Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T10:23:38.333Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Philomel and pericles: Silence in the funeral speech

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Lorna Hardwick
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This comment occurs in the closing sequence of the epitaphios of 431/0 attributed to Pericles. The speech was delivered at the public funeral held for Athenian casualties in the first year of the Archidamian War. The earlier part of the speech was devoted to praise of the characteristics, practices, and values of the Athenians as a democratic and imperial community. The features which Pericles is reported as stressing were those which ‘made Athens great’, those by which her dominance was shown. From these is derived the glory achieved by those who died ‘as became Athenians’ (2.43).

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , October 1993 , pp. 147 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. All quotations from Thucydides are from the translation by Crawley, R. (1910), Thucydides The History of the Peloponnesian War (London)Google Scholar.

2. A. W. Gomme (1925), ‘The Position of Women in Athens’, CPh 1–25, reprinted in (1937) Essays in History and Literature; Pomeroy, S. (1984), ‘Selected Bibliography on Women in Antiquity’ in (eds) Peradotto, J. and Sullivan, J. P., Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers (New York)Google Scholar; Just, R. (1989), Women in Athenian Law and Life (London)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Richter, D. C. (1971), ‘The position of Women in Classical Athens’, CJ 67, 1–8Google Scholar; Harvey, F. D. (1985), ‘Women in Thucydides’, Arethusa 18, 67–90Google Scholar; Foley, H. P. (1981) (ed), Reflections of Women in Antiquity (New York)Google Scholar contains articles from a variety of standpoints; Schapps, D. M. (1977), ‘The Women Least Mentioned: Etiquette and Women's Names’, CQ 27, 323–330CrossRefGoogle Scholar uses mainly fourth-century evidence to argue that defining women by reference to their male relations was a mark of respectability. Anderson, Ø. (1987), ‘The Widows, the City, and Thucydides (11.45.2)’, SO 62, 33–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The literature on epitaphioi logoi is reviewed in Hornblower, S. (1991), A Commentary on Thucydides Vol. I (Oxford), pp. 294–6Google Scholar.

3. Walcot, P. (1973) ‘The Funeral Speech, A Study of Values’, G&R 20, 111–21Google Scholar.

4. Manville, P. Brook (1990), The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens (Princeton)Google Scholar.

5. Loraux, N. (1981), ‘Marathon ou l'histoire ideologique’, REA 75, 13–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; (1978), ‘Mourir devant Troie, tomber pour Athénes. De la gloire du héros a l'idée de la cité’, Information surks sciences sociales 17(6), 801–17Google Scholar; (1986), The Invention of Athens(tr. A. Sheridan, Boston).

6. Bradeen, D. W. (1969), ‘The Athenian Casualty Lists’, CQ 19, 145–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar presents conclusions based on about one half of the public monuments erected in the fifth century.

7. BM GR 1816.6 – 10.348, discussed in Cook, B. (1987), Greek Inscriptions (London), pp. 33–4Google Scholar.

8. Clairmont, C. W. (1983), Patrios Nomos (public burial in Athens during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.)Google Scholar, BAR International Series 161(i), reviews the evidence from the polyandria in the demosion sema and specifically denies that the casualties in 430 at least were ‘relatively light’ (Vol. 1 p. 183)Google Scholar.

9. For discussion about the numbers see Hansen, M. H. (1981), ‘The Number of Athenian Hoplites in431BC’ SO 56, 19–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. Discussed by Cawkwell, G. (1975), ‘Thucydides'Judgement of Periclean Strategy’, YCS 53–70Google Scholar.

11. Spence, I. G. (1990), ‘Pericles and the defence of Attica during the Peloponnesian War’, JHS 110, 91–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. For the inadequacy of cavalry in controlling mountain passes see de Ste Croix, G. E. M. (1972), Origins of the Peloponnesian War (London), pp. 171–97Google Scholar.

13. Discussed by Ober, J. (1985), ‘Thucydides, Pericles and the Strategy of Defence’ in (eds) Eadie, J. W. and Ober, J.The Craft of the Ancient Historian (Montana), pp. 171–97Google Scholar.

14. For full treatment see Ober, J. (1985), Fortress Attica (Leiden)Google Scholar.

15. See Bugh, G. R. (1988), The Horsemen of Athens (Princeton), ch. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. Harvey, F. D., op. cit. and Thompson, W. E. (1972), ‘Athenian Marriage Patterns: Remarriage’, Ca SCA 5 211–25Google Scholar, although Isager, S. (1981–1982) ‘The Marriage Pattern in Classical Athens’, Class, and Med. 33Google Scholar, provides another view. Walcot, P. (1991), ‘On Widows and their reputation in Antiquity’, SO 66, 5–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar argues that the ideal of non-remarriage for widows persisted throughout antiquity.

