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The Haunting Waters of A River Runs Through It

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“In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing”
–opening lines

Anyone who has ever gone fly fishing knows it to be a complex art -almost spiritual in nature. Fly fishing forces a man to slow down, find rhythm, and discover patience and harmony with nature. In Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It, which was mysteriously denied the Pulitzer Prize in 1977, Maclean offers a short story that mines the depths of this delicate art. In the story, fly fishing serves as a kind of metaphor for the imperfect nature of human beings (a theological notion propounded by Maclean’s father).

The novella is less about the panoramic “big sky country” and more of a meditation on Maclean’s upbringing and his family, especially his relationship with his brother. Maclean works for a newspaper in Helena where he hones his writing craft. We meet his Presbyterian minister father who teaches his boys how to fly fish, and his brother Paul who is often-drunk and gambling while maintaining a strict fishing regimen. A significant portion of the story is an extended recollection of a fishing misadventure with Maclean’s frivolous brother-in-law who winds up laying drunk, sunburned, and naked with a prostitute beside the river. The story highlights both Norman’s and Paul’s sacred connection to the river and its fish, in contrast to an outsider who disgraces and disrespects it. The river serves as the one constant in Norman’s life -it continues flowing while he continues fishing.

The tearful book ends in sorrow. Maclean, his father, and his brother all go fishing one last time together, and they observe Paul’s superior skills as he catches his “limit” (his biggest fish) in the river. Maclean reflects on the enthusiasm of the trio in one glimmering moment of nostalgia. Little did the trio know it was the last time they would ever fish together. The final words of Paul echo in Maclean’s mind: “just give me three more years before I can learn to think like a fish… just give me three more years…” Shortly thereafter Paul is found dead, the result of an apparent bar room fight. Paul’s death leaves Maclean and his father burdened and fatigued. Norman’s father suggests writing fiction because “only then will you understand what happened and why. It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us” (104).

The concluding paragraphs are the most darkly beautiful in the whole novella:

“Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.

Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn’t. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and the memories of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters” (104).

There are many other deep and penetrating passages in A River Runs Through It. Here are a few that have stuck with me:

“‘Remember,’ as my father kept saying, ‘it is an art that is performed on a four-count rhythm between ten and two o’clock'” (4).

“Fishing is a world created apart from all others, and inside it are special worlds of their own -one is fishing for big fish in small water where there is not enough world and water to accomadate a fish and a fisherman” (40).

“The cast is so soft and slow that it can be followed like an ash settling from a fireplace chimney. One of life’s quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful, even if it is only floating ash” (43).

“…part of the way to know a thing is through its death” (62).

The 1977 Pulitzer Prize Controversy
A River Runs Through It was widely praised it upon its release. According to several news publications at the time, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction jury’s primary recommendation was for A River Runs Through It. The second choice was October Light by John Gardner. However, the Pulitzer Advisory Board denied the jury’s recommendation and no official Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was awarded in 1977.

There was speculation that the prize was not awarded due to a health emergency. One of the three fiction jurists, Jean Stafford, a novelist who won the Pulitzer herself in 1970, suffered a stroke while the jury was studying entries.

Richard T. Baker, a long-time journalism professor at Columbia University who succeeded John Hohenberg as Secretary of the Pulitzer Advisory Board, administered the prizes on behalf of Columbia University and said that no prize was given in the Fiction category because no recommendation “was clearly leading the pack.” He described 1977 as a “thin year, not a banner year” for both fiction as well as international reporting (a second category for which no award was given in 1977).

However, a special Pulitzer Prize was awarded in 1977 to Alex Haley in recognition of his best-seller, Roots, which traces seven generations of a black family in America.

Who Is Norman Maclean?
While A River Runs Through It offers the best insight into the life of Norman Maclean, I offer a terse overview of the author’s life below. Norman Maclean (1902-1990) was considered by some to be the patron writer of the state of Montana. He was born in Iowa and grew up in Missoula. In his early years he worked for the U.S. Forest Department, an experience he later wrote about in two of the stories featured in the A River Runs Through It and Other Stories.

