The Athenian Funeral Oration GCS Seminar 4

Thucydides 2.34 When the remains have been laid in the earth, a man, chosen by the city for his reputed sagacity of judgment and moral standing, delivers the appropriate eulogy over them; after which the people depart. This is the manner of interment, and the ceremony was repeated whenever there was need for it throughout the war. Over the first who were buried, Pericles was chosen to speak. At the fitting moment he advanced from the cemetery to a lofty platform which had been erected so that he might be heard as far away as possible by the crowd, and spoke as follows

Thucydides 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 to 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. 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.

Lysias, Funeral Oration, 2.1 If I believed it possible, friends who are attending this burial, to set forth in speech the valor of the men who lie here, I should have reproved those who gave me but a few days' notice of having to speak over them. But as all mankind would find all time insufficient for preparing a speech to match their deeds, the city itself therefore, as I think, taking forethought for those who speak here, makes the appointment at short notice, in the belief that on such terms they will most readily obtain indulgence from their hearers

Demosthenes, Funeral Oration, It is a grievous thing for fathers and mothers to be deprived of their children and in their old age to lack the care of those who are nearest and dearest to them. Yes, but it is a proud privilege to behold them possessors of deathless honors and a memorial of their valor erected by the State, and deemed deserving of sacrifices and games for all future time. It is painful for children to be orphaned of a father. Yes, but it is a beautiful thing to be the heir of a father's fame. And of this pain we shall find the deity to be the cause, to whom mortal creatures must yield, but of the glory and honor the source is found in the choice of those who willed to die nobly.

Plato Menexenus 234 M: This time, however, I went to the Council Chamber because I had learnt that the Council was going to select someone to make an oration over the dead; for you know that they propose to arrange for funeral rites. S: In truth, Menexenus, to fall in battle seems to be a splendid thing in many ways. For a man obtains a splendid and magnificent funeral even though at his death he be but a poor man; and though he be but a worthless fellow, he wins praise, and that by the mouth of accomplished men who do not praise at random, but in speeches prepared long beforehand…they bewitch our souls; and they eulogize the State in every possible fashion, and they praise those who died in the war and all our ancestors of former times and ourselves who are living still; so that I myself, Menexenus, when thus praised by them feel mightily ennobled, and every time I listen fascinated I am exalted and imagine myself to have become all at once taller and nobler….