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THE AGE OF PERICLES - PAINTING BY
PHILIPP VON FOLTZ
Pericles' Funeral Oration
Go here for more about
Pericles.
Go here for more about
Pericles' Funeral Speech.
The painting at the top of this
page shows Pericles delivering a speech on top of the Pnyx.
His audience is the Who's Who of Athens at the time -
contemporary poets, artists, and philosophers.
There is a modern day picture of
the Pnyx in the Speech Archive. You can find it at
Demosthenes'
Third Philippic. And here is a
map of the Pnyx.
Pericles' Funeral Oration is sometimes compared with
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
It follows the English translation of the full text transcript of
Pericles' Funeral Oration, according to the
Greek historian
Thucydides. Pericles
delivered this speech in the year 431 BC.
To see this speech in context,
you can also go directly to the source and read
The
History of the Peloponnesian War,
Book II, Chapter 6.
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Most of my
predecessors in this place have commended him
who made this speech part of the law, telling us
that it is well that it should be delivered at
the burial of those who fall in battle. |
For myself, I
should have thought that the worth which had
displayed itself in deeds would be sufficiently
rewarded by honors also shown by deeds; such as
you now see in this funeral prepared at the
people's cost. And I could have wished that the
reputations of many brave men were not to be
imperiled in the mouth of a single individual,
to stand or fall according as he spoke well or
ill. For it is hard to speak properly upon a
subject where it is even difficult to convince
your hearers that you are speaking the truth.
On the one hand,
the friend who is familiar with every fact of
the story may think that some point has not been
set forth with that fullness which he wishes and
knows it to deserve; on the other, he who is a
stranger to the matter may be led by envy to
suspect exaggeration if he hears anything above
his own nature. For men can endure to hear
others praised only so long as they can
severally persuade themselves of their own
ability to equal the actions recounted: when
this point is passed, envy comes in and with it
incredulity. However, since our ancestors have
stamped this custom with their approval, it
becomes my duty to obey the law and to try to
satisfy your several wishes and opinions as best
I may.
I shall begin with our ancestors. It is both
just and proper that they should have the honor
of the first mention on an occasion like the
present. They dwelt in the country without break
in the succession from generation to generation,
and handed it down free to the present time by
their valor. And if our more remote ancestors
deserve praise, much more do our own fathers,
who added to their inheritance the empire which
we now possess, and spared no pains to be able
to leave their acquisitions to us of the present
generation.
Lastly, there are
few parts of our dominions that have not been
augmented by those of us here, who are still
more or less in the vigor of life; while the
mother country has been furnished by us with
everything that can enable her to depend on her
own resources whether for war or for peace. That
part of our history which tells of the military
achievements which gave us our several
possessions, or of the ready valor with which
either we or our fathers stemmed the tide of
Hellenic or foreign aggression, is a theme too
familiar to my hearers for me to dilate on, and
I shall therefore pass it by. 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; since I think this to be a subject
upon which on the present occasion a speaker may
properly dwell, and to which the whole
assemblage, whether citizens or foreigners, may
listen with advantage.
Our constitution does not copy the laws of
neighboring states. We are rather a pattern to
others than imitators ourselves. Its
administration favors the many instead of the
few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we
look to the laws, they afford equal justice to
all in their private differences; if no social
standing, advancement in public life falls to
reputation for capacity, class considerations
not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor
again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able
to serve the state, he is not hindered by the
obscurity of his condition.
The freedom which
we enjoy in our government extends also to our
ordinary life. There, far from exercising a
jealous surveillance over each other, we do not
feel called upon to be angry with our neighbor
for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in
those injurious looks which cannot fail to be
offensive, although they inflict no positive
penalty. But all this ease in our private
relations does not make us lawless as citizens.
Against this fear is our chief safeguard,
teaching us to obey the magistrates and the
laws, particularly such as regard the protection
of the injured, whether they are actually on the
statute book, or belong to that code which,
although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without
acknowledged disgrace.
Further, we provide plenty of means for the mind
to refresh itself from business. We celebrate
games and sacrifices all the year round, and the
elegance of our private establishments forms a
daily source of pleasure and helps to banish the
spleen; while the magnitude of our city draws
the produce of the world into our harbor, so
that to the Athenian the fruits of other
countries are as familiar a luxury as those of
his own.
