The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Why did Pericles think Athens could live in peace after so many years of continuous fighting? In 430429 B.C.E., Athens was devastated by a mysterious epidemic, which reared its head again a few years later. The city was blanketed with corpses. The catastrophe contributed to Athenss shattering defeat, in 404 B.C.E., by the loutish Spartans, who tore down the citys walls and imposed a short-lived but murderous oligarchy. democracy the best source is the series of panegyrics on Athens. In the following speech, Pericles made these points about democracy: Baird, Forrest E., editor. But they surely reflected contemporary criticisms. A seasoned, hard-bitten warrior, he was, for once, at a loss: Words indeed fail one when one tries to give a general picture of this disease; and as for the suffering of individuals, they seemed almost beyond the capacity of human nature to endure. Thucydides himself got the plague but survived, as he coolly notes in passing. If, therefore, we are prepared to meet danger after leading a relaxed life instead of one filled with burdensome training, with our courage emerging naturally from our way of life instead of imposed by law, the advantage is ours. This analogy can be perceived as an explanation of Socrates view on democracy by rule by the many vs. by one or the few and how many results in a fallen nation. An Aerial View of New York City During a Pandemic. . The city of Athens, however, was physically still much as it had been left by the Persian sack of 480, and its gods were inadequately housed. "Pericles, son of Xanthippos, spoke like this". was the sight of people dying like sheep through having caught the disease as a result of nursing others. Neither medicine nor quackery helped. 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. 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. Here, front-line workers grapple with their anxieties about how the coronavirus has affected their city. A democracy is a form of government that gives all the ability to participate, and according to Pericles everyone has a responsibility to take part. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Athens is called a democracy because the many rule, not the few; everyone knew that in Sparta a small minority dominated the vast majority. The Spartans, from their earliest childhood, seek to acquire courage by painfully harsh training, but we, living our unrestricted life, are no less ready to meet the same dangers they do. 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. The Spartan imposed a property qualification for participation in public life; any Athenian citizen could sit on juries or the council and vote and speak in the assembly. They were a very small minority of the total population over which they ruled. In moderate material comfort, good health, long life, virtuous offspring, and an opportunity for kleosthe last two representing mans hopes for immortality preserved in the memory of his family and his polis. The polis was a political community and a sovereign entity competing in a world of similar communities. Its military power and tradition of leadership among the Greeks, the discipline and devotion to the public good displayed by its citizens, had already created an aura of virtue and excellence that a modern scholar has called the Spartan mirage. Pericles needed to confront this challenge, and much of the Funeral Oration is therefore a direct comparison with Sparta. With a fleet that commanded the seas, the guaranteed revenues needed to support its navy and provide supplies against any siege, and a city and port defended by impregnable walls, Athens had achieved unprecedented security. In a democracy, citizens behave lawfully while doing what they like without fear of prying eyes. The authorship of the Funeral Oration is also not certain. In the face of this reputation, and in the teeth of its critics, who charged democracy especially with indiscipline and lawlessness, Pericles makes the claim for a higher obedience to law than was characteristic of the Spartans. (2021, July 29). Pericles begins by mentioning the struggles of the Athenian ancestors whom "after many a struggle transmitted to us their sons this great empire." . A few days before Pericles birth, according to the Greek historian Herodotus, Agariste dreamed she bore a lion. For their food, the Spartans relied on the helots slaves of the Spartan state who out-numbered the Spartans by at least seven to one, bitterly hated their masters, and, in the words of the fourth-century writer Xenophon would gladly eat them raw (Hellenica 3.3.6). Our love of what is beautiful does not lead to extravagance; our love of the things of the mind does not make us soft. Pericles therefore asserts that we conduct our public life as free men [eleuthero.i] (2.37.2). America was a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Victory would mean a new birth of freedom, and would ensure that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. The fallen soldiers purpose was to preserve a Constitution and a way of life that was unique and worthy of sacrifice. "Plato's Opposition to the Veneration of Pericles". Pericles Funeral Oration in Depth - PBS He was so important to Athens that his name defines the Periclean age ("The Age of Pericles"), a period when Athens rebuilt what had been destroyed during the recent war with Persia (the Greco-Persian or Persian Wars). 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. In a democracy, there is equal justice for all in private disputes. 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. With brilliant brevity Lincoln answered some questions by pointing to the greatness of the cause at issue. