Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans. If Pericles seems like a Job figure, doomed by a higher power to suffer in order to prove a point about faith and virtue, he certainly doesn't know it himself. Pericles’ Funeral Oration Analysis: Athenian Democracy This piece is a funeral oratory, a speech written to honor fallen Athenian heroes at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War. The Funeral Oration was recorded by Thucydides in book two of his History of the Peloponnesian War Although Thucydides records the speech in the first person as if it were a word for word record of what Pericles said, there can be little doubt that Thucydides has edited the speech at the very least. Pericles' Funeral Oration from the Peloponnesian War (Book 2.34-46) This famous speech was given by the Athenian leader Pericles after the first battles of the Peloponnesian war. Pericles’ Funeral Oration stands as the grand exemplar of epideictic oratory, specifically the form of epideictic known to the Greeks as epitaphios logos, and to us as a eulogy. Funeral Oration Pericles was a famous Greek general. Pericles determines to enter the contest. When he wakes, he promises Marina to Lysimachus, and they set off for Ephesus. Tragic occurrences seem unconnected and unrelated and at times nonsensical. Yet the complex plot is unwoven at the end to reveal a version of Christian providence, masquerading as the workings of the Greco-Roman gods. According to Thucydides, Pericles' funeral oration said that democracy makes it so people can better themselves through merit rather than class or money. Athens, no stranger to war, finds itself mourning those who had fallen on the field of battle, the sons and fathers lost. He explains to us, finally, that Antiochus and his daughter and Cleon and Dionyza are punished because they did evil, whereas Pericles and his family are rewarded. Pericles, Prince of Tyre leaves home to escape death only to win a jousting contest and marry a princess. Once he can return home, his family sails with him, but a storm separates them, so Pericles returns alone. Faith has no obvious role. Pericles and his family have endured the vagaries of fortune, and through it all remained virtuous, so in the end they were rewarded with the joy of being reunited. He further says that democracy guarantees privacy and equal justice for all. However, he himself feels that the heroic deeds of the dead were adequately honored by the funeral the crowd has just witnessed and that the Athenian state has paid for. Thaisa confines herself to Diana's temple, remaining essentially in the same moment as when she first was separated from Pericles. Thaisa's body is put in a chest, which washes up in Ephesus, where it is brought to the attention of Cerimon, a generous doctor. For a play inhabited by incest, a lost daughter and a wife presumed dead, several tempests, several contests for the hand of a princess, and seemingly innumerable kingdoms ruled by men of greater or lesser tyranny, Johnson's assessment seems perfectly apt. However, the answer may be more complex. But soon a letter from Helicanus calls Pericles back to Tyre, so he sets off. He asks her about her birth, and she says her name is Marina. Pericles passes off his young daughter Marina to be raised by others. Gower also explains the role of the minor characters, who were living embodiments of their various virtues, such as loyalty (Helicanus) and charity (Cerimon). Startled, Pericles asks her to continue, and to his surprise finds that everything Marina s… However, it started as an ancient Greek art form. Funeral Oration of Pericles: Document Analysis OVERVIEW The Funeral Oration delivered by Pericles of Athens is considered one of the most famous speeches of antiquity. "Pericles' Funeral Oration" (Ancient Greek: Περικλέους Επιτάφιος) is a famous speech from Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. The whole family is reunited, and overjoyed.