Pericles
The historian, more often than not, will have direct or indirect personal input and remarks in the historical account he is relating; the historical facts and figures obtained would flow together with his objective tendency for that particular event. The historian, Thucydides, exemplifies such, as he narrates the account of the Peloponnesian War. Reading excerpts from the mentioned historical account - containing occurrences of the first years of the war, speeches from the general Pericles, as well as the historian's judgment on him - reveals certain illustrations of the values held by him as he infuses his text with personal opinions and evaluations, such as power, justice, virtue, equality, nobility, and rationality. Paying more attention to the speeches of Pericles - the funeral oration and the last speech during the plague - one sees a juxtaposition of opposites: rise and downfall, virtue and vice, democracy and mob rule. The reconstruction and inclusion of Pericles' funeral o
" They rationalized seeking for personal desires and satisfaction, thinking it was more appropriate and more important since their lives were already rushing to an end. So just as the body cannot live without the mind, so fell Athens. Athens became a body without a mind, a powerful city-state without justice. an unwritten record of the mind lives on for each of them, even in foreign lands, better than any gravestone. They are codependent, each equally important as the other, each equally useless without the other. where their glory is laid up to be remembered forever. they dared to do freely things they would have hidden before - things they never would have admitted they did for pleasure. In his speech, Pericles strengthens the wills and hearts of his fellow Athenians, especially relatives of those slain soldiers, speaking eloquently of life in their unyielding land, Ahtens - its people, ancestors, customs, warfare, and government. Throughout the work, it suggests that it is in human nature to seek power, but we must also see that it is the nature of man to be rational, and hence, just. Eventually, they blamed Pericles for all the misfortunes they had to endure.
Common topics in this essay:
War Thucydides,
Athens Thucydides,
War Reading,
,
Peloponnesian War,
peloponnesian war,
fellow athenians,
mob rule,
speeches pericles,
historical account,
power justice,
greatness athens,
funeral oration,
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