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 a comparison of the funeral oration with other genres that is missing in her famous book. What emerges is a speech that had a much greater political impact than Loraux thought. This volume puts the study of war in Athenian culture on a completely new footing.
| ISBN: | 9781009413084 |
| Publication date: | 1st February 2024 |
| Author: | David Pritchard |
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 448 pages |
| Genres: |
Ancient history Literary studies: ancient, classical and medieval Sociology: death and dying Political science and theory Semantics, discourse analysis, stylistics |