PERICLES’ FUNERAL ORATION (Speech)
430BC – 1 year into the Peloponnesian War
The citizens of Athens held the first funeral for those who
had died in the Peloponnesian War in 430BC. Pericles was
chosen to speak after the proper burial customs were
completed. The historian Thucydides recorded the event.
“…Most of those who have stood in this place before me have commended the institution of this closing
address. It is good, they have felt, that solemn words should be spoken over our fallen soldiers. I do not share
this feeling. Acts deserve acts, not words, in their honor, and to me a burial at the State’s charges, such as you
see before you, would have appeared sufficient…”
SUM IT UP: ________________________________________________________________
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“My first words shall be for our ancestors; for it is both just to them and seemly that on occasion such as this
our tribute of memory should be paid them. For, dwelling always in this country, generation after generation in
unchanging and unbroken succession, they have handed it down to us free by their exertions. So they are
worthy of our praise; and still more so our fathers. For they enlarged the ancestral inheritance by the Empire
which we hold today…”
Who does Pericles thank? ________________________ And for what? ____________________
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“For our government is not copied from those of our neighbors: we are an example to them rather than they to
us. Our constitution is named a democracy, because IT is in the hands not of the few but of the many.”
What is the “IT” Pericles refers to? _____________________________________
“Our military training too is different from our opponent…For our trust is not in the devices of material
equipment, but in our own good spirits for battle….”
What does Pericles think counts for more than armor in battle? ______________________________
“We are admirers of beauty without extravagance and wisdom without unmanliness. Wealth to us is not merely
for vanity but an opportunity for achievement; and poverty we think it no disgrace to acknowledge but a real
degradation to make no effort to overcome…”
What does Pericles think is a shameful thing for a civilization to do? ____________________________
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“In a word I claim that Athens is the school of Greece…”
What form of figurative language is this? _____________________________________________
SUM IT UP: ________________________________________________________________
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My favorite quote by Pericles is:
“What we leave behind is not what is engraved in stone
monuments but what is woven into the lives of others.”