Maclean graduated from Dartmouth College in 1924 and married Jess Burns in 1931. He enrolled in graduate school to study English at The University of Chicago, earning a doctorate in 1940. He taught courses on the Romantic poets and Shakespeare, before earning to a full professorship and becoming Dean of Students in Chicago. Many prominent Americans took classes with ‘Stormin’ Norman’ and his classes were often highly sought-after (some have grouped him among the neo-Aristotelians of the 20th century at The University of Chicago). U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens once credited professor Maclean as “the teacher to whom I am most indebted.”

Upon his retirement in 1974, Maclean’s two children encouraged him to write down the stories he often told them. In 1976, he published A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, a collection of three short stories, but the most prominent of the three is his memoir novella, “A River Runs Through It.” The book was the first work of fiction published by the University of Chicago Press.

Maclean spent his later years attempting to complete a book about the 1949 Mann Gulch Forest Fire, a wildfire that destroyed thousands of acres in Helena National Forest along the upper Missouri River. The book was published posthumously as Young Men and Fire (1992). Norman Maclean died in Chicago in 1990. In 1992, following Maclean’s death, the film rights to A River Runs Through It were purchased by Robert Redford and it was made into a Hollywood film starring Brad Pitt. The film version is entertaining and nostalgic, but it takes significant departures from the novella in order to expand the narrative.

Maclean, Norman. A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition. University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Click here to return to my survey of the Pulitzer Prize Winners.

Anglo-Saxon England, Part II

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With the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons a panoply of changes took effect across Britain. Old English replaced Latin as the lingua franca, the island of Britannia was renamed Aengla Land after the Angles, and perhaps most significantly, there was a political shift. The Saxons brought with them the idea of kingship by consent. That is, the Saxons selected ‘kings’ from amongst themselves, and the kings ruled with limited authority. It was not yet a monarchy familiar to modern minds but it was rulership by the consent of the governed and it was entirely foreign to a culture that carried the fresh memory of the decadent Roman Empire. The legacy of self-government from the Anglo-Saxons is still with us today.

This Anglo-Saxon epoch was captured wonderfully in the epic folk-poem, Beowulf. The hero, Beowulf, is an elected leader who becomes king, ruling for ‘fifty winters.’ Upon his death, a great pyre is built and valuables are buried in an Anglo-Saxon rites ceremony. Anthropologists of Anglo-Saxon culture were delighted when in 1939 the ceremonial practices described in Beowulf were triumphantly confirmed at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk where vast riches, likely once the possessions of a great king, were unearthed along with an entirely buried Dark Age Anglo-Saxon ship. Perhaps this king was Redwald of East Anglia. His iron helmet indicates royalty and the vast riches unearthed matched time period -including Merovingian coins dating to AD 625 (the most successful Anglo-Saxon kings built alliances with the powerful Frankish kingdom in contemporary France).

A partially reconstructed helmet found at Sutton Hoo. It was buried in AD 625 and is believed to have belonged to King Redwald of East Anglia.

Over time, Anglo-Saxon England was divided into seven chief kingdoms, sometimes referred to as the “heptarchy.” The regional names have continued to this day, like Northumbria (“north of the Humber River”), Essex (“East Saxony”), Wessex (“West Saxony”), and Sussex (“South Saxony”). Each king jockeyed for power to rule over the others as bretwalda (“Britan-Ruler”). Names like Redwald of East Anglia (mentioned above) and Offa of Mercia loom large over this period (he called himself Rex Anglorum, “King of the English”). Some consider Redwald to be the occupant of the massive ship excavated at Sutton Hoo. During his lifetime, Offa led some remarkable advances in Roman-styled coinage throughout his kingdom, and across the Channel his rule coincided with Pepin the Short’s Carolingian Revolution of the Frankish kingdom (Pepin usurped the throne in AD 751, 49 years later his son Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas morning AD 800).

