Sophie Mills (Strasbourg 2018), 'Making Athens Great Again', Audio Recording Only, The Athenian Funeral Oration: 40 Years after Nicole Loraux: 9-11 July 2018: An International Conference at the University of Strasbourg (France): Convened by David M. Pritchard. (original) (raw)
Related papers
A Funeral to Remember. The imagined past of the Athenian funeral oration as a source of resilience.
2014
The aim of this paper is to study the funeral oration given by Demosthenes in 338 BC, to better understand the role of the past as a source of resilience during the Athenian identity crisis after the defeat by Macedon at Chaironeia. The funeral oration or epitaphios has often been offhandedly treated as an uninventive and repetitive genre, employing stock themes to reach a never-changing goal: to praise the war dead by promoting polis identity. In 1981 however, Nicole Loraux published a groundbreaking work on the Athenian funeral oration, L’invention d’Athènes. In this book, she focused on the shared mythical and historical past as an important theme in the genre. This type of ‘memory study’ has become immensely popular in the past two decades, but where the ancient world is concerned it has mostly focused on classical fifth-century Athens. I would however like to shed more light on the function of memories of a shared past at the end of the fourth century BC, in what is now known as the Lycurgan period. Ushered in by the battle of Chaironeia in 338 BC, at which Athens suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of Philip II of Macedon, the Lycurgan period was a time of identity crisis for the Athenians. This sense of desperation and loss of identity inspired a series of reforms aimed at reinforcing not only military strength, but also civic pride. New insights into the mechanics of the shaping of civic identity have greatly increased interest in this turbulent episode of Athenian history in the past five years, coinciding with the current ‘boom’ in memory studies. The funeral oration, even though two of the six extant samples are dated to this period, has however not received much attention in this light. Indeed, after Loraux, the only one to devote serious attention to the epitaphios was Rosalind Thomas in her 1989 Oral Tradition & Written Record in Classical Athens. The funeral oration is however still only rarely seen as a useful source from which we can learn more about a specific moment in time. The goal here is to bring the funeral oration by Demosthenes into narrower focus, relating it to its specific historical circumstances and focusing on its evocation of social memory to show its unique and inventive character. Contrasting this epitaphios with that of Hypereides, which was held in 322 BC after Athens had booked several victories over Macedonian armies, will especially highlight its importance as an instrument of resilience in the city’s time of crisis.
Assembly-speeches and funeral speeches invite comparison. In both prominent politicians addressed a large and predominantly non-elite audience, and war played a predominant role. Yet contrasts between them abounded. The funeral oration emphasised the nobility of Athens and more particularly the selflessness and the patriotism of the war dead, whereas assembly-speeches criticised the decadence of Athenian politics and the short-sighted selfishness of Athenian citizens. The speaker of a funeral speech was self-effacing. The speaker in the assembly, by contrast, asserted his insight and knowledge, while he criticised his fellow citizens almost undemocratically. The funeral oration addressed a united Athens and avoided divisive issues, whereas disagreement was the raison d’être of assembly-speeches. In the assembly, speakers thus regularly excoriated this or that subset of the dēmos. While Loraux aligned the funeral oration with an idealised image of Athens, the assembly speakers professed, at least, a commitment to reality, however unpalatable. In spite of all these differences, similarities lay just below the surface. Insofar as their advice for the future depended on the past, assembly speakers invoked the patriotic and slanted history that was conspicuously promulgated in the funeral oration. Funeral speeches insisted on Athenian exceptionalism in the Greek world. Assembly-speeches did the same, if only to contrast Athens’s current policies with its true role as the leader of the Greek world and the guardian of freedom and justice.
Each year the classical Athenians held a public funeral for fellow citizens who had died in war. On the first two days they displayed the war dead's coffins in the centre of Athens. On the third day they carried them in a grand procession to the public cemetery. There they placed the coffins in a funeral monument that the democracy had built at great expense. Beside it a leading politician delivered an oration ostensibly in the war dead's honour. In 1981 N. Loraux published a transformational study of this funeral oration. Before her The Invention of Athens ancient historians had considered this speech of little importance. But Loraux proved that it played an absolutely central role in the self-perception of the Athenian people. Each funeral oration rehearsed the same image of them: the Athenians were always victorious and capable of repelling foreign invaders, because they were braver than the other Greeks, while their wars only brought benefits and were always just. The Invention of Athens proved that the funeral oration typically created this image by narrating Athens's military history in mythical and historical times. Her study also made bold claims about the genre. For Loraux it was the most important one for the maintenance of Athenian self-identity, whose content, she asserted, was confined to what the funeral oration rehearsed. The Invention of Athens claimed that this self-identity adversely affected how the dēmos ('people') conducted foreign affairs. Yet her study did not systematically compare the funeral oration and the other genres of Athens's popular literature. Consequently Loraux was unable to prove these bold claims. The Athenian Funeral Oration builds on Loraux's rightly famous study by making this comparison. The first way that this new book does so is by exploring the extent to which the other genres reproduced the funeral oration's commonplaces. In dramatising the genre's mythical military exploits tragedy certainly rehearsed its image of the Athenians, while comedy regularly parodied it. All this shows the funeral oration's importance. At other times, however, these two genres contradicted its commonplaces, depicting, for example, not just the benefits but also the huge human costs of war. If Loraux's claim about the funeral oration's adverse impact is correct, its image of the Athenians must have had a big part in the assembly's debates about war. The political speeches that survive partially support her claim; for they do show how proposals for war often were couched in terms of justice. But, it appears, again, that this genre's treatment of war also went well beyond the funeral oration. The second way that the book makes this comparison is by studying how these different genres depicted the state's military history, democracy and sailors. This, too, will force us to modify Loraux's claims. There is no doubt that the funeral oration set the pattern for the depiction of Athens's wars. But this, apparently, was not the case with the other common topics; for tragedy, it seems, took the lead with democracy, while all genres equally reflected the dēmos's positive view of sailors.
