Pericles’ speech is about the city of Athens and to commemorate those lost in a battle and did not receive a proper burial. In the first paragraph, Thucydides described what an Athenian funeral entails. A tent is opened and all the bones of the bodies are laid out. People bring offerings to the dead for two days. After, each tribe gets its own coffin and all the bones for each tribe are placed in them. There is one empty coffin for the bones of the missing. The coffins are buried in a public ceremony and after the departed are buried a smart and well-known man gives a eulogy. For this particular speech, the city chose Pericles. Throughout this speech Pericles explains to his audience that Athens is a great empire. To defend this, he mentions…show more content… Pericles begins to respond to critics of Athens by saying that “it is to these brave men that we owe our inheritance of a land that is free. They deserve our praise. Yet more deserving are our own fathers, who added to what they themselves had received and by their pains left to us, the present generation, the further legacy of the great empire which we now possess.” Pericles has great respect for Athens and he is reminding his audience that without their ancestors that they would not have been so lucky to live in this great empire. Pericles is also beginning to challenge the criticism that Athens is not a strong effective city. Pericles tells his audience and the critics that this land has a great legacy. He is answering the critics that do not believe that Athens is self sufficient in times of war and peace by discussing that Athens is equipped with every possible resource that they could. Pericles continues to answer the criticism that Athens is weak with casually mentioning the many accomplishments of Athens. Pericles mentions “I shall not mention our achievements in war, the campaigns which won us each addition to the empire, our own or our fathers’ spirited resistance to the attacks of Greek or barbarian enemies—I have no wish to delay you with a long story which you know already.” In this quote, Pericles is a reminding critic…show more content… Many cities at this time believed that a democracy was not an effective way to run a government. Pericles answers this criticism by mentioning all of the positive aspects of democracy like tolerance and freedom. Pericles also considers Athens to be an example to others instead of an imitation of them. He is answering the criticism that democracy is a bad way to run a city by answering that it is and it should be used as a lesson of how to run a city. Politics is an aspect of Greek cities that differ greatly. Athens’ citizens are very involved in politics because it is a democracy. In his speech, Pericles states “We are unique in the way we regard anyone who takes no part in public affairs: we do not call that a quiet life, we call it a useless life.” He is answering the criticism that Athens wastes their time by spending so much of it in politics. Pericles uses the word unique and it is used as a positive word. He is trying to answer the critics by saying that without politics, life does not have any true purpose. Another criticism of Athens’ government is that they spend too much time deliberating. Pericles answers this by stating that it is ignorant to go to battle without deliberating. He says in his speech that, “This is another difference between us and others, which gives us our exceptional combination of daring and deliberation about the objective—whereas with others their
