HOLMKS: A STUDY Ol' THE VWE OF THF. (iKEEK EPl'I'APHIOS. 2^1 



1. The earliest is the oration of Pericles in honor of the citizens 

 who fell before Samos in a war which was concluded 440 B. C. 

 Stesimbrotus quoted by Plutarch in liis life of Pericles (p. 156 D) 

 has preserved a fine sentiment from this speech, which is alluded 

 to by Aristotle (Rhet. i, 7, 34) as the work of Pericles, where he 

 compares the loss of the slain to the abstraction of the spring from 

 the year. (I differ from Roscher and agree with Weber here as to 

 Aristotle's quotation being from the Samian oration. See also 

 Grote Hist. Gr. , vol. 6. p. 41.) 



2. The second in order is the speech which is the especial sub- 

 ject of our study, reported by Thucydides in the second book of 

 his histor}'. 



3. The next in order, though of uncertain date, is the oration 

 composed b\' Gorgias the Sicilian. The type of the epitaphios was 

 not set until the time of Gorgias, who luifortunately was the first to 

 give the stamp to this style of composition. It appears from 

 Philostratus who considered it a specunen of v-n-ep^dWova-j. aocfyix. 

 that it was delivered at Athens over those who fell in the Persian 

 wars. It was about this time, not earlier than 427 B. C, that 

 Gorgias, then advanced in years, first came to Athens. The stilted 

 and unnatural style of this sophist exerted but too powerful an in- 

 fluence at Athens, and formed the model for subsequent epitaphioi. 



4. The funeral oration of Lysias was written (>s/ci!s/7>Iy, to com- 

 memorate the valor of the Athenians, who, under the command of 

 Iphicrates, went to the aid of the Corinthians, B. C. 394; but 

 iiititallw (as I endeavored to show in a paper prepared several years 

 ago) it was intended for a practice-speech. Its genuineness is 

 questioned by some scholars, and asserted by others, and this 

 difference of opinion ought to he an excuse for further stud}' of the 

 question. I cannot forego the somewvhat irrelevant but brief intro- 

 duction here of the immature conclusion I then reached in a study 

 of this (piestion. I give it onlv for what it is worth and b\- no 

 means as m}' final conclusion: There is no external evidence 

 against the genuineness of Lvsias' epitaphios, unless the silence of 

 Dion_ysius concerning it is to be so construed. What external 

 evidence there is, is in favor of its L\sianic origin. In respect to 

 internal evidence, the deviations from L\sias' norm outweigh the 

 parallelisms by reason of the greater weight which naturall}' 

 attaches to differences. But when we consider the exigencies of 

 the panegyric stvle our scales swing into ccpiilibrium. Put on the 

 side of the similarities the testimou}' of anti(juit\' and the scale 



