Welcome back to the new Thinkery. I'm David Barr and with me as always is a Roman Senator who's bald head, I anoint with oil, Alex Priya, how you doing? I'm doing well, David. Yeah, this is the second star we're re-recording, think to listeners, we're re-recording this episode, the we were too lethargic.
But how are you doing, man? There's a lot of snow where you are now, too. A lot of snow, we're like on two feet. It's going sideways, it's dense, it's heavy, got my glasses canceled tomorrow.
So super long. And maybe, now would be is she still, is she too young to take outside? I'm thinking outside, I can't do it right now, though. It's too intense.
I'm not even going outside. I mean, it's like you can't even walk through it so heavy and there's so much of it. Yeah, well, it's good thing we have Father Christmas on the show, Greg McBrayer, how are you, Greg? Welcome, gentlemen.
Welcome. I actually have a haircut planned tomorrow. A beard cut? Yeah, well, I'm actually going to get a call to get the vaccine and I said this was my pandemic beard.
So wait, wait, wait, hold on a second, Greg. You got a call to get the vaccine. People have certain eyes suspected. Yeah, that's right.
I suspected you would have had the vaccine much earlier, given your email. Yeah, that's right. Well, we have things that happen slower here in rural Ohio. Yeah, so you're going to look like a normal person now without that big beard.
Yeah, I think so. You'll go from duck dynasty to cuck dynasty. Alex has been saving that one for a while, but I got this joke. It's wonderful.
So awful. I really don't like this alt-right. That word has been usable. You want to be a proud one?
Yeah, Greg, you do. All you need is, you know? Yeah, you look a little proud of it. Is it the guns behind me?
Is that the problem? It's more the general misogyny of your attitude. Oh, geez. Hey, so this is a way better start than the last one.
I'm really proud of you. Seriously, Greg, you got a nice email because, oh, yeah, as you convinced listeners, you're a nice guy on the show and you somehow convinced students of that too. So what happened? What did you receive recently?
Well, I just, you guys, I shared with you and you guys thought it might be nice to share with our listeners, but I got a nice email from the students. I taught at Gettysburg College maybe 12 or 13 years ago and sort of a mediocre student sees and that kind of thing. Greg, I wasn't. Well, I'm not going to name him.
I know, but he listens to the show. Oh, probably not. Maybe. You did some?
No, I was going to say nice things about him. He just, I apologize. He's going to count. He was mediocre, but he was sort of impressed that I paid attention to him.
He had written me an email early on and I said, I don't know if this is nice or not, but I sort of semi-note back saying this is not how you should write emails. Apparently stuck with him in any event. He was very appreciative. You know, a dozen years later says, hey, as well, let you know that that really had a positive impact on me.
And he's now in medical school. I think maybe at Michigan State. So in any event, it's just nice to hear from former students. And this is not a student that took a bunch of classes with me.
Sort of, but anyway, it was kind of a nice thing. So what was the email that he wrote you that you chastised them for? Like, who knows? I don't remember.
I'm sure it was, you know, an old man, a brayer like that in the literature was me as doctor. Hey, I don't know. I don't have my students call me doctor. I follow your St.
John's model. I have them call me Mr. So I never get emails like that. No, I had one.
So what? You should try being nice to students. Yeah, I don't know. You're not like you're a very nice calling a mediocre in public.
And we're courted now. So he's not a medical school. So he's clearly turned it around. He's a good student.
Yeah. He's not to let me know his name. I'm not going to go to him for any medical treatment, given your characterization. No, so I once when I was at Tulane as a grad student, one of the real privileges I got when I was there was I got to teach a advanced course just on Plato.
We did the protagonists and the the the atetus. I had a student in the class. He was a good student. And he was in the honors version.
So we read a book on the side, whatever. And, you know, we took the class. He took a couple of classes with me and then he sort of went his way with whatever he was majoring in, I think, business and stuff. But I then a couple years later ran into a math coffee shop as the end of the semester.
And he was a senior now. He was graduating. And I was like, Hey, I was like, Hey, I'm graduating. I'm like, congrats.
