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Analysis of rhetoric Pericles funeral oration
Analysis of rhetoric Pericles funeral oration
Athens constitution essay
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Thucydides wrote Pericles’ Funeral Oration and the Milean Dialogue. Pericles’ Funeral Oration and the Milean Dialogue both show characteristics of the Athenian people. The Oration speaks of the Athenian people with praise and recognized the achievements of the Athenian people. Whereas, the Milean Dialogue made the Athenian people dictatorial and self-entitled to conquer anything they wanted. Pericles’ Funeral Oration is a speech given by the Athenian leader Pericles, at a funeral, after the first battle of the Peloponnesian war. Pericles used this public funeral to make a statement and praise the Athenian people. “Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves”.
... weaker state will remain neutral from a military strength. Melians’ loss reaffirms the absolute power of imperial conquests and nationalism in theories of realism. Since the Melians were allied with the Spartans and failed to cooperate, it is justifiable that the Athenians had the right to want to rule and invade the Melians as means to protect their own strengths.
Although Socrates and Pericles are in different situations while giving their speeches, they both talk about things that let you, as the reader, see their views on certain points. One of the key points they agree upon is death.
The Peloponnesian War and the Decline of Leadership in Athens Thucydides set out to narrate the events of what he believed would be a great war—one requiring great power amassed on both sides and great states to carry out. Greatness, for Thucydides, was measured most fundamentally in capital and military strength, but his history delves into almost every aspect of the war, including, quite prominently, its leaders. In Athens especially, leadership was vital to the war effort because the city’s leaders were chosen by its people and thus, both shaped Athens and reflected its character during their lifetimes. The leaders themselves, however, are vastly different in their abilities and their effects on the city. Thucydides featured both Pericles and Alcibiades prominently in his history, and each had a distinct place in the evolution of Athenian empire and the war it sparked between Athens and Sparta.
But the audience of Thucydides is future readers. The purpose of writing this chapter was to show the greatness of Athens as viewed by Pericles. Although the speech shown in this excerpt shows a little bias, the important thing to note is that Thucydides is only an observer and his views are not seen so the document itself is reliable even if the excerpt is biased toward the greatness of Athens.
Athens government and military is considerably different from their neighbors. According to Pericles, Athens government is not a copy of our neighbors...
Rodney, Sydney. "Pericles." Ancient Greece. University Inc., 11 May 2003. Web. 7 Dec. 2013. .
Thucydides’ version of Pericles’ “Funeral Oration” can be read as more of an ironic rendering of Pericles’ original speech since The History of the Peloponnesian War is not just considered to be a historical account but also a “highly imaginative piece of work” in which Thucydides made characters involved in the war say what he believed they actually meant instead of what they might have originally said (Thucydides Introduction pg. x). In the “Funeral Oration”, Pericles praises certain
The death of Pericles was a significant event in the course of the Peloponnesian War; however, even without Pericles' leadership the Athenian Assembly had countless opportunities to prevent their loss and chose not to take them. The fickleness and inefficiency of democracy ('the mob') allowed the Athenians to be easily influenced and therefore electing populists such as Cleon, Lysicles and Hyperbolus into dominant leadership roles. Election, via democratic means, of such populists, meant that the Athenians would take a much more aggressive approach to the war and therefore abandon the policies that Pericles had previously established. So in turn, democracy the institution for which the Athenians fought tirelessly to protect, rather than the death of Pericles, ironically became the dominant factor influencing the final outcome of this Ancient Greek civil war.
Socrates lived at a period when the ancient city-states of Greece were in war leading to the ultimate defeated of his polis, Athens by Sparta during the Peloponnesian War. Socrates was fond of discourse and arguments on free thought and rhetoric. One of his most famous works, the “Apology” and inspiring Greek writer Xenophon to recreate his conversations in literary works after his death to include “Memorabilia” and “Economicus”. These writings appeared around the same period of the height of Plato’s activity through teaching rhetoric and philosophy in ancient Greece (Huang 404). Thus, it is prudent to explore both the writings of other Greek thinkers to lay down the proper and exhaustive foundation on the philosophy, plays, and teachings of Socrates (Russell 59). The rhetoric of Socrates did not sit well with the aristocrats in Greece who constantly accused him of corrupting the youth and leading meaningless and at times profane thought in both the youth and his students. The writings of the “Apology” finally culminates in the death of Socrates, who was killed by poison after being accused by informants and his old accusers of not grounding his arguments
He says "..... 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 neighbour, and fighting upon a foreign soil usually vanquish with ease men who are defending their home". Pericles is telling the funeral audience that just because we sit here at a funeral we are winning easily against Sparta. They need help even on land they are more familiar with and we still defeat them. So not only does Athens have the better form of government that was passed down from generation to generation but we also obviously have better war tactics than Sparta in which that is supposed to be their specialty. He says this to distraught funeral crowd who deep in their mind are questioning if they could win this war and Pericles is giving them a sense of hope and a sense that they could win this war with
Kagan, Donald. Pericles of Athens and the birth of democracy. New York: Free Press ;, 1991.
The Melians argued using consequences of an Athenian take over. In section 110, the Melians threatened that if their allies the Lacedaemonians were provoked by the takeover of Melos, they might attack Athens itself: "...the Cretan sea is a large place; and the masters of the sea will have more difficulty in overtaking vessels which want to escape than the pursued in escaping. If the attempt should fail they may invade Attica itself, and find their way to allies of yours whom Brasidas did not reach: and then you will have to fight, not for the conquest of a land in which you have no concern, but nearer home, for the preservation of your confederacy and of your own territory." In addition, the Melians complained that they would be thought of as cowards if they surrendered, and they warned the Athenians that hostility would turn other neutral city-states against them.
Pericles of Ancient Greece once said, “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” He lived out this motto all throughout his life; in politics, war, and his personal life before rule. Pericles was over all one of the best leaders of Athens.
It is widely known that the Athenians highly valued their warrior class, and they saw the warriors as a ring of the higher circle of the society. The Athenians were very proud of Athena and its traditions, as well. Athenian’s thought that Athena was the best, none could be better. The funeral oration was aimed to respect the fallen as well as to keep up the national pride and its passion to protect their nation. The speech was a eulogy which focused on the eminence of Athens and its predecessors. Usually a son was chosen to give the eulogy. The law required the speech to have several essential components. The speech had to concerning the lives of the deceased. At his eulogy’s end, Pericles spoke in regard to the soldiers. The speech talked about the life that the departed lived and the achievements which they gained. Pericles wanted the citizens to recall the soldiers but to forget about the tragedy that had occurred. He wanted the departed’s lives to be remembered, but not their demise. The speech helped the Athenians appreciate what their ancestors had died for and how they shou...
The Melian Dialogue bears a host of political interpretations as the Melians and Athenians negotiate the reality of power and rights of countries on the scale of empires. Though Cleomedes eventually relied on the heavy handed realist course of action in the Peloponnesian War, ideally, he could have cultivated a healthy respect for differing universal truths of political theories and the fluidity of interpretation in every text available to us today.