THE OLD GREEK VOLUNTEER 481 



loss and consolation for the nearest relatives. It was the duty of the 

 orator, on such occasions, to celebrate the deeds of their ancestors, back 

 to the mythical period and to connect them with the recent glorious 

 achievements of the honored dead. Prescribed usage dictated the na- 

 ture of the consolation offered — the renown of the departed ; the happy 

 lot of the deceased from a consciousness of duty well done on earth; 

 the care the state will take of their families; and finally an appeal to 

 the survivors to submit to their fate and prove themselves worthy of 

 the example set by the fallen heroes. The introduction and conclusion 

 of all the extant funeral speeches are practically alike, beginning with 

 the declaration that the duty imposed on the orator surpasses his 

 strength, which, at the most, can only equal the efforts of previous 

 speakers ; and ends with the words * now go back to your homes after 

 you have bewailed the dead according to custom.' " But after all, it is 

 not hard to justify or difficult to approve the century-tested, ritualistic 

 formality of the old Athenian funeral oration; for a deep feeling of 

 sincere grief must be the dominant note in a funeral speech. Novel 

 thought and fervid rhetoric could bring no comfort to the afflicted, 

 whose hearts, rent with sorrow, respond only to that calm and beautiful 

 language in which the poet has voiced our common and most agonizing 

 woes. A master's task the poet-orator was forced to face ! 



Of the six funeral orations that have come down to us, two — some- 

 times assigned to Demosthenes and Lysias — are probably the work of 

 other hands; two others — imaginary speeches but among the greatest 

 specimens of their kind in the world's literature — are the stylistic 

 and patriotic models of Plato in the " Menexenus," and the grand 

 funeral speech Thucydides, the historian, has put into the mouth of the 

 eloquent Pericles; the other two — fragments of funeral orations by 

 Gorgias, the celebrated Sicilian orator and father of rhetoric, and 

 Hypereides, the master-panegyrist of the ancient world — were actually 

 delivered in honor of Athenians who fell in battle. 



Pericles closes his celebrated memorial to the dead soldiers, sub- 

 stantially, as follows : 



And it behooves you who survive to pray for a more steadfast purpose and 

 to demand of yourselves that you have no less daring spirit against the enemy 

 than they, considering the advantage of that courage, in no merely rhetorical 

 way but by actually keeping before your eyes the daily increasing power of 

 your country and by becoming lovers in her service; and when she appears to 

 you to be really great, by taking seriously to heart the fact that daring men 

 and men who knew their duty, showing too a sense of pride in their actions, 

 secured this greatness; and when they failed in any attempt they did not for 

 that reason think of depriving their country of their valor but made together 

 the noblest contribution in her behalf. 



Sacrificing their lives for the common good, they gained each one their 

 proper meed of never-dying praise and a most illustrious sepulchre — I speak 

 not of that in which their bones lie moldering but of that in which their fame 



voi* Lxxviii. — 33. 