That's great. You know, what are your plans? Et cetera. And he starts telling me this story about how he's like my your class changed my life.
And we don't know. But first he tells me he was out of the park and he saw this grasshopper and he was looking at this grasshopper and he communed with this grasshopper for like an hour. Just there. I played or you teaching out.
No, this is not. Well, so he's communing with this grasshopper and he said I stared and I swear he looked at me and he goes seriously. He goes, this grasshopper was wise. Right.
So he thought this grasshopper was wise. His eyes are blazed. You know, he's obviously still and we're talking. I'm like, Oh my God, he's insane.
He's lost his mind. And at the end of it, he goes, anyways, I just want to say thank you, you know, your, your course really changed my life. And I realized, Oh, he's insane. And I think I made him insane.
So. Oh, right. That's driving a lot of power to, to your teaching. Well, he attributed to me.
I mean, I don't know what to say, but he, but by your own account, he was crazy. Adaptable. He was fine when I met him initially. So I don't know.
Yeah. I was still there. So, no, no, there's two stories. There are other stories about students which we can't share.
No, most of them aren't. Not a lot of them are. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. What was the, um, tell this really quick before we start episode, Alex, about why Ben or Daddy got kicked out of St. Oh, he didn't get kicked out. He basically got client told him that he probably doesn't fit.
At the school, he found another job, but he was apparently mocking a student's paper in the coffee shop or something like that. I heard. I don't know. Yeah.
Just the, the, the undergrads. Yeah. Yeah. He's not good at hiding his superiority.
A lot of, yeah. Well, a lot of people do the stuff on Twitter. That's what I was thinking. A lot of, I see a lot of professors put their students on blast on Twitter and Facebook and stuff like that.
Yeah. It's wrong. It's like really poor taste to me. I agree with you.
I agree with you. Okay. So speaking of poor taste, uh, paricles today addresses the Athenians, right? Famous funeral oration.
why did we pick this? Because it's short. This is not in my wheelhouse and well, nothing's really in David's wheelhouse. So this is going to be a very Greg heavy episode.
So if you want to now go listen to partial exam, I've nobody's blamed you. That's, that's completely, that's completely your prerogative. Next week, it'll be better. My apologies.
But what are we doing next week? I don't know. It's something else. Okay.
It's a niche episode. Yeah. Yeah. We're in, we discover what you're all right.
Okay. Yeah. I think that's what can make sense. Okay.
So, um, on to paricles, why did we choose this? Um, we, we, there's a athletic mind went there. Sorry. Go on.
I'm done. Geez Louise. No, you're not done. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. So when you're right, I'm not done, but I will use myself. Well, I jokingly said we chose it because it's short, but the truth is with Alex's babies arrival, we did sort of decide we're going to do some shorter things just so we have a little bit easier prep. Alex is completely unprepared.
That's why he's thrown it all at me. And so I suggested paricles, funeral oration. And for what it's worth, it got a whole lot of traction on Twitter in the mail bag. So this seems like it's a pretty popular topic or a pretty popular question.
Why did we choose it? I think it's a fun speech. It has an influence on Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which is quite famous speech for the most Americans should be familiar with. I think it's very famous.
It's probably the most famous speech from Thucydides's account of the Peltonation War, so I should probably back up and talk about Thucydides. So paricles was a ruler in Athens during the Peltonation War, which is a 27 year long war between Athens and Sparta. We've talked about it before on the podcast when we discussed Plato's symposium. And at the end of the first year of the war, paricles gives an oration in memory of the those who fall in the first year.
It's widely held to be a model of funeral orations or in Komenia. And it's widely thought that paricles was a statesman of the highest order in Athens. And so one of the best statesman's from antiquity, one of the best speeches from antiquity, just seemed like a natural fit. Is that good enough as a sort of a by-way introduction?
Yeah, maybe some of the themes that you think are relevant, apart from, because I mean, there's stuff about empire, right? There's stuff about the relationship between loss of life and the political community. Right. Really quick.
That was a lot of really interesting parts of this speech. I agree with Alex. Before that though, can you tell us, Greg, it disappears in book two of Thucydides' great work, right? Of which they're eight books?
