Pericles' Funeral Oration for the Athenians who had died in the Samian War, a campaign in the First Peloponnesian War, is one of the greatest speeches recorded. It was an Athenian tradition to eulogise their war dead, and Pericles, the great democratic leader of Athens in the war against Sparta, speaks with unparalleled eloquence of the greatness and glory of Athens. This is an excerpt from Thucydides' The History of the Peloponnesian War, approximately 430 BC.
Author
Thucydides (c. 460 B.C. – c. 395 B.C.) (Greek Θουκυδίδης, Thoukydídēs) was a Greek historian and author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the 5th century B.C. war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 B.C. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific history" due to his strict standards of evidence-gathering and analysis in terms of cause and effect without reference to intervention by the gods, as outlined in his introduction to his work. He has also been called the father of the school of political realism, which views the relations between nations as based on might rather than right. His classical text is still studied at advanced military colleges worldwide, and the Melian dialogue remains a seminal work of international relations theory. More generally, Thucydides showed an interest in developing an understanding of human nature to explain behaviour in such crises as plague, genocide (as practised against the Melians), and civil war. Excerpted from Wikipedia.
