Examines the commonalities and differences in three selected ancient Greek works.
This paper provides an examination of the content of three public speeches made to the Athenian public: a funeral oration by Pericles from Thucydides’s History Of the Peloponnesian Wars; the comic play, ?Acharnians? by Aristophanes; and Socrates?s response to a capital charge contained in ?The Apology.? The paper looks at each speaker’s claim to a special insight and understanding that the ordinary person doesn’t have and analyzes the works to identify their commonalities and differences. The paper concludes with a summary of the research presented.
Thucydides. Athens reached its height of power and prosperity, its Golden Age, during the 400’s B.C., and was the center of culture in the Greek world. The Golden Age became famous for its remarkable literary and artistic Greek accomplishments. The Golden Age, though, ended with the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431 B.C. This costly war between Athens and Sparta lasted until 404 B.C. and left Athens exhausted. According to Chapter I of The First Book, Thucydides was an Athenian who wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians ?beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it.? Pericles was the leading Athenian statesman from 461 to 429 B.C., and his career spanned most of the Golden Age, a period of history that began in 477 B.C.