Is that correct? And so what's happened in the war so far? Maybe if you could set the scene dramatically. I know in a clip to just happen before he gives his speech, but I believe in stuff like that.
So come on. I believe that he closes up. Yeah. No one denies that.
No, no, no, no. I mean, like the gods come with their cloaks and stuff. But what's happened between Athens and Sparta so far? Well, I mean, that's relevant to the speech.
What's relevant to the speech? Oh gosh. Yeah. So the big it's yeah, there's a lot of people who died in the first year of the war.
Correct. So basically the beginning of the book is, so we're in book two, book one, kind of the war. There's two cities still kind of sitting stage. He actually gives a little bit of something called an archeology where he goes back and tells some ancient history.
And then he does that. Yeah. He does that to say that in a not so oblique way that he's superior to Homer. I would say and Herodotus actually.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think he's saying that his.
Yeah. No, not superior, but what he's describing is because he does a catalog of ships, essentially, right? Doesn't he? He goes through all the ramparts and stuff like that.
It goes through. He goes through Homer's and says. Homer's evidence that it wasn't that big, actually. Yeah.
Compared to mine. So if yeah, I mean, I actually think Thucydides is saying that the Peloponnesian war is the greatest war of antiquity. It dwarfs the Persian wars and the Trojan war. But I also think Thucydides is saying you just sort of said he's not saying this, but he is saying that he's a better encounter of political history than either Homer or Herodotus.
That he thinks that the mythological embellishments by Homer are somewhat problematic. And Herodotus mostly doing, I guess, ancient history, for the most part, I guess that's his criticism of Herodotus, whereas Thucydides is doing contemporary history. If that makes sense, like he's writing a count firsthand account. He's he's there-ish and seeing it happen before him.
And he's giving us a realistic account of what happened in the war with very- That's right. And so that's another good. Yeah. That's another good point.
So Thucydides was alive for the war. Yeah. During the war. Yeah.
Yeah. Though it was- It was a gentle war. He was a gentle war. Yeah.
It's impossible for Thucydides to have had firsthand accounts of every speech. So I think he says that the outside, like I give the speech the sense, I think it ought to have like, it ought to be presented with. So IE, I make some of this stuff up. Yeah.
And then contemporary historians would never- they could cancel for this and heartbeat. Yes. Yeah. I know he's sort of- Really quick, before we get to Alex's, I mean, the mean and potatoes of this.
Sure. Again, for listeners who maybe can't recall what happens after the war, essentially. What happens? Oh, sure.
Sparta basically wins the war after 27 years. Athens falls. There's a series of revolutions, but then ultimately they become a spard rule and the Spartan Empire emerges and then goes away. Yeah.
But yeah. So this is sort of the end of- Yeah. So it's a big Thucydides for all this. No, you're right.
I think that this book is recounting- I think Thucydides- this is my suspicion. I don't think it's that controversial, but I think Thucydides saw that what he was witnessing was the end of Greek civilization. And that's one reason. And so the- and that's why it's superior to Homer or Herodotus.
So that because the civilization that it's peak is greater than civilization that's beginning. So Homer starts- talks about the beginning of Greek civilization, which is not nearly impressive as once that civilization has reached its peak. So I think he thinks that his is going to be the best because it's only decline after this before Athens and therefore the wars won't be his grand. So yeah, that's a very good day.
Yeah. That's helpful. And maybe this is a good way to transition to the speech itself, but in a way Thucydides is looking at this funeral oration empirically, as a whole in the history, is playing a crucial- well, so some people look at Pericles and say, oh, he's the great statesmen of Athens. Some people are a bit more critical.
I think you're a bit more critical of him. And this speech might figure into that a bit. So for instance, I mean, his plan in the war was let's restrain, let's bring everybody back on the city causes this plague apparently. Let's restrain, let's say everybody back on the city will wait it out and then we'll expand.
So he's pushing for empire ultimately and arousing this desire for gain among the Athenians. He's very effective and mentally dies. He's very effective in that program. But that sounds like he's also kind of a catalyst of decay, wouldn't you, sir?
