No institution better illustrates the status of prose oratory than the Athenian funeral speech (epitaphios logos).18 The general custom in ancient Greece was to bury the dead on the field of battle. The Athenians however burned their dead and brought the remains home. They then held a state funeral at the end of each war year for those who had died in battle for the city, for which our best source is Thucydides.19 In his account of the end of the first year of the war (2.34) he says:
In the same winter the Athenians following their ancestral custom gave a funeral at public cost to those who had first died in this war in the following manner. Three days beforehand they erect a tent and lay out the bones of the dead; and each person brings to their relatives any offerings they please. When the funeral procession takes place, wagons carry cypress coffins, one for each tribe; the bones of the dead are placed in the coffin of their tribe. One empty bier is carried decked for the missing, those who could not be recovered. Any citizen or stranger who wishes joins in the funeral: and the female relatives are there to lament at the burial. They put them in the public burial ground [d'emosion scwa] in the most beautiful suburb of the city, and in this they always bury the war dead, except for those slain at Marathon, whom they buried on the spot because they judged their valour extraordinary. After they cover the bodies with earth, a man chosen by the polis, who is deemed to be intelligent and of pre-eminent reputation, pronounces over them a suitable praise; after which all disperse.
Thucydides describes an event that combines public and private, family and state ceremony. The funeral is augmented by three distinctive features: the funeral oration spoken over the dead, the use of a communal burial site for all the dead (though this could be regarded as again an extension of the concept of the family), and the funeral games held in their honour. The event is a remarkable hijacking of the trappings of elite honour for the democracy. These dead men individually are ordinary Athenian citizens. Yet collectively they receive a level of honour that in an earlier period - or in some other states - would be reserved for a very small privileged group. The appropriation is especially by the celebration of funeral games, noted by Lysias (2.80):
For they are buried at public cost, and competitions of strength and wisdom and wealth are held in their honour, on the principle that those who die in war deserve to receive the same honours as the immortals.
These games are a remarkable phenomenon. They take us into the world not just of the early aristocrat (like the funeral contests for Amphidamas in Euboea in which Hesiod competed, Works and Days 654-657) but also that of the hero (on which Amphidamas’ games were probably modelled), like the funeral games for Patroclus in Iliad 23 or the games for Pelias celebrated in Greek myth. Within this larger appropriation, the funeral oration makes its own territorial gain. The funeral oration like the games has its roots in much earlier practice. We do not know how far back this particular practice goes. But it has very illustrious antecedents. Originally lyric poetry was the medium for ornate celebration of the dead, and we have examples of the commissioning of distinguished lyric poets to produce laments in praise of aristocrats and rulers for public choral performance. The Athenian funeral oration appropriates the role previously played by such laments and places those who die for the democratic polis on the same level as the aristocratic dead of former generations. This kinship and rivalry is acknowledged in the speeches themselves, which often speak of poetic treatment of the themes (see below).
The funeral oration in Athens developed into a distinctive genre, with all that the term implies, that is a recognizable but flexible set of characteristics (never explicitly defined but always implicitly present), a recurrent set of themes, and a relationship between artist and audience which is based on the mutual recognition ofthese elements and an acceptance that success lies in the effective deployment and redefinition of those elements to make something simultaneously familiar and original. Our evidence for the genre is a strange farrago of speeches, only one of which is unambiguously and directly derived (with or without revision) from a speech actually uttered. The unambiguously genuine (in the dual sense that it was written by its putative author and for its avowed context) example is the fragmentary speech of Hyperides for the dead of the Lamian War (6). The others all come with a health warning, though collectively they are still very informative about the characteristics of the genre.
Fittingly for a genre which is invariably ornate, one of our earliest sources is a fragment of Gorgias, whose elaborate style lent itself so readily to speaking on ceremonial occasions and who preferred set piece speeches to other kinds of oratory. Since distinguished citizens delivered funeral orations and Gorgias was an alien, his speech is - and was - self-evidently a rhetorical exercise rather than a speech written for a state funeral.
