Only someone of Pericles intelligence and integrity, Thucydides wrote, could respect the liberty of the people and at the same time hold them in check. His death left Athenian democracy in the hands of self-serving scoundrels such as Alcibiades, who later promoted an oligarchic coup, and bellicose demagogues such as Cleon, whom Thucydides scorned as remarkable among the Athenians for the violence of his character.. Pericles allowed all people to participate in government which also made Athens more of a direct democracy. Those who wish to help them grow and flourish, as well as those who worry for the future of the older democracies, troubled again, strangely enough, by a growing allegiance to family, tribe, and clan at the expense of the commonwealth, could do worse than to turn for inspiration and instruction to the story of Pericles of Athens and his city, where once, against all odds, a noble democracy triumphed. Under the hands of Pericles, Thucydides thought democracy could be controlled, but without him, it could be dangerous. Updates? 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.. "Pericles, son of Xanthippos, spoke like this". 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. What we can learn from Chernobyl's strays. Inside South Africas skeleton trade. Silence and Democracy: Athenian Politics in Thucydides' History. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008. Only facing dangers that the mind can comprehend deserves to be called bravery, and that is what is expected of the men in his polis. The ancient Greek statesman Pericles (ca 495429 B.C.) 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. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Finally, Pericles revels in the variety available to the citizens of Athensan object of scorn to Plato, but another quality, we must remember, normally associated with aristocracy. In the process, he presented his vision for Athens and the kind of citizen its unique constitution and way of life would produce. It might have been smallpox, a fungal poisoning called ergotism, or something worse. Given Pericles' family's wealth and influence in Athens, he received a very good . All rights reserved, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. But a free and democratic people, one not constantly fearful of deadly rebellions by furious helots, cannot simply be told permanently to subordinate their personal pursuits to the needs of society. And in his last recorded speech in 430, although its intention was to persuade the Athenians to keep fighting, he said: For those who are prospering and who have a choice, going to war is folly (2.61.1). Pericles was widely seen as the leader of Athens. The Athenian statesman Pericles defined democracy as a system which protects the interests of all the people, not just a minority. Prior to the plague's devastation, Athenians were already dying as a result of the war. Because as they are described by Pericles, Athenian citizens were distinct from the citizens of other nations they were open minded, tolerant, and ready to understand and follow orders. We do not wear ourselves out in advance of future troubles, and when they come we show ourselves no less bold than those who are always in training. Thucydides says early in his History that the speeches presented are not verbatim records, but are intended to represent the main ideas of what was said and what was, according to Thucydides, "called for in the situation". He gave a speech in Athens, a public speech, honoring the many warriors who were killed in battle after the first year of the Peloponnesian War. To approach a question 400 million years in the making, researchers turned to mudskippers, blinking fish that live partially out of water. Cleon's rhetoric resembles that of Herodotus' Sosicles, the Corinthian delegate to the Peloponnesian assembly after the Peisistratids' fall, who uses images of They lived without the comfort of the two major devices that other cultures have used to evade that terrible truth. The kind of man formed by such a constitution reflects its shortcomings: He lives from day to day indulging the appetite of the hour; and sometimes he is lapped in drink and strains of the flute; then he becomes a water-drinker and tries to get thin; then he takes a turn at gymnastics; sometimes idling and neglecting everything, then once more living the life of a philosopher; often he is busy with politics, and starts to his feet and says and does whatever comes into his head; and, if he is emulous of anyone who is a warrior, off he is in that direction, or men of business, once more in that. [6] He enabled civic participation by subsidizing service on juries and also for other civil roles. TOP 25 QUOTES BY PERICLES | A-Z Quotes Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. Then a funeral procession was held, with ten cypress coffins carrying the remains, one for each of the Athenian tribes, and another left symbolically empty for the missing or those whose remains were unable to be recovered. Plus: each Wednesday, exclusively for subscribers, the best books of the week. He was too scrupulous to blame the epidemic on the Spartansan ancient reproach to those today who try to pin blame on foreign rivals. [21] He regards the soldiers who gave their lives as truly worth of merit. Thucydides, Pericles' Funeral Oration. The last part of the ceremony was a speech delivered by a prominent Athenian citizen chosen by the state. left his mark on the world in far more ways than the iconic Acropolis that still defines the skyline of Athens. Pericles: The First Great Statesman of the Ancient World In his speech, he talked about Athenian democracy. But these benefits, important as they were, did not appeal to the most basic spiritual need of all, the need for kleos and immortality. These sources are not all ascertainable, but they certainly preserve an invaluable amount of fact and contemporary gossip, which is sometimes nearly as useful. Pericles delivered the oration not only to bury the dead but to praise democracy. While the rest of the world continued to be characterized by monarchical, rigidly hierarchical, command societies, democracy in Athens was carried as far as it would go before modern times, perhaps further than at any other place and time. Pericles notes, "We alone do good to our neighbors not upon a calculation of interest, but in the confidence of freedom and in a frank and fearless spirit." When it reappeared in the Western world more than two millennia later, it was broader but shallower. Open Document. In the realm of private disputes everyone is equal before the law, but when it is a matter of public honors each man is preferred not on the basis of his class but of his good reputation and his merit [arete]. Work began in 447 B.C. Pericles met the challenge of the heroic tradition by showing that democracy would bring to all the citizens of Athens the advantages heretofore reserved for the well-born few. Analysis of Pericles Funeral Oration Essay examples | Bartleby