The Grandest of All Sepulchres
On the annual Remembrance Day of ancient Athens, Pericles rose to remind the people of the City that grief alone was not the best way to honour the fallen.
431 BC
On the annual Remembrance Day of ancient Athens, Pericles rose to remind the people of the City that grief alone was not the best way to honour the fallen.
431 BC
In the winter of 431 BC, their annual Remembrance Day had a special resonance for Athenians: war had broken out with Sparta, a city felt to stand for crushing State control, even as Corinth stood for licentious ruin. Rising to deliver the keynote address, Pericles asked Athenians not just to grieve for the dead, but to cherish a City founded on liberty and self-control as a living monument to heroes.
COUNTING the quest to avenge her [the City’s] honour as the most glorious of all ventures, and leaving Hope, the uncertain goddess, to send them what she would, they faced the foe as they drew near him in the strength of their own manhood; and when the shock of battle came they chose rather to suffer the uttermost than to win life by weakness. So their memory has escaped the reproaches of men’s lips, but they bore instead on their bodies the marks of men’s hands, and in a moment of time, at the climax of their lives, were rapt away from a world filled for their dying eyes not with terror but with glory.
Such were the men who lie here and such the city that inspired them. We survivors may pray to be spared their bitter hour, but must disdain to meet the foe with a spirit less triumphant.