Analysing the Best Speech ever written??
Channel: Kanishka
Date: 2022-01-08

Hi! I'm starting a series on the most influential speeches in history. I'll be reading, analysing and breaking them down. I hope to better understand the rhetoric employed and gain insights into the historical period during which the speech was delivered.

Today, I'm covering Pericles' Funeral Oration Speech, often called the best speech ever delivered. It is taken from Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. The speech is supposed to have been delivered by Pericles, an eminent Athenian politician, at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War as a part of the annual public funeral for the war dead. 

David Cartwright describes it as "a eulogy of Athens itself...". The speech glorifies Athens' achievements, designed to stir the spirits of a state still at war.