The Funeral Oration
In my group we are reading Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War and we are at the part when Pericles gives his famous speech early on, and this is in fact a funeral oration. It is giving to memorialize the first casualties of the war with Sparta, but most of it is about what it is they are fighting for, which is Athens, its values, and its ideals.
When we were done with the discussion, someone said, "I expected this book to be a kind of therapy, but it has turned out to be the opposite". Another replied, "I feel similar. I have found reading this to be deeply unsettling."
At one point someone was reading a passage of the speech aloud and they couldn’t continue because they choked up with emotion. Pericles’ statements are so lofty, clear and ring close to what we may recognize are the supposed ideals of our own country, that reading in the current moment feels haunted. Why?
Some highlights of the funeral oration:
- 2.37 "Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses. No one, so long as he has it in him to be of service to the state, is kept in political obscurity because of poverty.
- 2.37 "We give our obedience to those whom we put in positions of authority, and we obey the laws themselves, especially those which are for the protection of the oppressed, and those unwritten laws which it is an acknowledged shame to break."
- 2.39 "Our city is open to the world...This is because we rely, not on secret weapons, but on our own real courage and loyalty."
- 2.40 "We make friends by doing good to others, not by receiving good from them. ...we want to keep alive the gratitude of those who are in our debt by showing continued good will to them."
- 2.40 "Our love of what is beautiful does not lead to extravagance; our love of the things of the mind does not make us soft. We regard wealth as something to be properly used, rather than as something to boast about. As for property, no one need to be ashamed to admit itl real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it. Here each individual in interested not only in his own affairs but in the affairs of the state as well...we do not say that a man who takes not interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.”
- 2.43 "What I would prefer is that you should fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens as she really is, and should fall in love with her.”
- 2.44 "One does not feel sad at not having some good thing which is outside ones's experience: real grief is felt at the loss of something which one is used to.”
The last statement was part of the speech that addressed the parents of the dead. I think this line is particularly significant to explain the phantom pain we felt.
There is this notion of political equality, the ability to participate in the political process, the belief that the city or state you are in, and the government of that thing is meant to benefit all — "Its administration favors the many instead of the few..."(landmark 2.37 )
Perhaps this is why we were unsettled... we see what the ideal is, and we feel its disappearance from the language of our current leaders and like a phantom limb, we feel it still....