 |
|
Pericles Bust - Vatican Museum
|
The funeral speech was held to commemorate the soldiers who
died in wars every year in Athens. Pericles delivered the famous “funeral
speech” in 432 BC which is a sort of lesson to all contemporary political
leaders although it has been delivered thousands of years ago by Pericles, who
led Athens during its golden age, between the Persian and Peloponnese wars.
The Athenians as the citizens of the richest and largest
city state of the antique ages were involved to the management of their city
with its first of its kind democracy. The half of the city population consisted
of “strangers” who came from all corners of the Mediterranean Sea. Pericles
delivered this speech to rally the Athenians at the end of the first year of
the Peloponnese war which was supposed to last many years. Although Spartans
who raised their youth with a fierce indoctrination and who was afraid of
strangers won this war, Pericles speech will become immortal and carried away
for thousands of year. The Athenians opened the doors of their city to the
citizens of other nations fearlessly and encouraged the diversity in their
city. I believe it’s a bitter fact that we don’t have many politician who can
give such a speech nowadays.
Without further due, please go ahead and read the original
Pericles funeral speech on your own and please also bear in mind that the below
lines were written 1600 years before Magna Carta and 2200 years before the
declaration of independence.
 |
|
Pericles Funeral Oration (Perikles
hält die Leichenrede) / Philipp Foltz / 1852
|
Pericles – Funeral Oration
"I shall begin with our ancestors: it is both just and
proper that they should have the honour of the first mention on an occasion
like the present. They dwelt in the country without break in the succession
from generation to generation, and handed it down free to the present time by
their valour. And if our more remote ancestors deserve praise, much more do our
own fathers, who added to their inheritance the empire which we now possess,
and spared no pains to be able to leave their acquisitions to us of the present
generation. Lastly, there are few parts of our dominions that have not been
augmented by those of us here, who are still more or less in the vigour of
life; while the mother country has been furnished by us with everything that
can enable her to depend on her own resources whether for war or for peace.
That part of our history which tells of the military achievements which gave us
our several possessions, or of the ready valour with which either we or our
fathers stemmed the tide of Hellenic or foreign aggression, is a theme too
familiar to my hearers for me to dilate on, and I shall therefore pass it by.
But what was the road by which we reached our position, what the form of
government under which our greatness grew, what the national habits out of
which it sprang; these are questions which I may try to solve before I proceed
to my panegyric upon these men; since I think this to be a subject upon which
on the present occasion a speaker may properly dwell, and to which the whole
assemblage, whether citizens or foreigners, may listen with advantage.
"Our constitution does not copy the laws of
neighbouring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators
ourselves. Its administration favours the many instead of the few; this is why
it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to
all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public
life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed
to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able
to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The
freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life.
There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not
feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or
even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive,
although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations
does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard,
teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard
the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book,
or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without
acknowledged disgrace.
"Further, we provide plenty of means for the mind to
refresh itself from business. We celebrate games and sacrifices all the year
round, and the elegance of our private establishments forms a daily source of
pleasure and helps to banish the spleen; while the magnitude of our city draws
the produce of the world into our harbour, so that to the Athenian the fruits
of other countries are as familiar a luxury as those of his own.
"If we turn to our military policy, there also we
differ from our antagonists. We throw open our city to the world, and never by
alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing,
although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality;
trusting less in system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens;
while in education, where our rivals from their very cradles by a painful
discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we please, and
yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger. In proof of this it
may be noticed that 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 homes. Our united force was
never yet encountered by any enemy, because we have at once to attend to our
marine and to dispatch our citizens by land upon a hundred different services;
so that, wherever they engage with some such fraction of our strength, a
success against a detachment is magnified into a victory over the nation, and a
defeat into a reverse suffered at the hands of our entire people. And yet if
with habits not of labour but of ease, and courage not of art but of nature, we
are still willing to encounter danger, we have the double advantage of escaping
the experience of hardships in anticipation and of facing them in the hour of
need as fearlessly as those who are never free from them.
"Nor are these the only points in which our city is
worthy of admiration. We cultivate refinement without extravagance and
knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and
place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining
the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private
affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the
pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any
other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as
unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we
cannot originate, and, instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in
the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action
at all. Again, in our enterprises we present the singular spectacle of daring
and deliberation, each carried to its highest point, and both united in the same
persons; although usually decision is the fruit of ignorance, hesitation of
reflection. But the palm of courage will surely be adjudged most justly to
those, who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are
never tempted to shrink from danger. In generosity we are equally singular,
acquiring our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favours. Yet, of course,
the doer of the favour is the firmer friend of the two, in order by continued
kindness to keep the recipient in his debt; while the debtor feels less keenly
from the very consciousness that the return he makes will be a payment, not a
free gift. And it is only the Athenians, who, fearless of consequences, confer
their benefits not from calculations of expediency, but in the confidence of
liberality.