From the same period we have the most famous example of the genre, the funeral speech that Thucydides puts into the mouth of Pericles in the second book of his history (2.35-46). The relationship between the speeches in Thucydides and those actually delivered is contentious. But we do not need to hold ‘Pericles’ to his every word, merely to accept that the broad tenor of the speech has been reproduced.
The second speech in modern editions of Lysias affects to have been delivered for the dead in the Corinthian War in the late 390s. As a metic, Lysias could never have delivered the speech himself, while the Athenian principle of selecting a distinguished speaker makes it unlikely that an active politician chosen to deliver the speech would have hired a speechwriter in an age when speeches were generally bought for the court, not for contexts of public debate or display.20 So we cannot be sure that the speech was written at the date or for the events it appears to commemorate. It could be an exercise. If it is a genuine funeral speech, its author may have been the Athenian chosen to make the speech. Certainly it was written by someone familiar with the Athenian funeral oration and with the topography of the Cerameicus (2.63). So it is a useful guide to Athenian practice in the epitaphios logos.
We also have funeral oration spoken by Socrates in Plato’s Menexenus and allegedly learned from Pericles’ mistress Aspasia. If this dialogue is really by Plato, some of it at least must be tongue-in-cheek, since the enthusiasm for democracy evidenced in the funeral speech is at odds with the views of Plato’s Socrates elsewhere and those of Plato himself. But again, questions of authenticity (and purpose) do not diminish the usefulness as evidence for generic trends.
The same applies to the funeral oration that survives in the medieval corpus of Demosthenes, printed in modern editions as Speech 60. This purports to be the speech that we know Demosthenes to have delivered for the dead of the Battle of Chaeronea in 338. Its authorship was already suspected by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Demosthenes 23, 44) in the first century, and many modern writers are disinclined to accept it as the genuine work of Demosthenes.21 It contains some nice Demosthenic turns of phrase, and it follows a markedly Demosthenic line about the role of destiny in the Athenian defeat. The author knew his Demosthenes. The work rises to some fine moments but it is structurally weak and often flat. These sources are supplemented by the praise of Athens in Isocrates’ Panegyricus and Panathenaicus, which clearly draw on the same encomiastic tradition and so help to confirm the generic status of specific elements in the surviving funeral speeches.
From this collection of texts,22 sometimes by inclusion, sometimes by the explicit refusal to treat themes that the audience are expecting, we gain a sense both of the purpose and of the distinctive features of the funeral oration. Though its obvious function is to praise the dead, which it does, like all funerary activity the epitaphios logos is more for the living than for the dead.23 While commemorating the achievements of the specific honorandi, it locates them in a larger tradition and in the process defines the group present at the event, in this case the whole polis (at least in theory). It thus becomes an act of collective self-definition and self-assertion. This is the task of persuasion for the speaker of the funeral oration. He must present that collective self-image in a way that is inherently convincing and so conducive to the general sense of identity and of shared purpose. To be effective, praise must be specific, and so the funeral oration has a pronounced narrative element. All societies have their myths about their past and about their defining values. And such elements of self-definition are especially important in times of war and consequent loss, to assert the value of the culture for which the war is fought and confirm that the price paid by the dead and the living is worth paying.24 In the case of the epitaphios logos this involves a narrative which combines events from the mythic past with events from (predominantly fifth century) history, both told to create a coherent image and therefore both in essence mythical, since not only is the historical past filtered for suitable events but those events in turn are told in a way which by selective treatment conforms with the message of the encomium.