'Their memories will never grow old': the politics of remembrance in the Athenian funeral orations
Classical Quarterly, 2013
In this article, I ask what the Athenian funeral orations’ relationship to memory is and how exactly they worked to create it. Looking at these speeches through their politics of remembrance shows that they are not limited to celebrating the good death of citizens and to promulgating the ideology of the city, as the scholarly discourse currently suggests, nor are they focused only on adult male Athenians. As I argue, the processes of remembering are integral to the dynamics of these orations, the purpose of which is to create memory. The ritual context generates remembrances which would not otherwise exist both for the survivors, the children, parents, and brothers of the dead, and for the Athenians as a corporate group; it also ensures that these memories are ‘national’ ones shared by the whole city. The work of remembrance done in the epitaphioi intersected with other strategies of memorialisation elsewhere in the city and their juxtaposition brings out the complexities of remembering in classical Athens; indeed, the orations formed a critical part of this larger context and can not be understood without it. The speeches further show in exemplary fashion how one individual’s memory may become collective remembrance.
From Homer’s Iliad to the Athenian funeral oration and beyond, the ‘beautiful death’ was the name that the Greeks used to describe a combatant’s death. From the world of Achilles to democratic Athens, the warrior’s death was a model that concentrated the representations and the values that served as masculine norms. This should not be a surprise: the Iliad depicts a society at war and, in the Achaean camp at least, a society of men, without children and legitimate wives. Certainly, the Athenian city-state distinguished itself from others by the splendour that it gave the public funeral of its citizens that had died in war and especially by the repatriating of their mortal remains. In a society that believed in autochthony, this repatriation was, undoubtedly, significant. Since the beautiful death crys
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 the comparison of the funeral oration and other genres that is missing in her famous book. What emerges is a speech that had a much greater political impact than Loraux thought. The volume puts the study of war in Athenian culture on a completely new footing.
Epitaphioi mythoi and tragedy as encomium of Athens
Trends in Classics, 2013
Fourth-century Athenian orators of epitaphioi logoi and other Athenian panegyric attempt to portray fifth-century tragedy as fundamentally encomiastic of Athens. This is borne out by the rhetorical reception of two ‘epitaphioi mythoi’, i.e. myths handled by both tragedians and orators: Erechtheus’ repulsion of Eumolpus’ invasion of Athens and Theseus’ efforts to secure the burial of the ‘Seven against Thebes’. The orators’ ‘encomiastic’ view of tragedy marks a new departure in Athenian intellectual history and should be read against the background of other attempts to curate the city’s tragic heritage in the third quarter of the fourth century.
"Epitaphs and Citizenship In Classical Athens"
Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1993
‘Death is bad for those who die, but good for the undertakers and the grave-diggers’. (Dissoi Logoii 3)And for archaeologists and for epigraphers as well, even though epitaphs, and especially simple or formulaic ones, are probably the most understudied and unloved area of ancient epigraphy. Yet the mere fact of an inscribed epitaph indicates deliberate and intentionally enduring commemoration, and therefore embodies a social attitude; epitaphs thus constitute a matter of historical importance that can be studied for the very reason that so many—in Athens over 10,000—survive. Most Athenian epitaphs which have been found have been dated, and for approximately two-thirds of them a general find-spot has been recorded (very few are actually foundin situwith a body or grave-goods). Temporal and spatial variations within the distribution of Athenian epitaphs (Part I) prompt not only the question of why aspects of this habit should change over time, but why the habit of epitaphs should exist at all; the answer suggested here links the function and distribution of Athenian epitaphs to changing concepts of (and importance attached to) Athenian citizenship. For epitaphs function as more than testimonials to grief: they represent what survivors saw as defining the deceased (Part II), and the significantly greater number of epitaphs in fourth-century Athens derives from Athenians' emphatic definition of themselves as citizens at that time (Part III). Finally, the Athenians's use of tombstones has no parallel in the classical Greek world (Part IV), for the Athenians' developing perceptions of their own city and of their own special relationship, as citizens, to it, were also unparalleled.
Ancient historians regularly argue that the Athenian dēmos held sailors in much lower esteem than hoplites. They cite in support of this the extant funeral speech of Pericles. Certainly this famous speech said a lot about courageous hoplites but next to nothing about sailors. Yet it is also clear that this was not a typical example of the genre. Funeral speeches usually gave a fulsome account of Athenian military history. In 431 Pericles decided to skip such an account because of the difficult politics that he faced. In rehearsing military history funeral speeches actually always mentioned naval battles and recognised sailors as courageous. Old comedy and the other genres of public oratory depicted sailors in the same positive terms. Their sailors displayed no less courage than hoplites and both groups equally benefitted the state. All these non-elite genres assumed that a citizen fulfilled his martial duty by serving as either a sailor or a hoplite. They used a new definition of courage that both groups of combatants could easily meet. In tragedy, by contrast, characters and choruses used the hoplite extensively as a norm. In epic poetry heroes spoke in the same hoplitic idiom. By copying this idiom the tragic poets were setting their plays more convincingly in the distant heroic age. In spite of this, tragedy still recognised Athens as a major seapower and could depict sailors as courageous. In Athenian democracy speakers and playwrights had to articulate the viewpoint of non-elite citizens. Their works put beyond doubt that the dēmos esteemed sailors as highly as hoplites.