Things not as they appear

After reading Aristotle’s Book 1 on Rhetoric I found some new insight by rereading Pericles’ Funeral Oration. One might look at this ceremonial speech as a tribute to those who had fallen, but based on some historical background discussed our class and guided by Aristotle’s Rhetoric, we might see that things aren’t always as they seem. While it might have seemed to the Athenians that Pericles was honoring the fallen warriors, I believe that Pericles was using the ceremony as an opportunity to promote his own desires.

A typical epideictic speech focuses on displaying, singling out, and praising specific virtues of an individual such as courage, honor, charity, or strength as shown by Pericles as he discusses the sacrifice of the warriors.  What was interesting to me was the virtues that Pericles singled out and praised were the very virtues he hoped to see in the Athenians that would help promote his dream of establishing an empire.

I’m not stating that this is a wrong or evil thing for him to do, but I was surprised by how my opinion of his speech changed after reading Aristotle’s Rhetoric. What I once viewed as words of praise and honor, I began to see as words of persuasion; persuasion to become the type of people Pericles was describing. I have no doubt that the fallen Greek warriors had many attributes, some favorable, others not as favorable, it is also possible that those fallen didn’t die as heroic a death as he described, yet he chose to focus the minds of the audience on a grand idea, “Beautiful Athens, something worth dying for”. We have no idea if this was the cause that these warriors were fighting for or not. For all we know they could have been mindless fighting machines merely following Pericles command, yet the way it is portrayed is to paint the picture of a glorious cause surrounded by all the virtues we admire.