"In short, I say that as a city we are the school of
Hellas, while I doubt if the world can produce a man who, where he has only
himself to depend upon, is equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy
a versatility, as the Athenian. And that this is no mere boast thrown out for
the occasion, but plain matter of fact, the power of the state acquired by
these habits proves. For Athens alone of her contemporaries is found when
tested to be greater than her reputation, and alone gives no occasion to her
assailants to blush at the antagonist by whom they have been worsted, or to her
subjects to question her title by merit to rule. Rather, the admiration of the
present and succeeding ages will be ours, since we have not left our power
without witness, but have shown it by mighty proofs; and far from needing a
Homer for our panegyrist, or other of his craft whose verses might charm for
the moment only for the impression which they gave to melt at the touch of
fact, we have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring, and
everywhere, whether for evil or for good, have left imperishable monuments
behind us. Such is the Athens for which these men, in the assertion of their
resolve not to lose her, nobly fought and died; and well may every one of their
survivors be ready to suffer in her cause.
"Indeed if I have dwelt at some length upon the
character of our country, it has been to show that our stake in the struggle is
not the same as theirs who have no such blessings to lose, and also that the
panegyric of the men over whom I am now speaking might be by definite proofs
established. That panegyric is now in a great measure complete; for the Athens
that I have celebrated is only what the heroism of these and their like have made
her, men whose fame, unlike that of most Hellenes, will be found to be only
commensurate with their deserts. And if a test of worth be wanted, it is to be
found in their closing scene, and this not only in cases in which it set the
final seal upon their merit, but also in those in which it gave the first
intimation of their having any. For there is justice in the claim that
steadfastness in his country's battles should be as a cloak to cover a man's
other imperfections; since the good action has blotted out the bad, and his
merit as a citizen more than outweighed his demerits as an individual. But none
of these allowed either wealth with its prospect of future enjoyment to unnerve
his spirit, or poverty with its hope of a day of freedom and riches to tempt him
to shrink from danger. No, holding that vengeance upon their enemies was more
to be desired than any personal blessings, and reckoning this to be the most
glorious of hazards, they joyfully determined to accept the risk, to make sure
of their vengeance, and to let their wishes wait; and while committing to hope
the uncertainty of final success, in the business before them they thought fit
to act boldly and trust in themselves. Thus choosing to die resisting, rather
than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonour, but met danger face to
face, and after one brief moment, while at the summit of their fortune,
escaped, not from their fear, but from their glory.
"So died these men as became Athenians. You, their
survivors, must determine to have as unfaltering a resolution in the field,
though you may pray that it may have a happier issue. And not contented with
ideas derived only from words of the advantages which are bound up with the
defence of your country, though these would furnish a valuable text to a
speaker even before an audience so alive to them as the present, you must
yourselves realize the power of Athens, and feed your eyes upon her from day to
day, till love of her fills your hearts; and then, when all her greatness shall
break upon you, you must reflect that it was by courage, sense of duty, and a
keen feeling of honour in action that men were enabled to win all this, and
that no personal failure in an enterprise could make them consent to deprive
their country of their valour, but they laid it at her feet as the most
glorious contribution that they could offer. For this offering of their lives
made in common by them all they each of them individually received that renown
which never grows old, and for a sepulchre, not so much that in which their
bones have been deposited, but that noblest of shrines wherein their glory is
laid up to be eternally remembered upon every occasion on which deed or story
shall call for its commemoration. For heroes have the whole earth for their
tomb; and in lands far from their own, where the column with its epitaph
declares it, there is enshrined in every breast a record unwritten with no
tablet to preserve it, except that of the heart. These take as your model and,
judging happiness to be the fruit of freedom and freedom of valour, never
decline the dangers of war. For it is not the miserable that would most justly
be unsparing of their lives; these have nothing to hope for: it is rather they
to whom continued life may bring reverses as yet unknown, and to whom a fall,
if it came, would be most tremendous in its consequences. And surely, to a man
of spirit, the degradation of cowardice must be immeasurably more grievous than
the unfelt death which strikes him in the midst of his strength and patriotism!
No comments:
Post a Comment