From debruces@teleline.es Sat May 13 21:18:50 2000 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id VAA28978 for ; Sat, 13 May 2000 21:18:49 -0700 Received: from tsmtp1.mail.isp (mailhost.teleline.es [195.235.113.141] (may be forged)) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id VAA27197 for ; Sat, 13 May 2000 21:18:48 -0700 Received: from teleline.es ([195.53.210.156]) by tsmtp1.mail.isp (Netscape Messaging Server 4.1) with ESMTP id FUJ7W302.DP2 for ; Sun, 14 May 2000 06:16:51 +0200 Message-ID: <391E2823.C74D0475@teleline.es> Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 05:14:27 +0100 From: "Luis H. Aguilar Polo" X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: occasion for, and purpose of, Demothsenes' Funeral Oration References: <391DF184.C45220E@home.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I am not a scholar and maybe my response will seem simple but well, hope it helps you, I guess you are referring to Pericles Funeral Oration for the Athenian War Dead in the first year (431-430 BC) of the Peloponnesian War. A first touch to position yourself in time and space from Thomas Martin Overview of Archaic and Classical Greek History at Perseus Project: Athens and Sparta had cooperated during the Persian War, but relations between these two most powerful states in mainland Greece deteriorated in the decades following the Greek victories of 479 B.C. The deterioration had progressed to open hostilities by the middle of the century. The peace struck in 446/445 formally ended the fighting, supposedly for thirty years. New disagreements that arose in the 430s over how each of the two states should treat the allies of the other led to the collapse of the peace, however. When negotiations to settle the disagreements collapsed, the result was the devastating war of twenty-seven years that modern historians call the Peloponnesian War after the location of Sparta and most of its allies in the Peloponnese, the large peninsula that forms the southernmost part of mainland Greece. The war dragged on from 431 to 404 B.C. and engulfed almost the entire Greek world. This bitter conflict, extraordinary in Greek classical history for its protracted length, wreaked havoc on the social and political harmony of Athens, its economic strength, and the day-to-day existence of many of its citizens. The severe pressures that the war brought to bear on Athens were expressed most prominently in the comedies produced by Aristophanes on the Athenian dramatic stage during the war years. Jeffrey B. Gibson wrote: > I'd be grateful if some one could tell me what the occasion was for > Demosthenes' Funeral Oration. I'd also be interested to know what > purpose, besides eulogizing those of whom he speaks, D. was trying to > achieve in giving it > >From the book II of the _History of the Peloponnesian War_ by Thucydides: In the same winter the Athenians gave a funeral at the public cost to those who had first fallen in this war. It was a custom of their ancestors, and the manner of it is as follows. Three days before the ceremony, the bones of the dead are laid out in a tent which has been erected; and their friends bring to their relatives such offerings as they please. In the funeral procession cypress coffins are borne in cars, one for each tribe; the bones of the deceased being placed in the coffin of their tribe. Among these is carried one empty bier decked for the missing, that is, for those whose bodies could not be recovered. Any citizen or stranger who pleases, joins in the procession: and the female relatives are there to wail at the burial. The dead are laid in the public sepulchre in the Beautiful suburb of the city, in which those who fall in war are always buried; with the exception of those slain at Marathon, who for their singular and extraordinary valour were interred on the spot where they fell. After the bodies have been laid in the earth, a man chosen by the state, of approved wisdom and eminent reputation, pronounces over them an appropriate panegyric; after which all retire. Such is the manner of the burying; and throughout the whole of the war, whenever the occasion arose, the established custom was observed. Meanwhile these were the first that had fallen, and Pericles, son of Xanthippus, was chosen to pronounce their eulogium. When the proper time arrived, he advanced from the sepulchre to an elevated platform in order to be heard by as many of the crowd as possible, and spoke as follows: > >From my own cursory reading of the text I gather that D. is eulogizing > those who had fallen in campaigns against Darius and Xerxes. But why? > Towards what end? > In my humble opinion: In a time that for Athenians would have been like a world war in our same backyards for us, having for enemy their most feared foes, the Spartans, Pericles tries to make their fellows look at all they have achieved in the past and the present, to their hard work but also beautiful outcomes, to the harships but too towards the pride of being free and unique, in one phrase, he is appealing to his fellow countrymen patriotic feelings to fulfill their hearts in order to strive in being an example for everyone else, that is: Athenians, democratic people, masters of arts, literature and philosophy and go on fighting without fainting the war they have at hand. -- Luis Heliodoro Aguilar Polo Tenerife Islas Canarias Espaņa .