Pericles’ Funeral Oration

Translated by Fred Cecil

I shall begin with our ancestors. By their valor, from generation to generation, they handed down to us a free country. But if our earliest ancestors deserve praise, so too do our own fathers, who built the empire we now rule. How glorious our military achievements, and the ready valor with which we stemmed aggression! 

But by what road did we reach our position? Under what form of government under did our greatness grow, and from what national habits did it spring? These questions I must answer before I eulogize our dead – because for those answers they lived and fought and died. 

Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states. We serve rather as a pattern to others than as imitators ourselves. Our administration favors the many [demos] instead of the few. Thus we call it democracy.

If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences. If we look to social standing, we see that only a reputation for capacity drives advancement in public life. We do not let class considerations impeded merit. Nor again does poverty bar the way. If a man can to serve the state, the obscurity of his condition does not hinder him. The freedom we enjoy in our government extends to our daily lives. We do not jealously surveil each other, we do not hate our neighbor or give him dirty looks for doing what he likes.

But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless. We obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly for protection of the weak. In this regard we heed not just written laws, but the customs of an unwritten code, which we cannot break without disgrace.

Further, we provide plenty of means for the mind to refresh itself from business. We celebrate games all year round. The elegance of our private establishments forms a daily source of pleasure, distracting us from distress. Our city’s greatness draws the world’s produce into our harbor, so that other countries’ fruits have become as familiar to us as the luxuries of our own land.

If we turn to our military policy, there also we differ from our enemies. We throw open our city to the world, and never exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, even though the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit. We trust less in system or policy than to the native spirit of our citizens. 

In education, where our rivals cultivate manliness by a painful discipline from the cradle, we live just as we please. Our courage comes not from art but from nature. Yet we find ourselves just as ready our enemies to encounter every legitimate danger. In proof of this, note that the Spartans do not invade our country alone, but bring with them all their confederates. We by contrast advance unsupported into the territory of a neighbor, and fighting upon a foreign soil vanquish men defending their homes.

No enemy has yet fought our united force. Events have forced us to divide our strength between our navy and our land armies, which we must send everywhere. Wherever our enemies engage some fraction of our strength, they magnify a success against a detachment into a victory over the nation. Yet we because we live as free men, we have the double advantage of not suffering hardships before we need to, and of facing hardships in the hour of need as fearlessly as our enemies, who never enjoy life at all.

***

Yet our city deserves admiration on other points too. We cultivate refinement without extravagance, and knowledge without effeminacy. Wealth we employ more for use than for show. We see no disgrace in poverty, but only in refusing to struggle against it. 

Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to. Yet our citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, still judge fairly in public matters. For, unlike any other nation, we regard the citizen who takes no part in these duties as useless. We judge proposals even if we cannot originate them. 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 proceed with daring and deliberation, each carried to its ultimate, and united in the same persons. With the rest of mankind, decision proceeds from ignorance, because reflection means hesitation. 

 When it comes to generosity, we win we our friends by giving rather than receiving favors. We confer our benefits not from calculations of expediency, but from good will.

***

In short, I say that as a city we serve as the school of Greece. Where a man has only himself to depend upon, I doubt if any other city can produce a man who will prove equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility. I do not throw this out as boast, but simply state the plain fact. When tested, Athens alone proves greater than her reputation, and she alone by her merit gives her subjects no cause to question her right to rule. 

Later ages will admire us, since we have shown our power by mighty proofs. Far from needing a Homer for our eulogist, our fame does not depend on the momentary charm of verses which melt at the touch of fact. Instead we have made every sea and land the highway of our daring, and everywhere have left imperishable monuments behind us. For this Athens our brave men, resolving not to lose her, nobly fought and died. 

We celebrate this Athens because of what the heroism of these dead men have made her. Neither wealth, with its prospect of future enjoyment, nor poverty, with its hope of freedom and riches, tempted these men to shrink from danger. No, valuing vengeance upon their enemies more than any personal blessings, and rising to the most glorious of hazards, they joyfully determined to accept the risk. To secure their vengeance they let their wishes wait. In the business before them, they acted boldly and trusted themselves. Choosing to die resisting, rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonor, but met death face to face. In that fateful instant, at the summit of their fortune, they left behind them not their fear, but their glory.

***

These men died as true Athenians, just as they lived. You, their survivors, must determine to have as firm a resolution, though you may pray that it may have a happier outcome. Do not content yourself with abstract ideas derived from words like duty. 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. Then when all her greatness shall break upon you, you must reflect that only courage and a keen feeling of honor in action enabled men to win all this. Athens became great through men with a spirit of adventure, men ashamed to fall below a certain standard. 

They left their valor at their country’s feet, as the most glorious gift they could offer. For this offering they each won that fame which never fades and never dies. Their glory remains eternal in men’s minds, always there on the right occasion to stir others to speech or to action. For a tomb, they have more than just this column with its epitaph, marking the deposit of their bones. Heroes have the whole earth for their tomb. In lands far from their own, every breast enshrines a record with no monument except the heart. 

Take these men as your model.. Never decline the dangers of war. For surely, to a man of spirit, cowardice makes life a living death.

Comfort, therefore, not condolence, I offer to the parents of the dead who gather here. You know the numberless the chances which affect the life of man. But only the truly fortunate draw for their lot a death so glorious as that which has caused your mourning. 

Still, I know that will seem a hard saying, especially when see other, intact families enjoying the blessings you once also enjoyed. We grieve for what these dead might men have become, but even more for the loss of that to which we became long accustomed. 

Yet you those of you still young enough to have more children must bear up in the hope of having others in their stead. Not only will they help you to forget those whom you have lost, but they will provide to the state both a reinforcement and a security. For just policy can only come from the citizen who brings to any decision the interests and apprehensions of a father. 

Those of you who too old to have children must meanwhile congratulate yourselves that the best part of your life proved fortunate, and that the fame of the departed will cheer the span that remains.