There are certain elements that recur, sometimes in a perfunctory way, sometimes treated at greater length. Among the mythic events favoured, the invasion of the Amazons recurs often (Isoc. 4.68, 70, 12.193, Pl. Menexenus 239b, Lys. 2.4-6, [Dem.] 60.8). Unsurprisingly, the story is never taken back to possible antecedents, always instead commencing with the Amazon attack on Athens to make them invaders. This invasion is sometimes complemented by the attack of the Thracians under Eumolpus (Isoc. 4.68, 12.193, Pl. Menexenus 239b, [Dem.] 60.8). Also popular are myths that present the complementary side of Athens (equally popular in tragedy) as protector of the weak, the episode of the bodies of the heroes who fought in the expedition of the seven against Thebes (Lys. 2.7-10, Pl. Menexenus 239b, [Dem.] 60.8), and the protection of the children of Heracles (Lys. 2.11-16, Isoc. 4.56, 12.194, Pl. Menexenus239b, [Dem.] 60.8). When the narrative moves on to the historical period, again we find favoured incidents. The Battle of Marathon of 490 recurs (Lys. 2.20-26, Isoc. 12.195, Pl. Menexenus 240c, etc.),25 unsurprisingly, since already in fifth century comedy it is semi-mythologized. The Battle of Salamis of 480 is found at Lysias 2.27-43 and Plato, Menexenus241a, etc., and that of Plataea in 478 at Plato, Menexenus 241c and Lysias 2.46-47. Beyond this point there is more divergence over specific incidents selected for treatment. Thus the civil war of 403 is used at Lysias 2.61-65 and Plato, Menexenus 244a, but not by other sources. These two speeches contain a more substantial narrative of fifth century history, embracing the so-called Fifty Years (between Plataea and the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431 (Pl. Menexenus 241e ff., Lys. 2.48-53)26 and even the Peloponnesian war itself, though Lysias 2 views the war solely through the implications of Athens’ defeat while Plato includes specific incidents. It is important here to note that apart from the individual desire for originality each speech is shaped by its period. At the end of the fifth century and into the fourth the defeat at the Battle of Aegospotami in 405 with its aftermath was one of the great defining events.
In addition to recurrent incidents, we find recurrent topics of praise. The tendency to place the freshly buried in the context of a larger tradition means that explicit praise of the ancestors (beyond the narration of specific incidents) figures prominently.27 This is also implicit in the praise of the dead for their nature, physis (Pl. Menexenus 239a, Lys. 2.20, Hyp. 6). Another recurrent theme is autochthony (Lys. 2.17, 43, Pl. Menexenus237b, Isoc. 4.24, 12.124, Hyp. 6.7, [Dem.] 60.4), with the native soil of Attica as mother, sometimes elaborated by the expansion of the notion of earth as nurturer of the Athenians and more generally of the human race (Lys. 2.18, Pl. Menexenus237b-c, [Dem.] 60.5, Isoc. 4.25).28 The Athenians prided themselves on having always been there. The democratic constitution is praised (Thuc. 2.37, Pl. Menexenus 238b-e, Lys. 2.17-19, [Dem.] 60.27) and this is coupled with or regarded as the process of education that shaped those praised. Just as the Athenian constitution is idealized, so their foreign policy both in myth (see above) and in recorded history is presented as altruistic, based on protecting the weak from oppression (Thuc. 2.40,4, Isoc. 4.42, Hyp. 6.4-5). Athens is persistently presented as liberator (Lys. 2.25, 35, 41, 42, 44, 47, 55, 60, 68, Isoc. 4.42, 83, 95, Hyp. 6.10, 11, 16, 19, 24, 34, 39, 40, [Dem.] 60.23).
Other themes which occur are (inevitably at a funeral) consolation for the living on their loss, which may include both a firm statement of the renown and honour won by the dead and a reminder of the care the city takes of the orphans (Thuc. 2.44, Pl. Menexenus247c, Hyp. 6.41-45, Lys. 2.70-80, [Dem.] 60.32-37). In the same vein, the dead are often congratulated on the manner of their death (Thuc. 2.44.1, Lys. 2.79-81, Hyp. 6.28-31, [Dem.] 60.32-3). The renown won by the dead makes explicit the heroizing tendency of the event as a whole. Isocrates in the Panegyricus compares the Athenians who fought against Asia (favourably) with the heroes of the Trojan War (4.83), a comparison picked up by Hypereides (6.35-36) who applies it specifically to those who died in the Lamian War. Almost as explicit is Lysias 2.78-79, where the inevitability of death, even for those who shun battle, echoes the famous speech of Sarpedon to Glaucus in Iliad 12.322-328:
Man, supposing you and I, escaping this battle, would be able to live on forever, ageless, immortal, so neither would I myself go on fighting in the foremost nor would I urge you into the fighting where men win glory.
