Athenian Democracy: A Sourcebook by Luca Asmonti;

Author:Luca Asmonti; [Asmonti;, Luca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bloomsbury Sources in Ancient History
ISBN: 9781441147769
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2019-11-23T06:00:00+00:00

8

Building a Unique Community

23. Pericles’ funeral speech: A citizen’s manifesto

In the years of the pentekontaeitia Athens became the dominant power of the Greek Aegean. The city was a capital of culture and commerce, which attracted traders, intellectuals, scientists and artists from all over the Mediterranean. Athens of course was a democracy where power belonged to the people; yet, the city seemed to have lived its time of maximum splendour under the towering leadership of one individual, Pericles, son of Xanthippus, the political heir of Ephialtes, and the continuator of his democratizing policies.

Pericles held the strategia almost without solution of continuity between 443 and 429. In the winter of 430/429, a few months before succumbing to the epidemic which had broken out in the city, Pericles was called to deliver the traditional speech in honour of the Athenians who had died in battle in the course of the previous year. This speech was the central moment of the public funeral for the fallen soldiers which was held every year at the cemetery of the Ceramicus. This was one of the most important and solemn events in the city’s calendar and had a central significance in shaping the identity of the Athenian citizens. Thucydides marks this by giving a brief account of how the ceremony unfolded.

According to French scholar Nicole Loraux, the funeral speech (epitaphios logos) was a unique rhetorical genre of the democratic polis, and was meant to express a dual political and cultural hegemony: on the one hand the supremacy of Athens over the rest of the Greek world, and on the other that of the demos over the whole of the Athenian citizen body. Pericles’ funeral speech as reported by Thucydides is one of only six such texts extant. The content of these speeches reflects the solemnity of the occasion and generally focuses on the glorious past of the city and the noble deeds of the ancestors. Pericles, as he warns his audience, intends to follow a slightly different path by celebrating the sacrifice of the Athenian soldiers through a eulogy of the city’s national character and the democratic constitution, which is the most original product of the Athenian genius, and a model for other Greek states to follow. Contrary to modern interpretations of democracy as a universal value, Pericles is adamant in linking the development of the Athenian democratic constitution with the specific character of the history and social and even ethnic identity of the city. Democratic Athens is great because it is different from all the other poleis. In this speech, Pericles famously says that the Athenian constitution is called demokratía because power is in the hands of the many, not the few. Even in the celebratory context of the funeral speech, therefore, the orator does not deny the fact that popular government implies the rule of one specific section of the population. The Athens described by Pericles is a well-balanced community of responsible citizens, who are willing to take part in the government of the polis and to defend it with the utmost bravery whenever needed.

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