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes"[15] These lines form the roots of the famous phrase "equal justice under law." Pericles greatest achievement lay in his ability to explain how the interests of the city and its citizens depended on each other for fulfillment. Millennia later, the plague reminds us that the legacy of the eternal wonder of Athens contains within it a cautionary tale: the failure of democratic society to cope with a lethal epidemic. Democracy allows men to advance because of merit rather than wealth or inherited class. Solon, an Athenian lawmaker of the early sixth century, went further, arguing that a well-governed polis was the best defense against injustice, faction, and turmoil: It makes all things wise and perfect in the world of men.. The law also may have passed because of a general wish to restrict access to the benefits of office and public distributions, but there was never any disposition on the part of Athenians to restrict economic opportunities for foreignerswho served in the fleet, worked on public buildings, and had freedom of trade and investment, with the crucial, but normal, exception of land and houses. The new and emerging democracies of our time are very fragile, and they all face serious challenges. N.S. In a democracy, there is equal justice for all in private disputes. It contained a clear, if often implicit, contrast with the Spartan way of life, which so many Greeks admired but which Pericles regarded as inferior to the Athens he portrayed. Pericles | Athenian statesman | Britannica Politically he is credited with some kind of rapprochement with Cimon, who is said to have been recalled and allowed to resume the war with Persia, much preferred to fighting other Greeks, but the date of Cimons recall is uncertain, and the rumours are hard to disentangle. He also said that the ability to govern and participate in government was more important than one's class. Democracy - The theory of democracy | Britannica He met both challenges by adapting the first to his own purposes and by rejecting the latter as inferior to the new society he had introduced in Athens. Whatever it was, it was a horror. THUCYDIDES gives Pericles very little to say in his Funeral - JSTOR First, he said, I shall make clear through what practices we have come to our present position and with what political constitution and way of life our city has become great. The institutions are democratic, but Pericles explanation of what that means is a refutation of the attacks made by the enemies of democracy. Pericles stirring funeral oration is among the most famous passages of Thucydides. Least of all did it suit the open, democratic society that Athens had already become by the time Pericles was born. In a battle between the Athenians and their neighbors near Eleusis, he came to the aid of his fellow-citizens, turned the enemy to rout, and died most nobly. Men must put aside their petty wants and look at what is best for the state as a whole. The Spartans faced this fundamental problem of the polis in its sharpest form. It limited the scope and power of the state, leaving enough space for individual freedom, privacy, and the human dignity of which they are a crucial part. A dynasty or tyranny or clique may be deposed, but it is invariably replaced by another or by a chaotic anarchy that ends in the establishment of some kind of command society. Peter Aston wrote a choral version, So they gave their bodies,[26] published in 1976.[27]. 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. Croesus asked why, and this was Solons response: Tellus polis was prosperous, and he was the father of noble sons, and he saw children born to all of them, and they all grew up. But soon after Pericles gave that prideful speech, the original democracy got sick. 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. The older ethical tradition came chiefly from the Homeric epic, where the esteemed values were those of heroic individuals. In a democracy . In it, Pericles (or Thucydides) extols the values of democracy. They did not believe that man was entirely trivial, a mere bit of dust in the vast Cosmic order, such that his passing was a thing of no account. We do not say that a man who takes no interest in public affairs is a man who minds his own business. Many historians consider that event to have marked the birth of Athenian democracy. [8] It is possible that elements of both speeches are represented in Thucydides's version. Pericles Foils - 476 Words | Bartleby This message has been remembered: during the First World War, London buses carried posters with passages from the speech; in 2012, a memorial in central London to the R.A.F. You, their survivors, must determine to have as unfaltering a resolution in the field, though you may pray that it may have a happier outcome. The basic ideologies of democracy were described by Pericles in his funeral oration. The play lacks moral ambiguity within many of the central characters. . This new faith will be especially hard to instill in societies that have learned to be cynical about the use of political idealism. 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. Essay on Pericles | Ultius 29, 2021, thoughtco.com/pericles-funeral-oration-thucydides-version-111998. "Pericles's Funeral Oration" (Ancient Greek: ) is a famous speech from Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. When his twolegitimatesons died, their son Pericles had to belegitimated. 399 BCE): Pericles's Funeral Oration from the Peloponnesian War (Book 2.3446)", "What new music are you singing these days? His account suffers from the fact that, 40 years younger, he had no firsthand knowledge of Pericles early career; it suffers also from his approach, which concentrates exclusively on Pericles intellectual capacity and his war leadership, omitting biographical details, which Thucydides thought irrelevant to his theme. Thucydides fervently supported Periclesbut was less enthusiastic about the institution of democracy. One hundred years later, an orator argued for firm distinctions of status on the ground that the law provided even the poorest Athenian girl with a dowry in the form of her citizenship. Pericles' speech reminded Athenians of the power of democracy and gave them courage to keep fighting. That is why Pericles could make this extraordinary demand on them when the great war came: You must every day look upon the power of your city and become her lovers [erastai] and when you have understood her greatness consider that the men who achieved it were brave and honorable and knew what was necessary when the time came for action.

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