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Pericles’ funeral oration is a famous ancient speech from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. In Athens there was a practice to hold a public funeral and give a speech in honor of all those who had died in war. The Pericles’ funeral oration seems to be a very modern one to demand blood sacrifices in the name of the state ‘polis’. Mourning was general, and yet it was not to dominate Pericles’ funeral oration. Instead, he delivered the eulogy of the imperialistic Athens bluntly, and praised the fallen soldiers’ blood sacrifice for noble causes. The war, however,was for the imperialist domination. The logic and cause of his speech is like those of Yasukuni Shrine in the Japanese Imperialism. In the funeral oration, Pericles justified the warlike politics of Athens against the same Greeks in the second half of the 5th century B.C., on the pretext that she had contributed to the defensive wars against Persia in the first half of the same century. Here we can discover somewhat unjustified enforcement of the role of war in society being processed. The warlike values and politics need private sacrifices and the democracy, and the liberty of Athenians developed on the violence committed by the state against the other Greek polis.
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Pericles’ Funeral Oration, Peloponnesian War, Defensive War /Offensive War, Private Sacrifice, State(Polis), Liberty