With the rise of the Frankish kingdom and the decline of Offa’s family, the kingdom of Wessex arose as the dominant power in Anglo-Saxon England. In AD 827 Egbert, a former exile at Charlemagne’s court during the Offa years, returned to England and claimed the throne of Wessex. He dominated many of the surrounding kingdoms, calling himself the new Rex Anglorum. He was followed by his son Aethelwulf in AD 839, a devoutly pious man and father of five sons, including Alfred the Great (Aethelwulf took young Alfred on a trip to Rome to see the Pope -a trip that would have remarkably lasting consequences). Each of Aethelwulf’s sons then ruled in turn: Aethelbald (Aethelwulf’s second son) took the throne of Wessex in AD 858. He was in some sort of conflict with his father while Aethelwulf traveled with Alfred abroad and after his father’s death, Aethelbald later married his stepmother, causing condemnation from the church. At the time, the church in Rome had a somewhat uneasy relationship with the British Isle.

All across the isle was a religious schism. The ashes of Rome had left a Christian heritage, while the Anglo-Saxons had remained largely pagan, with many leaders claiming to descend from Woden, himself. In the 5th century, a Roman Briton St. Patrick was living somewhere on the British Isles. He was captured and enslaved by a band of marauding Irish pirates. He was forced into servitude, tending animals in Ireland but he escaped after six years only to return to the Emerald Isle and spread the faith across Ireland and Scotland, with the help of his follower, St. Columba who founded the important Abbey at Iona (a small island off the coast of western Scotland). Thus, the form of Christianity that took hold among the Celts was monastic, ascetic, and characterized by vast abbeys and monasteries, as well as sacred and ornately decorated books, like the famous Book of Kells (9th century). In parts of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales Christianity grew entirely apart from mainland papal authority. One unique example of the unusual character of early British Christianity is the cult of St. Alban, in honor of the martyrdom of Alban at the Romano-British city of Verumalium, today known as St. Albans.

However, this unique Christian heritage was not always entirely popular with mainstream Roman Christianity. For example, a well-educated, ascetic monk living somewhere on the British Isles named Pelagius (354-418) taught a controversial doctrine that was highly antithetical to the apostolic and Augustinian tradition, namely that humans were not fallen as a result of “original sin” and instead could achieve goodness and grace through their own free will (i.e. without divine intervention). This “Pelagian Heresy” -as it came to be known- needed to be stamped out by the church (Pope Innocent I condemned Pelagius at Augustine’s behest).

In an effort to spread the ‘true faith’ Pope Gregory “The Great” sent a cohort of bishops led by a man named Augustine (not to be confused with St. Augustine of Hippo.) Today he is known as “Augustine of Canterbury” because his cohort reluctantly landed at Kent after expressing their wish not to continue with the mission -the British isle seemed far too dangerous a place, so the group initially landed at Gaul requesting permission to abandon the mission from the Pope, but their request was denied. With no other options, they set sail across the Channel to Kent.

The Southeastern region of Kent had recently been conquered by the dominant Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex and King Aethelbald’s brother was put in charge. When Augustine and his group landed, they were met by the pagan King Aethelbert (brother of Aethelbald) who had married the Christian princess Bertha of the Franks. A pagan king and a Christian queen. Bertha brought to Kent her Frankish, Christian bishop, Luidhard, and King Aethelbert gave Bertha a little church originally from the Romano-British era called St. Martin’s to worship (she named it after Martin of Tours, the patron saint of the Merovingian family). This church is now the oldest still active church in England today. It was located just outside the capital city of Kent at Canterbury. On the ruins of this ancient church, Augustine founded the British Christian tradition (he later died before completing the construction of his prized cathedral at Canterbury which was first founded in AD 597 and then entirely rebuilt between 1070-1077 by the Normans). Initially skeptical of the newcomers, Aethelbert had Augustine confined to the island of Thanet. He consulted his advisors about the ‘magical powers’ of this new preacher, but the allure of a strengthened relationship with the Franks was too promising a prospect, thus Aethelbert allowed Augustine entry and free-reign to preach the gospel in Kent. Augustine first arrived in Canterbury clad in robes, singing the litany in Latin, while also carrying a large icon of Jesus -a scene which must have seemed magical to the Anglo-Saxons. Augustine’s preaching caught hold among the populace and he baptized thousands, including King Aethelbert, himself, who eventually converted to Christianity -much to Queen Bertha’s delight. After his conversion, Aethelbert issued a new series of laws much like the Byzantine Justinian Code.

