The Funeral Speech

After[*](In this genre ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοιis unusable because aliens and women were present; there was no salutation for mixed audiences.) the State decreed that those who repose in this tomb, having acquitted themselves as brave men in the war, should have a public funeral, and appointed me to the duty of delivering over them the customary speech, I began straightway to study how they might receive their due tribute of praise; but as I studied and searched my mind the conclusion forced itself upon me that to speak as these dead deserve was one of those things that cannot be done. For, since they scorned the love of life that is inborn in all men and chose rather to die nobly than to live and look upon Greece in misfortune, how can they have failed to leave behind them a record of valor surpassing all power of words to express? Nevertheless I propose to treat the theme in the same vein as those who have previously spoken in this place from time to time.

That the State seriously concerns itself with those who die in battle it is possible to infer both from these rites in general and, in particular, from this law in accordance with which it chooses the speaker at our public funerals. For knowing that among good men the acquisition of wealth and the enjoyment of the pleasures that go with living are scorned,[*](A commonplace of funeral speeches: Thuc. 2.42.4.) and that their whole desire is for virtue and words of praise, the citizens were of the opinion that we ought to honor them with such eulogies as would most certainly secure them in death the glory they had won while living.

Now, if it were my view that, of those qualities that constitute virtue, courage alone was their possession, I might praise this and be done with the speaking, but since it fell to their lot also to have been nobly born and strictly brought up and to have lived with lofty ideals, because of all which they had every reason to be good men, I should be ashamed if I were found to have passed over any of these topics.[*](Blass censures the author for not following in the sequel a threefold division of his theme, which is here implied and may be found in Plat. Menex. 237 a-b: nobility of birth, upbringing and education, and exploits. These topics are treated, but not consecutively. Peculiar to this speech is the passage on the ten tribes, Dem. 60.27-32.) I shall begin from the origin of their race.[*](Blass compares Isocrates, Helen16 τὴν μὲν οὖν ἀρχὴν τοῦ λόγου ποιήσομαι τοιαύτην τοῦ γένους αὐτῆς, (Isoc. 10.16).)