My sister-in-law gifted me a book about war writings by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. A flattering gift perhaps. Better still having a wife who’d choose it for our nightly ritual of reading to each other.
Pericles was the great Athenian statesman of the 5th Century BCE. Some years ago I came across part of a speech he’d given on democracy. Both noble and remarkably modern-sounding. What a sad contrast, I thought then, against an American leader so manifestly devoid of any such nobility or lofty principle. As if after 2400 years of progress, we’d plunged all the way back and further.
The Thucydides book includes other Periclean speeches. One was a long funeral oration for war dead. This too had some good stuff, but also parts discordant to modern ears, reflecting social and cultural mores (especially regarding women) that have changed a lot since his time.
Afterwards, I told my wife I could think of another oration, on a comparable occasion, much shorter and far better. I didn’t have to spell it out! We both thought this Pericles speech likely influenced Lincoln at Gettysburg.
So much of our culture is rooted in ancient Greece. Sure, some of theirs seems unrecognizably backward to us today, yet to have had a leader like Pericles bespeaks a true greatness in ancient Athens.
Lincoln too was a very great man, and I’d always been stirred to think how well it spoke of America that we produced such a one. Indeed arising out of backwoods poverty.
It’s said people get the government they deserve. To get a Pericles — or a Lincoln — requires a populace understanding and valuing such virtue. How tragic that Americans (or half of them), who once rose to a Lincoln, have now sunk to getting the government they deserve.