In the coming years, the authority of the church in England was established in a series of letters between Pope Gregory and St. Augustine of Canterbury. The Pope was to be the supreme authority, but England would be self-governing for all internal matters by two archbishops -one in the north in York and the other in the south in Canterbury. This dual leadership was novel but would cause future political strife -Augustine declared himself the superior authority as the first archbishop of Canterbury. Augustine died in AD 605, and Aethelbert died nearly a decade later. Both were buried at the splendid abbey at Canterbury which was later named in the honor of “St. Augustine” (not to be confused with Canterbury Cathedral where Chaucer’s famous pilgrims ventured). In the end, church and state both found their final resting place alongside one another in the cemetery at St. Augustine’s: Augustine and his followers were buried on one side of the church, and Aethelbert, Bertha, and their successors on the other.

In the north, in AD 664, the King of Northrumbria issued a proclamation regarding the church. He made the heavy decision to side with Catholic Rome, rather than the Celtic monks. However, tensions would remain in place between north and south, Celtic and Catholic for years to come.

After the death of Aethelbert, the throne of the House of Wessex passed to Aethelred, the fourth son of Aethelwulf. His reign oversaw the violent arrival of the Vikings and their takeover of the surrounding Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Kent, Northumbria, and Mercia. However, Wessex had the advantage over the Vikings with minimal rivers with which the Danes could use to sail inland and pillage the many English commercial ports (including an occupation of London). Through the year AD 871, Aethelred, ever the pious Christian, waged a divinely ordained war alongside his younger brother against the invaders, including an impressive victory at Ashdown, but Aethelred caught a sickness late in the year AD 871 and he died after ruling for six years. Following Aethelred’s reign came the most consequential Anglo-Saxon king who would ever take the throne: Alfred “The Great,” the fifth son of Aethelwulf. Alfred assumed the kingship of Wessex while still in his early twenties.

For this reading I used Winston Churchill’s essential History of English Speaking Peoples, David Starkey’s Crown and Country, Peter Ackroyd’s Foundation: The History of England From Its Earliest Beginnings To The Tudors, and the writings of Gildas, the Venerable Bede, and Asser’s Life of Alfred the Great.

Anglo-Saxon England, Part I

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After the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, first spurred by the Visigothic sack of Rome in AD 410 followed by the collapse of the western Empire in AD 476, a cloud of darkness overcame the island of Britain. Very little writing or culture emerged as the world of the Britons became immersed in constant war. The bloody and murderous assaults were regularly perpetrated by the Picts and the Scots as they overran Hadrian’s Wall and fought the kingdoms of the Britons. However, a growing threat also emerged from the East: the seafaring Germanic warring culture known as the Saxons. Amidst this hazy picture of anarchy, Winston Churchill notes, there were four windows into a “dim and coloured glass” offering us a glimpse into what truly happened between the Britons and the Saxons: Gildas, Bede, and then much later, the Historia Britonium, and the famous Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

The first writer who documented the destruction of Britannia by the Saxons was Gildas “The Wise.” In the 6th century, he penned a diatribe from the perspective of the Britons entitled De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (or “On the Ruin of Britain”). Gildas was a monk and his Latin text is composed of a series of sermons condemning many of the political and religious leaders of post-Roman Britain. In contrast, nearly 200 years later, from the perspective of the invaders, the Saxons, came the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Bede was a provincial Anglo-Saxon monk from Northumbria, born in 673. He was sophisticated and well-educated and his chronological history is sober and reflective, with just a hint of contempt for early Britain. Still the haze enveloping this epoch makes it difficult to discern truth from fiction. Hundreds of years later Geoffrey of Monmouth celebrated this era for its fabled aristocracy, chivalry, Christian faith, knights and ladies and so on. Out of the cloud of this mist emerged the legend of King Arthur, a defiant British king who upheld the chivalrous customs of his ancestors while defending his kingdom against the Saxons. King Arthur was made popular in the chivalric romance tradition, and his story is echoed in the writings of Chrétien de Troyes and Thomas Malory.