If we turn to our military policy, there also we
differ from our antagonists. 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;
trusting less in system and policy than to the
native spirit of our citizens; while in
education, where our rivals from their very
cradles by a painful discipline seek after
manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we
please, and yet are just as ready to encounter
every legitimate danger.
In proof of this
it may be noticed that the Lacedaemonians do not
invade our country alone, but bring with them
all their confederates; while we Athenians
advance unsupported into the territory of a
neighbor, and fighting upon a foreign soil
usually vanquish with ease men who are defending
their homes. Our united force was never yet
encountered by any enemy, because we have at
once to attend to our marine and to dispatch our
citizens by land upon a hundred different
services; so that, wherever they engage with
some such fraction of our strength, a success
against a detachment is magnified into a victory
over the nation, and a defeat into a reverse
suffered at the hands of our entire people. And
yet if with habits not of labor but of ease, and
courage not of art but of nature, we are still
willing to encounter danger, we have the double
advantage of escaping the experience of
hardships in anticipation and of facing them in
the hour of need as fearlessly as those who are
never free from them.
Nor are these the only points in which our city
is worthy of admiration. We cultivate refinement
without extravagance and knowledge without
effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than
for show, and 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 affairs to
attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though
occupied with the pursuits of industry, are
still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike
any other nation, regarding him who takes no
part in these duties not as unambitious but as
useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all
events if we cannot originate, and, 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.
Again, in our
enterprises we present the singular spectacle of
daring and deliberation, each carried to its
highest point, and both united in the same
persons; although usually decision is the fruit
of ignorance, hesitation of reflection. But the
palm of courage will surely be adjudged most
justly to those, who best know the difference
between hardship and pleasure and yet are never
tempted to shrink from danger. In generosity we
are equally singular, acquiring our friends by
conferring, not by receiving, favors. Yet, of
course, the doer of the favor is the firmer
friend of the two, in order by continued
kindness to keep the recipient in his debt;
while the debtor feels less keenly from the very
consciousness that the return he makes will be a
payment, not a free gift. And it is only the
Athenians, who, fearless of consequences, confer
their benefits not from calculations of
expediency, but in the confidence of liberality.
In short, I say that as a city we are the school
of Hellas, while I doubt if the world can
produce a man who, where he has only himself to
depend upon, is equal to so many emergencies,
and graced by so happy a versatility, as the
Athenian. And that this is no mere boast thrown
out for the occasion, but plain matter of fact,
the power of the state acquired by these habits
proves. For Athens alone of her contemporaries
is found when tested to be greater than her
reputation, and alone gives no occasion to her
assailants to blush at the antagonist by whom
they have been worsted, or to her subjects to
question her title by merit to rule.
Rather, the
admiration of the present and succeeding ages
will be ours, since we have not left our power
without witness, but have shown it by mighty
proofs; and far from needing a Homer for our
panegyrist, or other of his craft whose verses
might charm for the moment only for the
impression which they gave to melt at the touch
of fact, we have forced every sea and land to be
the highway of our daring, and everywhere,
whether for evil or for good, have left
imperishable monuments behind us. Such is the
Athens for which these men, in the assertion of
their resolve not to lose her, nobly fought and
died; and well may every one of their survivors
be ready to suffer in her cause.
Indeed if I have dwelt at some length upon the
character of our country, it has been to show
that our stake in the struggle is not the same
as theirs who have no such blessings to lose,
and also that the panegyric of the men over whom
I am now speaking might be by definite proofs
established. That panegyric is now in a great
measure complete; for the Athens that I have
celebrated is only what the heroism of these and
their like have made her, men whose fame, unlike
that of most Hellenes, will be found to be only
commensurate with their deserts. And if a test
of worth be wanted, it is to be found in their
closing scene, and this not only in cases in
which it set the final seal upon their merit,
but also in those in which it gave the first
intimation of their having any. For there is
justice in the claim that steadfastness in his
country's battles should be as a cloak to cover
a man's other imperfections; since the good
action has blotted out the bad, and his merit as
a citizen more than outweighed his demerits as
an individual. But none of these allowed either
wealth with its prospect of future enjoyment to
unnerve his spirit, or poverty with its hope of
a day of freedom and riches to tempt him to
shrink from danger.
