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In classical Athens, a funeral speech was delivered for dead combatants almost every year, the most famous being that by Pericles in 430 BC. In 1981, Nicole Loraux transformed our understanding of this genre. Her The Invention of Athens showed how it reminded the Athenians who they were as a people. Loraux demonstrated how each speech helped them to maintain the same self-identity for two centuries. But The Invention of Athens was far from complete. This volume brings together top-ranked experts to finish Loraux's book. It answers the important questions about the numerous surviving funeral speeches that she ignored. It also undertakes a comparison of the funeral oration with other genres that is missing in her famous book. What emerges is a speech that had a much greater political impact than Loraux thought. This volume puts the study of war in Athenian culture on a completely new footing.
‘This is an interesting, useful and timely volume, featuring focused and well-grounded essays of consistently superior quality by some of the best contemporary Hellenists … As a monument to [Loraux’s] pathbreaking work, as well as a critical advance on parts of it, the book should command real interest. It will also be a valuable reference resource for scholars and students of Greek history, literature and Classical reception.’
Richard P. Martin - Antony and Isabelle Raubitschek Professor in Classics, Stanford University
‘This is a very high-quality volume … very well introduced and contextualised by its editor, whose opening chapter is very clear and very full on the contribution of Nicole Loraux and the Paris School to the study of ancient Greek life and thought, on her original intellectual context and on her influence … This new volume provides much that [The Invention of Athens] no longer can, yet still preserves its status as a landmark in the study of ancient Athenian ideology.’
Douglas Cairns - Professor of Classics, The University of Edinburgh
‘The Athenian Funeral Oration: After Nicole Loraux is destined to be the new reference work on this vitally important genre. Building on the significant advances in cultural history since the 1980s, it will be essential reading for all those interested in Athenian democracy, literature and warfare.’
Christophe Pébarthe - Associate Professor of Greek History, Université Bordeaux Montaigne (France)
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