17. Lacey, W. A. K. (1968), The Family in Classical Greece (London), pp. 104–8Google Scholar.

18. Schapps, , op. cit. Gardner, J. (1989) has shown how the values and structure of the oikos fostered male anxiety, ‘Aristophanes and Male Anxiety - The Defence of the oikos’, G&R 36, 51–62Google Scholar.

19. See Gould, J. P. (1980), “Law, Custom and Myth: Aspects of the Social Postion of Women in Classical Athens’, JHS 100, 38–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. Plutarch, Pericles 28, tr. Scott-Kilvert, I. and Just, modified R. (op. cit., p. 109)Google Scholar.

21. Gould, op. cit.

22. Morris, I. (1989), ‘Attitudes Towards Death in Archaic Greece’, CA 8, 296–320Google Scholar.

23. Kurtz, D. and Boardman, J. (1971), Greek Burial Customs (London)Google Scholar; Humphreys, S. (1983), ‘Family Tombs and Tomb Cult in Ancient Athens: Tradition or Traditionalism’, in The Family, Women and Death (London)Google Scholar; Garland, R. (1985), The Greek Way of Death (London)Google Scholar.

24. Loraux, (1978), op. cit, builds on the distinction between Tame Death and Death of the Self drawn by Ariès, P. (1981), The Hour of Our Death (New York)Google Scholar and (1974), Western Attitudes to Death from the Middle Ages to the Present (London and Baltimore)Google Scholar.

25. I. Morris, op. cit., argues that there was no large-scale change in the individual psychology of death in response to the rise of the polis, contra Sourvinou-Inwood, C. (1983), ‘A Trauma in Flux: Death in the Eight Century and After’ in (ed) Hägg, R., The Greek Renaissance of the Eighth Century BC (Stockholm)Google Scholar.

26. For the evidence on archaic attitudes to hero-cult see Snodgrass, A. M. (1989), An Archaeology of Greece (Berkeley and LA), p. 162Google Scholar. Stein-Hölkeskamp, E. (1989), Adelskullur und Polisgesellschaft: Studien zum Griechischen Adel in Archaischer und Klassischer Zeil (Stuttgart)Google Scholar. Vernant, J.-P. (1982), ‘La Belle Mort et Le Cadavre Outrage’ in (eds) Gnoli, G. and Vernant, J.-P., La mart, les mons dans les sociètès anciennes (Cambridge)Google Scholar.

27. Alexiou, M. (1974), The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (Cambridge)Google Scholar, esp. cc. 1 and 6. Holst-Warhaft, G. (1992), Dangerous Voices – women's laments in Greek literature (London), discusses the epitaphios logos (ch. 4) but misses the political significance of the point that Pericles is trying to get male silenceCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28. A selection of vases is illustrated and discussed in Havelock, C. M. (1982), ‘Mourners on Greek Vases: Remarks on the Social History of Women’ in (eds) Broude, N. and Garrard, M. D., Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany (New York)Google Scholar. See also Osborne, R. G. (1988), ‘Death Revisited: Death Revised. The death of the artist in archaic and classical Greece’, Art History 2.1, 1–16Google Scholar and Snodgrass, A. M, op. cit., ch. 5Google Scholar (Osborne rightly draws attention to the element of personal feeling expressed in the commemoration of individuals).

29. Vermeule, E. (1979), Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Literature (Berkeley and LA), ch. 1Google Scholar.

30. Ellis, J. R. and Stanton, G. R. (1968), ‘Factional Conflict and Solon's Reforms’, Phoenix 22, 95–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31. Vermeule, , op. cit., p. 3Google Scholar.

32. Humphreys, op. cit. for a range of examples with iconographical notes, see Kurtz, D. C. (1975), Athenian White Lekythoi (Oxford), especially Plates pages 19–23, 26, 29–33, 35–41Google Scholar. Garland, op. cit, ch. 7 discusses the Nomizomena, annual rites performed by a family on behalf of its members. For the relation between funerary iconography on Athenian lekythoi and gravestone reliefs, see Boardman, J. (1989), Athenian Red Figure Vases: The Classical Period (London), pp. 129 ffGoogle Scholar. Boardman, (1985), Greek Sculpture: The Classical Period (London), pp. 183 ffGoogle Scholar. discusses the interruption in the production of decorated gravestones in early fifth-century Athens and the small number of individual warrior stones even after the tradition resumed c.430.1. Morris, (1992), Death-ritual and social structure in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, evaluates the evidence relating to strategies of display and restraint in Athens (cc. 4 and 5).

33. Tod, M. N. (1949), A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions, Vol. II (from 403 to 328 B.C.), Nos.104 & 105Google Scholar.

34. Osborne, R. G. (1987), ‘The Viewing and Obscuring of the Parthenon Frieze’, JHS 107, 98–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. I am grateful to Dr. Simon Hornblower for discussion of this point.

36. For a study of the various groups identified by the term apragmones, see Carter, L. (1986), The Quiet Athenian (Oxford)Google Scholar.