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He states that the parents who are still young should have more children, children who will be able to enjoy the democracy that their older siblings fought and died for, and he tells the women to be strong too, in the face of the sorrows that they and their city are enduring over the course of the war. Pericles thus admits, without falsely creating a beautiful image of wartime, that casualties are inevitable during a violent conflict, and it is only because Athenian democracy is so unique, so worth fighting for, that men are willing to give up the comforts of peacetime to sacrifice their lives.
Of course, it might be protested that the ideal Pericles speaks of in the funeral oration was not always in practice, in Athens. Pericles himself was married to a foreign woman, and his son was only made a citizen through special dispensation by the government. Only men...
Athens was also guilty of bloody wartime actions against its enemy, just as it accused the oligarchic Sparta of practicing during war. But even if the ideal of Athenian democracy was not always as pure as the vision lauded by Pericles in his speech, the very presence of the ideal, and the idea that freedom is worth fighting for, was unique, and uniquely expressed in this leader's words.
Works Cited
The World of Athens: An Introduction to Classical Athenian Culture. The Joint Association of Classical Teachers. An Open University Set Book. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 194.
Works Cited
The World of Athens: An Introduction to Classical Athenian Culture. The Joint Association of Classical Teachers. An Open University Set Book. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 194.
15). He argues that there is a duty resting on convention, which he considers in a deep and morally weighty sense, based on an implied but nonetheless binding contract between the individual and the state: It is a fact, then," they would say, "that you are breaking covenants and undertakings made with us, although you mad them under no compulsion of misunderstanding, and were not compelled to decide in a limited
Ancient History The ancient histories of Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations have much in common. Both regions were inhabited since prehistoric times by nomadic groups, which began to settle down in towns and villages by around 6000 BCE. Consistent settlements soon grew into larger cities; in both Egypt and in Mesopotamia, these cities became city-states with complex lifestyles and forms of government. Some of the first written languages were created simultaneously in
policies of Pericles contributed to the expanding power and influence of the Athenian Empire Pericles was an Athenian political leader mostly accountable for the complete growth in the 5th century, of both the empire and democracy of Athens. As a result, Athens became the political and social focus of Greece. His success involved the development of the Acropolis, started in 447. During the Athens' golden era, philosophy, sculpture, drama, poems
Athenian Culture The connection between the development of Athenian culture and the development of Athenian democracy was intimate. Culture and politics flowed together in Athens, as the philosophers (from Socrates to Aristotle), the playwrights (from Aeschylus to Euripides) and the statesmen (from Solon to Pericles) all played fundamental roles in shaping how both culture and democracy developed. The playwrights showed the importance of worship and of civic duty (Aristophanes in particularly
Pericles' Funeral Oration Pericles, the most revolutionary figure ever found in the history of Ancient Greece was born of a distinguished family about 494 B.C. probably in the country house of his father in the plain near Athens. Pericles's father, Xanthippos, was a rising general and politician. His mother Agariste, also bore strong family values, descending from the house of Alkmeonidai. She was the niece of the great Athenian reformer, Clisthenes
This is Aristotle's launching pad for his discussion of politics. To him, ethics and politics are matters of rational judgment, stemming from the natural inclinations of individual humans. This notion is reflected in Aristotle's analysis of the constitutional doctrines of some 158 cities. Essentially, he recognized that every state -- necessarily city states -- exist in unique sets of circumstances that act upon the universal forms of ethics in ways