Oh, yeah, I think so. No question. I suppose the more common reading of this is that. Sorry, just out of point of that.
Like Alcibi, he's the sort of crazy political figure in a way as a product of Pericles, right? Well, quite literally almost a product of Pericles as far as he was an nephew. But yes. That's right.
Yeah, and he aspires to be a Pericles figure, I think that that's right. Yeah, the common mind-pressions that the common reading of Thucydides and the funeral oration in all Pericles as the parentes is that Thucydides has nothing to praise for Pericles, that he was an impressive statesman, the first citizen, and that the reason that Athens fell apart was because no one could achieve the greatness that Pericles achieved, that he alone could sort of keep Athens together. Sort of because he alone could sort of run the empire, but keep it restrained as you just mentioned. Like he was definitely trying to fan the flames of Imperial ambition, but also he alone was able to rein it back in when necessary.
I think that's right. But my reading of this has been greatly influenced by Steve Ferdys and some others, Drowus' and Borswerk. And I think that Thucydides is actually quite critical of Pericles. And I think that you see that even in this speech, which is held up as the model Pericles and speech was where we can go through it.
And I can point to some of the problems, I think, but ultimately the problem is that, well, I mean, this is very simple, I think Empire is unjust. I think that was Thucydides' view. Later speech of Pericles, please, in Thucydides, Pericles admits that what they have is the tyranny, that they tyrannize over other cities. And so I would say that to be a pretty serious piece of evidence that it's a blame of Pericles.
And I think it's helpful. I'm thinking on N that freedom is shown by being able to do what you want, right? How do you know you're free and that you're not just able to do what you want by virtue of the grace of another, right? Well, the way you do that is to rule over them, right?
So freedom or the love of freedom can easily turn into the desire for Empire and the suppression of freedom, the very thing that's supposed to be just in the first place. And so there's this very delicate balance where it's really easy for the love of justice to turn into a kind of tyrannizing as you put it. Yeah, I think that's right. Before I jump into it, I'll give an outline of the text real quick if there's other things people want to say.
But I should mention that I use typically when I teach this text, I use Robert Strassler's The Landmark Thucydides. And these landmarks here are quite invaluable. I think they have a lot of maps, pictures of archaeological digs. Why do you hate Hobbes?
Why do you hate Hobbes? I do like Hobbes. I like the Hobbes edition. I do like the Hobbes edition, right?
The Strassler, the problem I have with the Strassler is actually the translation is not very good. They use an old open source translation that I think has serious issues. Yeah, yeah. And so actually today, if I do any quoting, it'll probably be from Thomas Pangal up on his academia.edu site has who's that?
Thomas Pangal is a professor of government at the University of Texas. And he has a translation of some passages of Thucydides up on his academia site. So that's what I'll- Yeah, it's really good. I mean, it's eight pages or something.
Yeah, it's a really nice gift. But it's not the whole thing. It's just- I mean, it's really important passage to his not the whole thing. So back to Eperically's, his funeral oration, unless you guys have something that- The whole thing is relatively short as far as these speeches go, and it consists mostly of five parts.
There's an introduction to conclusions. So that's part one and part five. And in the middle, the three central parts, there's a praise for the Athenian ancestors. Then there's a praise for the regime, the Athenian regime.
And then there's the eulogy proper. So I'll do that again. Maybe less confusing. There's an introduction.
Then Pericles turns to praising the Athenian ancestors. Then he praises the Athenian regime. Then he gives his eulogy proper, where he praises the dead. And then he concludes.
I would just say from the beginning, one of the things that- One of the things I find confusing or interesting about this is that the eulogy proper is actually quite short. That most of the speech does not eulogize the dead for its worth. So there's something going on there. Another curious omission is there's almost nothing whatsoever said about the gods.
And so what I would say is if any funeral you've ever gone to, every funeral I've ever gone to, the most of the remarks have to do with the dead. And usually there's a lot of religious language. And so both of those things are absent from this speech. So that's the outline as I understand it.
