anne Frankand kept her story alive, This Persian marvel was lost for millennia. Pericles lifted Athens into a golden age through his support of the arts, architecture, philosophy, and democracy building. Pericles also elevated Athenss role within the Delian League, a naval alliance of Greek city-states unified to fight the Persians. To shape that vision and persuade others of its virtues, Pericles needed to overcome the attractive force of two earlier views of the best human life. 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. In it, Pericles (or Thucydides) extols the values of democracy. Here Pericles has identified a critical element of his vision for Athens: its commitment to reason and intelligence. No one, moreover, if he has it in him to do some good for the city, is barred because of poverty or humble origins (Thucydides 2.37.1). This new kind of government was carried to its classical form by the reforms of Pericles a half-century later, and it was in the Athens shaped by Pericles that the greatest achievements of the Greeks took place. In his speech, he talked about Athenian democracy. The world has been astounded to see thin shoots of democracy trying to break through the hard surface of oppression. [21] He regards the soldiers who gave their lives as truly worth of merit. He further says that democracy guarantees privacy and equal justice for all. Given Pericles' family's wealth and influence in Athens, he received a very good . But archaeology is confirming that Persia's engineering triumph was real. 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. No fear of god or law of man had a restraining influence.. Athens lost its first citizen, but his legacy endures in the Athens skyline and in democratic institutions around the world. 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. 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. In 431 B.C., Pericles urged the popular assembly to declare war against Sparta. To me, at least, they still seem to indicate some of the important ways in which democracy is likely to go astray. He was one of those rare individuals who do not merely accept the conditions of the world they find but try to shape it to an image in their own minds. An even greater substitution for the glories of war could be found in the exercise by each Athenian of his political duties. The Spartans believed in deeds, not words. According to Lincoln, democracy means " Government of the people, by the people and for the people," (Nicolay, 209). As Plato knew, political regimes are as fragile as any other human structure, and all fall in time. 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. Funerals after such battles were public rituals and Pericles used the occasion to make a classic statement of the value of democracy. Leading up to this oration, the people of Athens, including those from the countryside whose land was being pillaged by their enemies, were kept in crowded conditions within the walls of Athens. An understanding of that reality should give pause to any who may think that democracy is the natural polity of mankind and that its establishment and success are assured once despotic or reactionary rule has been removed. His political program allowed all Athenian citizens to take part in government, to help guide their own destinies and those of their polis, as befits free men, to pursue their own prosperity and happiness in a broad realm of privacy, free of interference and confiscation by the state yet held to a high standard of ethical behavior in the role of a citizen. Most of what we know about the plague comes from the brilliant Athenian historian Thucydides, widely viewed by classicists as the single best source on Athens in the age of Pericles. It was written by the Greek philosopher Thucydides (460-395 B.C.E. For trade and the manufacture of whatever they needed, the Spartans relied on the perioikoipeople who lived in free communities, gave control of foreign policy to the Spartans, and served under Spartan command in the army. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Some time in the eighth century the polis emerged, and its needs at once came into conflict with the old heroic ethos. 1, Routledge, 2016. . Only in ancient Athens and in the United States so far has democracy lasted for as much as two hundred years. Above all, Pericles helped the Athenians to understand that their private needs, both moral and material, required the kind of community Athens had become. In a democracy, citizens behave lawfully while doing what they like without fear of prying eyes. Thucydides, who wrote his Periclean speech for his History of the Peloponnesian War, readily admitted that his speeches were only loosely based on memory and shouldn't be taken as a verbatim report. Pericles is perhaps best remembered for a building program centred on theAcropolis which included the Parthenon and for a funeral oration he gave early in the Peloponnesian War, as recorded by Thucydides. As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it: the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it. In the following speech, Pericles made these points about democracy: Baird, Forrest E., editor. 