Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 78.djvu/491

Rh 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 nature 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—sometimes 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, substantially, 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