But now, seeing that the spirits of death stand close about us in their thousands, no man can turn aside or escape them,
Let us go on and win glory for ourselves, or yield it to others (trans. Lattimore).
Also inspired by epic is the eternal renown which the dead win,29 an echo of the kleos aphthiton (‘fame undying’) won by Achilles in exchange for his short life.
This is only a partial list of the recurrent features of the genre. But a brisk glance at this brief survey indicates that as with most literary genres the epitaphios logos is a flexible medium,30 reshaped by each exponent, though always signalling the generic affiliation. The need for and claims of originality are constant themes. We find some particularly bold experiments on occasion, of which the two boldest are Hyperides and Thucydides’ Pericles. The funeral oration is a collective tribute to the collective dead. Consequently the general trend is to treat current and past dead each as an anonymous group (these men, the men lying here, the ancestors, etc.). As scholars have repeatedly emphasized, Hyperides breaks with this tradition in singling out the general of the Lamian War, Leosthenes, not merely for individual praise but as the focus for much of his speech. His awareness of the boldness of this approach is indicated by the fact that Hyperides goes out of his way to justify it (6.15-16). Equally bold is his favourable comparison (Hyperides 6.35-36) with the heroes of Troy (his probable model, Isocrates, made his comparison in a written essay, not a public oration), and with the heroes of Marathon and Salamis (6.37) in a genre that usually assimilates the current dead into the tradition rather than making them stand out in relief against it. A little over a century before, Pericles is presented by Thucydides as explicitly curtailing the praise of the achievements of previous generations (2.36.4) to focus on the Athenian constitution.
The style appropriate to oratory varies according to context and speaker. Judicial oratory for private cases avoids overt elaboration - at least from the end of the fifth century. Deliberative oratory and judicial oratory involving politically prominent people can afford to be more elaborate, most notably in its use of metaphor; but even here there is a tacit sense of a limit to audience tolerance. But epideictic oratory - and above all the funeral oration - has more freedom. Since it is written as a performance, it can afford to put on display the verbal craftsmanship that produced it. This is particularly the case with the epitaphios logos. The affinities of the epitaphios logos with the lyric threnos becomes explicit both in the self-referentiality of the genre, as the speaker constantly muses on the task of praise in a manner reminiscent of verse panegyric and especially Pindar, and in the recurrent comparison of the speaker’s task with that of the poet (Lys. 2.2, Isoc. 4.82, [Dem.] 60.9). It is also visible in the space given to myth, which aligns the funeral oration with poetry (epic, lyric, tragedy) and distinguishes it and epideictic oratory more generally from other oratorical forms. The language of the funeral oration is often ‘marked’ to a degree not found in (most) courtroom or Assembly speeches. Thus ornate or hyperbolic metaphors which would be out of place in other contexts are freely used, as in the elaboration of the notion of the soil as mother (noted above), or when in Lysias 2.60 we are told that Greece should cut its hair in mourning for the Athenian dead of the Peloponnesian War and that the liberty of Greece was buried with them, or at [Demosthenes] 60.24 that the courage of the dead men was the ‘soul’ or ‘life force’ (psyche) of Greece. The same hyperbole is present (this time in a simile) when Hyperides (6.5) compares Athenian intervention in the cause of justice to the sun that sheds it light over the whole world. Sentence structure is also often more overtly elaborate. The tone is set by Gorgias’ ripe style in his model speech:
What did these men lack which men should have; what did they have which they should
Not have. Might I have the ability to say what I want to and might I want to say what I
Should, evading divine anger and avoiding human resentment.
And here, approximately a hundred years later, is Hyperides (6.40):
How noble beyond belief was the boldness these men practised, how honourable and magnificent the moral choice they made, how surpassing the courage and manliness in times of danger, which these men contributed to the common freedom of the Greeks...
Elaborate syntax is not an absolute rule and is not pursued consistently. But freed from the need to create a facade of amateurism (as in most judicial oratory) or extemporaneity (as in deliberative oratory), epideictic was able to put its craftsmanship (as its name suggests) on display.
World History