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. Pericles, the author of the speech, was a general of Athens in the fifth century BCE. Read the following excerpt from Pericles's speech: Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Approaching 50, he began a relationship withAspasiaofMiletus. Judgment was rendered according to their laws, once again, by courts made up of citizens. 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. At any rate, Pericles eventually succumbed to and died from this plague. Yet this tolerant, easygoing way of life does not entail a disrespect for law or an invitation to licentious behavior. Axolotls and capybaras are TikTok famousis that a problem? 2023 Cond Nast. 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. One can recognize this dichotomy by analyzing the utilization of foils in Pericles. In a democracy, there is equal justice for all in private disputes. Many historians consider that event to have marked the birth of Athenian democracy. . Most died after about a week. Instead, survivors looked for already burning funeral pyres, adding friends and relatives to the blaze. [28][29][30] Lincoln's speech, like Pericles': It is uncertain to what degree, if any, Lincoln was directly influenced by Pericles's funeral oration. An Aerial View of New York City During a Pandemic. . Their national poet, Tyrtaeus, specifically rejected the Homeric values and replaced them with a single definition of arete: the courage to stand bravely in the ranks of a hoplite phalanx fighting for Sparta. 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. For the annual summer birthday celebration of Athena (the Greek goddess of wisdom for whom the city is named), a procession started at the Dipylon Gatethe largest of 15 gates in the cityand marched more than a mile to the Altar of Athena on the Acropolis. Pericles was among its victims. The Funeral Oration was delivered during a war that was clearly going to continue for some time. While Athens was fighting the Peloponnesian War, he gave a famous speech called the Funeral Oration. Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now, Pericles, the great Athenian statesman, declared in his funeral oration, a celebrated speech in the winter of 431430 B.C.E. 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. That Pericles skull was of unusual shape seems well attested, but one can hardly speculate about the possible psychological consequences. Pericles was a leading figure from the Greek Peloponnesian War. 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). This ancient marvel rivaled Romes intricate network of roads, For some long COVID patients, exercise is bad medicine, Radioactive dogs? The Athenian democracy would encourage merit in its traditional form and reward it with victory, glory, and immortality. Pericles greatest achievement lay in his ability to explain how the interests of the city and its citizens depended on each other for fulfillment. How did Cleisthenes reform Athenian democracy? Pericles believed these should be the goals for every Athenian to live and die for. [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). Orderly Athenians, no longer expecting to live long enough to face punishment for crimes, plunged into a state of unprecedented lawlessness. They could not even bother to lay their dead to rest respectably. Although Thucydides records the speech in the first person as if it were a word for word record of what Pericles said, there can be little doubt that he edited the speech at the very least. But the most original aspect of Pericles vision for Athens was its expectation of an enduring peace. Concentrating on each translator's rendering of one of the most frequently cited passages in Thucydides' History (the so-called "funeral oration" given by Pericles in Book 2), Lianeri's central aim is to show how each of these interpretations was shaped by changes in attitudes towards the concept of . 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). Pericles was born into the Athenian aristocracy. He wasnt wrong. The Spartans faced this fundamental problem of the polis in its sharpest form. If they ever failed in some attempt, they were determined that, at least, their city should not be deprived of their courage [arete] and gave her the most beautiful of all offerings. 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. The Athenian statesman Pericles defined democracy as a system which protects the interests of all the people, not just a minority. It might have been smallpox, a fungal poisoning called ergotism, or something worse. What we can learn from Chernobyl's strays. Next came coughing, stomach pain, diarrhea, and vomiting of every kind of bile that has been given a name by the medical profession. The skin turned reddish with pustules and ulcers, while the stricken plunged into the citys water tanks trying to slake an unquenchable thirstpossibly contaminating the water supply. But we have these speeches because Thucydides reported them, and his subject was war. How could the ordinary man achieve kleos? Despite Thucydides' divided attitude towards democracy, the speech he put in Pericles' mouth supports the democratic form of government. 