How did the Saxons ultimately succeed over the Britons? After many years of coastal raids along the British isle, Gildas writes of how a naive king of the Britons, King Vortigern (“Mighty king”), was in need of military support to defend against the Picts and the Scots. Finding no help from Rome, he regrettably called upon the Saxons, led by two brothers, Hengist and Horsa. Vortigern fatefully invited them to the British island like a Trojan Horse being led across their network of coastal defenses. The Saxons were lured with the promise of payment in exchange for military support. However, in the absence of Roman bureaucracy, payment was difficult, slow, and not always accurate. Money became a growing bone of contention between the Britons and the Saxons. Thus, the Saxons soon turned their swords against the Britons, and eventually an all-out war erupted. Whole towns were sacked and entire populations were horrendously murdered across the entire island. Scores of Saxons flooded into Britain. The invaders were merciless, running naked through the countryside, sparing none, slaughtering all. Where once stood walls and roads, now sat piles of human bodies, toppled architecture, and scattered limbs with blood lining the roads and villas. However, at the Battle of Mount Badon (late 5th or early 6th century), one lone British royal hold-out secured a victory under the military guidance of Ambrosius Aurelianus around AD 490. But by the end of the 6th century, almost everything south of Hadrian’s Wall had been completely re-populated by Saxons.

From the opposite perspective, Bede tells us of three primary Germanic groups who invaded Britain: the Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes. They were a mostly egalitarian people without kings, ruled by blood and kin. They were part of the greater diaspora of Germanic tribes, forever the enemies of Rome. Their German homeland lay on the plains between the River Elbe to the east and the River Ems to the west in a region still known as “lower Saxony” (Neidersachsen) in present-day northern Germany. For the Saxons, the tribe was the family unit and money was the supreme law, and the position of king grew in purpose and authority following their invasion of Britain. Upon the takeover of Britain, the Anglo-Saxons began creating feudal hierarchies intended to dominate their subordinates. Saxon leaders began referring to themselves as rex (“king”) and new laws were created. Much of the ethnographic information on the Germanic tribes, like the Saxons, comes down to us in the writings of the late Roman aristocrat, Tacitus because the Saxons were illiterate.

The Saxons had no cities, they disliked close neighbors. They lived in a smattering of hamlets throughout the countryside. Their houses were made of wood and their garb was simple, muted.

There is a rousing debate that continues to this day between whether the invading Saxons wholly exterminated the native Britons or instead intermingled and reproduced with at least some of them. I tend to agree with the latter -there is enough evidence to suggest the Saxons kept some living Welsh noblemen on their lands, and they likely took some British women as concubines. However, the overwhelming majority of the Britons were wholly massacred by the Saxon incursion.

For this reading I used Winston Churchill’s essential History of English Speaking Peoples, David Starkey’s Crown and Country, Peter Ackroyd’s Foundation: The History of England From Its Earliest Beginnings To The Tudors, and the writings of Gildas, the Venerable Bede, Historia Britonium (perhaps written by Nennius), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Tacitus, and Geoffrey of Monmouth.

What Is A Eulogy? Ethos, Pathos, and Logos In Pericles’s Funeral Oration Speech

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Thucydides offers one-hundred and forty-one speeches in his monumental history of the Peloponnesian War, yet the early eulogy offered by Pericles (in Book II) is surely the most famous.

pericles funeral
“Pericles’s Funeral Oration” by Philipp Foltz in 1877

The word “eulogy” comes down to us from the Greek word eulogia meaning to offer praise, or even high praise. Pericles delivers his famous eulogy, the “funeral oration speech” in the winter of 431 BC, after the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War in honor of the fallen Athenians. Thucydides explains ancient burial customs: he tells us that the bones of the dead were laid three days before the ceremony for their fellow tribesmen to honor, along with one empty bier to honor the bodies who could not be recovered (not unlike the American ‘Tomb of the Unknown Soldier’). The ceremonies were open to both citizens and strangers, they were paid for by their families as was customary. After the bodies were laid into the earth a man was chosen by the state to deliver a eulogy, one of “approved wisdom” and “eminent reputation.” The man chosen at the end of the first year of the war was Pericles, son of Xanthippus, an Athenian soldier and politician who fought in the Persian Wars. It has been said that he delivered the speech in the Kerameikos cemetery (from which we derive our word “ceramic”).

