Idealized Democracy?
Socio-Economic Tensions in Thucydides 2.37

Edward J. Roe (Indiana University)

Much has been written about Pericles’ Funeral Oration in Thucydides’ History, and the general impression it leaves upon the modern reader is one of a rosy, idealized portrait of Athenian democracy.  Delivered over the bones of those who died in the first year of the Peloponnesian War, this interpretation seems fitting, as it provides “the democratic rallying cry of free participation for all[1]”: in short, something for the war-weary citizens of Athens to defend in the upcoming year.  This idea is embraced by a number of scholars such as Nicole Loraux, who uses a line from Pericles’ speech as a chapter title in her book on Athenian funeral oration[2], in which she characterizes this particular oration as a eulogy of democracy.

Such generalizations, however, are suspect, as Thucydides is rarely so simplistic in his presentation of democracy.  They prefer to view the Funeral Oration as a whole, seldom breaking it into its component parts and examining its rhetoric, vocabulary or structure.  There are scholars who have done this in the past, especially within the realm of commentary (Gomme’s classic treatment comes to mind[3]), but only a handful of others have given real attention to these factors.  When they do, however, one immediately realizes that the portrait of Athenian democracy is not as rosy as it seems.  Peppered with allusions and tensions embedded within the Greek, Pericles’ oration has been shown to subvert its own intentions on several levels. 

In this paper, I aim to continue this line of interpretation, while focusing specifically on the socio-economic tensions that arise through a close reading of Thucydides 2.37.  My reading engages the text from several angles—grammar and word choice, political and literary context within Thucydides’ work, and the structure of Pericles’ argument itself.  Through this analysis, a subtle yet deliberate dichotomy is brought to light that is familiar to any reader of Thucydides: the delicate political and economic balance between the Few and the Many. 

In a history that so often chronicles and analyzes stasis in its various forms, it comes as little surprise that some of the underlying causes of the Athenian uprising of 411 are already hiding within Pericles’ oration, some twenty years earlier.  The political and economic tensions between dynatoi and demos are already extant in this speech, and can be traced throughout 2.37 as Pericles subtly shifts his narrative between oligarchic and democratic ideas.  The most interesting (and rather poetic) point of this chapter comes at the end, when Thucydides, through his speaker, achieves an almost tragic resolution of these tensions.