What's the deal with Pericles?

Pericles was a prominent public figure in Athens mentioned in all three of the classic readings thus far. In Gorgias, Plato’s Socrates is very critical of Pericles’ influence in political affairs going so far as to accuse him of making “the Athenians lazy, cowardly, babbling, and money lovers” (515e). However, his skill in oration is praised in Phaedrus: “Pericles may possibly have become the most perfect of all in rhetoric” (269e). How can he be both bad and good? I think the ideas on rhetoric expressed in Aristotle’s On Rhetoric help shed light on the contrasting opinion of Pericles. Reference to Pericles in Aristotle is brief and made in passing, mainly as an example for something he is explaining (see 1.7.34). Rather than look at what Aristotle has to say in regards to Pericles, I intend to apply Aristotle’s conception of epideictic and deliberative rhetoric to the funeral oration attributed to Pericles found in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. (As a side note... from what I remember in undergrad, Pericles never wrote his speeches, so Thucydides kind of uses Pericles in his History as Plato uses Socrates in his dialogues.)

At the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War, Pericles delivered a speech at a public funeral held in Athens in honor of the dead. One assumes his speech would be in praise of those who had fought courageously, fallen in battle, and died for Athens. However, Thucydides’ Pericles begins by explicitly stating otherwise, “These men have shown themselves valiant in action, and it would be enough, I think, for their glories to be proclaimed in action, as you have just seen it done at this funeral” (2.35). He then proceeds to speak about the city of Athens herself, past and present, in epideictic fashion. Aristotle describes epideictic rhetoric as a means of praise and blame. For the purpose of this response, I am concerned with praise, “speech that makes clear the great virtue [of the subject praised]” (Aristotle 1.9.33). Praise uses amplification to “take up actions that are agreed upon, so that what remains is to clothe the actions with greatness and beauty” (1.9.40). In other words, epideictic praise is speech focused on making a widely acknowledged good subject much better than it is already perceived. For example, in Pericles’ Funeral Oration, Athens is described as the greatest and most badass of all its contemporary cities in a long sequence of comparing, contrasting, inducting, etc. that build up to this epic proclamation:

Athens, alone of the states we know, comes to her testing time in a greatness that surpasses what was imagined of her. In her case, and in her case alone, no invading enemy is ashamed at being defeated, and no subject can complain of being governed by people unfit for their responsibilities. Mighty indeed are the marks and monuments of our empire which we have left. Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now. (Thucydides 2.41)

Only after Thucydides’ Pericles establishes the unsurpassable greatness of Athens does he return to briefly speak of those who died, a mere paragraph-and-a-half compared to Athens’ better half of the speech’s entirety. Why all this talk of Athens instead of the dead at a funeral? In Thucydides’ Pericles’ words: “I wanted to make it clear that for us there is more at stake than there is for others who lack our advantages; also, I wanted my words of praise for the dead to be set in the bright light of evidence” (2.42). In other words, in a time of war where national defense is of utmost importance (war and defense being two topics of deliberative rhetoric by the way), Athens, the greatest of nations, faces the greatest loss if it falls; and those who die in defense of Athens have the greatest death.

In praising the greatness of Athens and its fallen defenders, Thucydides’ Pericles seeks to persuade Athenians to emulate “men with a spirit of adventure, men who knew their duty, men who were ashamed to fall below a certain standard . . . It is for you to be like them” (2.43). He concludes with a turn to the audience in a direct address of their roles as the war continues based on the Greek views of those in their prime, the old, and the young. By this point in the Funeral Oration, if one hasn’t realized Pericles has something more in mind than praise, it is pretty obvious. Emulation is “a kind of distress at the apparent presence among others like him by nature of things honored and possible for a person to acquire, [with the distress arising] not from the fact that another has them but that the emulator does not” (Aristotle 2.11.1). To continue the war against the Peloponnesian League and be successful, Thucydides’ Pericles implies something is lacking amongst the Athenians attending the funeral that was evident in the fallen. Underneath all of the praise, he is truly concerned with the future state of Athens, exhorting what would be most advantageous for the city’s survival.

Why does Plato’s Socrates view Pericles as a good and bad rhetor? My answer is far from adequate, but I think it is because Pericles was capable of manipulating rhetorical techniques to meet his ends, however he uses them in a way not directed towards Truth. In conclusion, Pericles’ Funeral Oration in Thucydides’ History is a deliberative speech in the guise of epideictic praise. My analysis of this speech in relation to Aristotle barely skims the surface, though. There is much to pick apart from Pericles’ speech, Thucydides and his History, and Aristotle’s On Rhetoric to look at the (what I think) neglected epideictic rhetoric’s role in public discourse.

Aristotle. On Rhetoric. Trans. George A. Kennedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Print.

Plato. Gorgias. Trans. James H. Nichols Jr. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. Print.

Plato. Phaedrus. Trans. James H. Nichols Jr. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. Print.

Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Trans. Rex Warner. New York: Penguin, 1972. Print.