In the first year of the war between Athens and Sparta, Pericles was chosen to speak at a state funeral for the Athenian war-dead. This was an old tradition and a grand spectacle, starting at the funeral pyre and ending in front of a mass, ornate sepulcher. Traditionally, the speaker, surrounded by the wailing female relatives of the fallen, would make a speech about the noble deeds of the dead, but Pericles’s speech was different.He spoke to the mourning public about why Athens is worthy of empire.
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