At the appropriate time, Pericles proceeds from the sepulcher to an elevated platform to deliver his eulogy. Thucydides gives himself a certain degree of creative license: the following speech is “like” what Pericles delivered in the winter of 431.

He begins by addressing “most” of his predecessors who praise the practice of eulogy and funeral oration, while separating himself (Pericles) into the undemocratic minority. He wishes that the deeds of men are honored, rather than the words of one man. Some may hear inaccuracies while others may be filled with resentment and envy. Appropriately honoring the heroic dead is a difficult task. “For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity” (2.35). However, since the Athenian ancestors have stamped this custom with their approval, Pericles will reluctantly oblige.

Why should we eulogize the dead?

In Aristotle’s Rhetoric, he identifies three key parts of a successful speech: ethos, pathos, and logos. After appealing to his own Ethos, or his the appeal to his own bona fides, Pericles begins by honoring Athenian ancestors who laid the foundation for such a great city and empire. Pericles endeavors to find the ‘road by which’ the Athenians came their current status, what form of government their greatness grew, and what national habits out of which it sprang. Pericles will address these three questions before eulogizing the dead. This section might be said to be the logos of Pericles’s speech.

Pericles’s eulogy is unlike any other – it is a praise of Athenian greatness because in order to honor the valorous dead Pericles must first justify the Athenian empire and the cause of the war. He praises the unparalleled Athenian constitution, laws, and citizenry. Since there are both citizens and strangers present for the ceremony, Pericles feels it is necessary to justify the status of Athens by means of “proofs” (2.42). The city requires justification. 

Now, proceeding to the eulogy at 2.42 Pericles says this established greatness is nothing without the deeds of the many unnamed dead Athenian heroes. And citizens who give their lives, despite their personal flaws, are nevertheless heroes:

“For there is justice in the claim that steadfastness in his country’s battles should be as a cloak to cover a man’s other imperfections; since the good action has blotted out the bad, and his merit as a citizen more than outweighed his demerits as an individual…Thus choosing to die resisting, rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonor, but met danger face to face, and after one brief moment, while at the summit of their fortune, left behind them not their fear, but their glory”
(2.42 [3-4]).

Once Pericles has established and praised the dead for their decision to serve country over self, he turns the patriotic lens back onto the audience, instructing them to see the greatness of Athens in the faces of those who Athens has now lost.

“For heroes have the whole earth for their tomb; and in lands far from their own, where the column with its epitaph declares it, there is enshrined in every breast, a record unwritten with no monument to preserve it, except that of the heart” (2.42 [3]).

Therefore, Pericles offers comfort, not condolence, to the grieving families, for their children died for a most honorable and noble cause. Parents find joy in honor, especially in old age; brothers take pride in their fallen heroes, and widows Pericles instructs to find glory and excellence in being gossiped about infrequently, whether for good or for evil.

Pericles closes his famous eulogy by offering rewards paid for by the state to the families and children of the dead, though the true rewards are numerous for citizen-soldiers.

In closing, Pericles’s “funeral oration speech” bears certain remarkable similarities to the structure of President Abraham Lincoln’s brief but striking eulogy: “The Gettysburg Address.” Both begin with an ancestral praise, followed by an ode to national greatness, and an acknowledgement that mere speeches cannot fully honor the dead, however we, the living, may forever remember their deeds. The other great analog to Pericles’s “Funeral Oration Speech” is the Platonic dialogue, the Menexenus.

It should be noted that the “funeral oration speech” does not identify any fallen soldier by name, and instead we simply see Pericles standing in place of the city, turning the focus from the honored to the honored living (i.e. himself). Pericles becomes the city through his demagoguery, and also Pericles’s speech immediately precedes an outbreak of the plague which eventually kills Pericles. Thucydides, the author, survives the outbreak of the plague with his moderate disposition and constitution, while Pericles, an ambitious leader prone to swings of high hopes and low fears, catches the plague that is unleashed mainly in Athens, not in Sparta. This plague might be said to be the birth of the mania in Athens that eventually culminates in the ill-fated Sicilian Expedition and the decline of Athens. 

For this reading I used the impeccable Landmark edition of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War by businessman-turned classical scholar Robert B. Strassler.