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. ", "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. Only someone of Pericles intelligence and integrity, Thucydides wrote, could respect the liberty of the people and at the same time hold them in check. His death left Athenian democracy in the hands of self-serving scoundrels such as Alcibiades, who later promoted an oligarchic coup, and bellicose demagogues such as Cleon, whom Thucydides scorned as remarkable among the Athenians for the violence of his character.. Nor did consulting the oracles or praying in the temples, futile pieties which Thucydides dismissively noted were soon discarded. The thousands of citizens who participated in Athenss fledgling democracy attended the popular assembly at the Pnyx, a rise in the center of the city. Pericles therefore asserts that we conduct our public life as free men [eleuthero.i] (2.37.2). Men must put aside their petty wants and look at what is best for the state as a whole. Bequeathed, too, was his innovative approach of conducting an orderly, thorough examination of the past to explain the causesand outcomesof past events. 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 . In contrast, Pericles, via his funeral oration speech, believes that democracy is better ruled by many rather than few. The tale tells us much about Greek values. Plato and Aristotle wrote long after the death of Pericles, and it is by no means clear that these descriptions fit the real Athenian democracy at any time. Business, Men, Mind. 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). Unauthorized use is prohibited. Courage, strength, military prowess, persuasiveness, cunning, beauty, wealth: these were examples of arete, the excellent qualities of the good, the fortunate, the happy man. Pericles' mother was related to the controversial noble family of Alcmaeniode. We say he has no business being here at all. The older ethical tradition came chiefly from the Homeric epic, where the esteemed values were those of heroic individuals. "Pericles, son of Xanthippos, spoke like this". The rewards conferred by these aristocratic virtues are precisely those sought by the epic heroes: greatness, power, honor, fame. [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. .he must support his unmarried sisters at home and explain to them why they are still spinsters, he must live without a wife at his fireside. In these ways our city deserves to be admired (2.39). Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). And with the spectre of mortality looming at all times, they lived only for the pleasure of the moment and everything that might conceivably contribute to that pleasure. Thought is not a barrier to the achievement of heroic goals. The highest reward is the kind of immortality that was once reserved for epic heroes but which now has come to the Athenian soldiers who have died in the service of their city, and which Pericles urges the living to earn for themselves: They gave their lives for the common good and thereby won for themselves the praise that never grows old and the most distinguished of all graves, not those in which they lie, but where their glory remains in eternal memory, always there at the right time to inspire speech and action. Then a funeral procession was held, with ten cypress coffins carrying the remains, one for each of the Athenian tribes, and another left symbolically empty for the missing or those whose remains were unable to be recovered. Instead, it opened the competition for excellence and honor to all, removing the accidental barriers imposed in other constitutions and societies: Our city is called a democracy because it is governed by the many, not the few. Pericles' speech reminded Athenians of the power of democracy and gave them courage to keep fighting. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. Older, better established democracies have the same needs if they are not to become the aimless, selfish, unstable, and doomed perversions of the Periclean vision described by Plato and Aristotle. In the decade before 500 B.C., the Athenians established the worlds first democratic constitution. Achilles came to fight at Troy not for any national, ethnic, or communal cause but for his own purposes: to obtain booty seized from captured cities and to display the heroic excellence that Homer called arete. [b] Another confusing factor is that Pericles is known to have delivered another funeral oration in 440BCE during the Samian War. And after a life spent in what among our people passes for comfort, he died most gloriously. Pericles was born into an aristocratic family in Athens in 495 BC. Why did Pericles think Athens could live in peace after so many years of continuous fighting? She has been featured by NPR and National Geographic for her ancient history expertise. He was the son of the politician Xanthippus and Agariste. As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it, the real shame is in not taking . On the contrary, we have forced every sea and land to become an entrance for our daring, and we have everywhere established permanent monuments of the harm we have done our enemies and the good we have done for our friends (2.4l.4). But soon after Pericles gave that prideful speech, the original democracy got sick. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests.

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