This exercise has you consider the IDEAL of Athenian democracy, as it appears in Thucydides–the second great Greek historian after Herodotus. The Athenian ideal appears in Thucydides’ version of a funeral oration that was delivered by Pericles, Athens’s greatest leader, over the Athenian soldiers who died in the 2nd year of the war. We then consider this speech in relation to the REALITY that the Athenians were faced with when a plague visited their city–a situation not unlike the one we have recently experienced with COVID-19.
Please read these sections from Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War
, and perform the following TWO EXERCISES using DIRECT QUOTATION (i.e. word-for-word from the translation, with a citation) from the text.
To cite Thucydides, you must place the section number (35, 36, etc.) AND the page number of the excerpt (page 39, page 40, etc.) after each direct quote.
A submission WITHOUT direct quotations FROM THIS TRANSLATION or WITHOUT proper citations will not be accepted.
As noted in the previous Discussion, it’s worth keeping in mind that ChatGPT tends to make things up (quotations and citations), so by the time you fix everything that’s wrong with what it gives you, you might have well just done the assignment properly.
EXERCISE 1:
List 10 specific descriptions that the funeral speaker, Pericles, gives of Athens in the Funeral Oration.
Then, making sure that you understand precisely what Pericles is saying, FOR EACH POINT give a critical response to these two questions:
|
Do we have this ideal in our society? Do we live up to that ideal in our society, in reality? Keep in mind that these really are two different things! |
(NOTE: I am NOT asking for a description of the circumstances of the oration, but to refer what Pericles SAYS about Athens throughout the speech; use direct quotation here.) (Word count is open: just follow these directions closely and you will end up with plenty of words!)
EXERCISE II:
Thucydides does not often make direct moral judgments on people and events in history, but instead arranges episodes in such a way as to force the reader to make moral judgments of their own. Note Thucydides’ arrangement in which the great funeral oration praising Athens is followed by the immediate onset of the plague in the next section.
Having read both the Funeral Oration and Thucydides’ description of the Plague together, tell me what connections you can make with the Athenian situation and a) our idea of who we are as Americans and b) our country’s reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. This should be around 100-200 words combined.
WARNING: As indicated above, only submissions that follow my specific instructions for quotation and citation of the version of Thucydides that I’ve given you. I will assume that off-topic answers (summaries, commentary that has no citations or has WRONGLY CITED citations) are AI-generated or otherwise plagiarized. Those submissions will receive NO credit.