No, holding that
vengeance upon their enemies was more to be
desired than any personal blessings, and
reckoning this to be the most glorious of
hazards, they joyfully determined to accept the
risk, to make sure of their vengeance, and to
let their wishes wait; and while committing to
hope the uncertainty of final success, in the
business before them they thought fit to act
boldly and trust in themselves. Thus choosing to
die resisting, rather than to live submitting,
they fled only from dishonor, but met danger
face to face, and after one brief moment, while
at the summit of their fortune, escaped, not
from their fear, but from their glory.
So died these men as became Athenians. You,
their survivors, must determine to have as
unfaltering a resolution in the field, though
you may pray that it may have a happier issue.
And not contented with ideas derived only from
words of the advantages which are bound up with
the defense of your country, though these would
furnish a valuable text to a speaker even before
an audience so alive to them as the present, you
must yourselves realize the power of Athens, and
feed your eyes upon her from day to day, till
love of her fills your hearts; and then, when
all her greatness shall break upon you, you must
reflect that it was by courage, sense of duty,
and a keen feeling of honor in action that men
were enabled to win all this, and that no
personal failure in an enterprise could make
them consent to deprive their country of their
valor, but they laid it at her feet as the most
glorious contribution that they could offer.
For this offering
of their lives made in common by them all they
each of them individually received that renown
which never grows old, and for a sepulcher, not
so much that in which their bones have been
deposited, but that noblest of shrines wherein
their glory is laid up to be eternally
remembered upon every occasion on which deed or
story shall call for its commemoration. For
heroes have the whole earth for their tomb; and
in lands far from their own, where the column
with its epitaph declares it, there is enshrined
in every breast a record unwritten with no
tablet to preserve it, except that of the heart.
These take as your
model and, judging happiness to be the fruit of
freedom and freedom of valor, never decline the
dangers of war. For it is not the miserable that
would most justly be unsparing of their lives;
these have nothing to hope for: it is rather
they to whom continued life may bring reverses
as yet unknown, and to whom a fall, if it came,
would be most tremendous in its consequences.
And surely, to a man of spirit, the degradation
of cowardice must be immeasurably more grievous
than the unfelt death which strikes him in the
midst of his strength and patriotism!
Comfort, therefore, not condolence, is what I
have to offer to the parents of the dead who may
be here. Numberless are the chances to which, as
they know, the life of man is subject; but
fortunate indeed are they who draw for their lot
a death so glorious as that which has caused
your mourning, and to whom life has been so
exactly measured as to terminate in the
happiness in which it has been passed. Still I
know that this is a hard saying, especially when
those are in question of whom you will
constantly be reminded by seeing in the homes of
others blessings of which once you also boasted:
for grief is felt not so much for the want of
what we have never known, as for the loss of
that to which we have been long accustomed.
Yet you who are
still of an age to beget children must bear up
in the hope of having others in their stead; not
only will they help you to forget those whom you
have lost, but will be to the state at once a
reinforcement and a security; for never can a
fair or just policy be expected of the citizen
who does not, like his fellows, bring to the
decision the interests and apprehensions of a
father. While those of you who have passed your
prime must congratulate yourselves with the
thought that the best part of your life was
fortunate, and that the brief span that remains
will be cheered by the fame of the departed. For
it is only the love of honor that never grows
old; and honor it is, not gain, as some would
have it, that rejoices the heart of age and
helplessness.
Turning to the sons or brothers of the dead, I
see an arduous struggle before you. When a man
is gone, all are wont to praise him, and should
your merit be ever so transcendent, you will
still find it difficult not merely to overtake,
but even to approach their renown. The living
have envy to contend with, while those who are
no longer in our path are honored with a
goodwill into which rivalry does not enter. On
the other hand, if I must say anything on the
subject of female excellence to those of you who
will now be in widowhood, it will be all
comprised in this brief exhortation. Great will
be your glory in not falling short of your
natural character; and greatest will be hers who
is least talked of among the men, whether for
good or for bad.
My task is now finished. I have performed it to
the best of my ability, and in word, at least,
the requirements of the law are now satisfied.
If deeds be in question, those who are here
interred have received part of their honors
already, and for the rest, their children will
be brought up till manhood at the public
expense: the state thus offers a valuable prize,
as the garland of victory in this race of valor,
for the reward both of those who have fallen and
their survivors. And where the rewards for merit
are greatest, there are found the best citizens.
And now that you have brought to a close your
lamentations for your relatives, you may depart.
More History
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