Rhetoric as Ritual: The Semiotics of the Attic Funeral Oration

Abstract

The Athenians were unique among the ancient Greeks in the burial of their war dead. These they interred not, like the other Greeks, on the battlefield where they fell, but in a common grave in their public cemetery. It was located in the Kerameikos, Athens' most beautiful suburb. This practice had begun at least by the time of the Persian Wars and lasted throughout the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.Its most outstanding feature was the funeral oration recited annually each winter over those who had died in the previous summer's campaigns. This epitaphios logos comprises a genre of literature that provides us with unusual access to the concerns and issues ofAthenian society. Our direct evidence spans the years 465 to 322 B.C.3 It thus coincides with the career of Atheniandemocracy, with the rise and fall of the Athenian empire, and with the brilliantefflorescence at Athens of oratory, philosophy, history, and tragedy. While the funeral oration'sostensible purpose was to eulogize the dead, in fact it was an encomium on the city itself. The epitaphioi reveal how the Athenians pictured to themselves their city's merits and achievements, its present policy and past actions.