So let me just- I can just walk through- I'd like you to walk through this and do it like a nice version and a bad version, but I think I'll just give it the way that I understand. So it opens with an introduction. This is a fairly common rhetorical technique where Pericles says, look, giving funeral arrangements is a nasty business. It's a thankless task.
I'm no speaker. I'm no public speaker, but it's noble that the city demanded this, and so I'm going to do it. And then he says, look, I can't please anybody. If you're- if you knew them, you're going to think I didn't do them justice, I didn't praise them highly enough.
And if you didn't know them, you're going to think I'm over doing it. So no one's going to be pleased by this. That's kind of his introduction to the problem of delivering eulogies, which I think is a fair problem. He then turns to praising the Athenian and ancestors.
And from my view, I think if you want to see an excellent leader, it would be someone who would praise especially the founding generation or something like this. But in, in book two, section 36 and following, what you see actually is Pericles begins by praising the ancestors, the ancient ancestors. But then the most immediate ancestors are more impressive than their remote ancestors as far as they really started to make the city impressive. But then the current generation, i.e.
Pericles, are even more impressive. So he's the most impressive because he's taken Athens from what it was to an empire. So it's not traditional, it's not conservative. What seems to be a praise for Athens ancestors is in fact only a praise for himself and the current generation.
So I take that to be one small part. The next part- So yeah, go ahead. Really quick. There's another great general that figures in and is written about favorably- Thucydides early on in this account, and that's the mystically's.
I thought that his the mystically's was more responsible for Athens' greatness in so far as it positions the city-state to- to move forward on other fronts, like these long city walls. He fortifies Athens. So he allows the Pericles to flourish. Yeah, I think that I mean I'm not saying I agree with Pericles' self-account here, but by Pericles' account the ancestors deserve praise.
But we deserve it even more because we've equipped the city to be most self-sufficient in their respective regards to warm peace. So the mystically's helped us, but we've now added to that and so we're superior. I mean, I'm inclined to agree with you that the guys who set up them to be able to accomplish what they accomplished, that's somehow more impressive. But he's not that differential.
Yeah, go ahead. This is interesting. It's now reminds me of what you were saying about these cities a minute ago, right? Which is in a way Pericles brought Athens to its peak, right?
Right, right, right. And the very reason that Thucydides' history would be the best history, Pericles would be the best of the problem though, is if you bring Athens to its peak, that means you also set it up for its decline, right? That's exactly right. And in a way, I think that would be maybe that's one way to think about the difference or the crux of the criticism, which is yeah, he brought it to its peak and that makes Thucydides' history the best, but that's actually also a flaw of Pericles, right?
The fact that he couldn't do it further. So one thing from the introduction that I like, I was just when I was reading it earlier today, just struck me, the parallel struck me for the first time. He starts with this very sort of humble thing, right? You mentioned this, but I can't do much, right?
I'm just, you know, the deeds are the really the ones that are valorous. And speech indeed is an important distinction throughout Thucydides. What's interesting is it reminded me of, because I've been reading a lot of Pindar just back earlier in the semester, and Pindar actually says, look, deeds are great. They're beautiful, but they're ephemeral.
They're by the very nature, they happen, and then they're gone. And you can't witness them again, right? And so to really, if you really want to preserve them, you need a poet, right? And the poet preserves that.
What's interesting about Pericles is he tries to sort of subdue his role as order. In preserving the deeds, but in a way, we wouldn't know about any of this, or you know, about Gettysburg. Nobody would even talk about Gettysburg if it weren't for Lincoln, right? It's really, you know, conscious.
A little note what we said here, but they will long remember what was done here. Yeah, but it's actually quick to refresh, right? We've said there more than what was done. Well, I think that's a pretty common rhetorical technique.
And I think that in both cases, they're aware that their words are what we remembered more than. At one point, he says, think about the everlasting glory of all these people who died here. Pericles says, can you name one of them? I can't, but I can name Pericles, right?
And so yeah, I think that that's exactly right. So I take it to be false modesty in that regard. For sure. But then it makes me think, sorry, I'm kind of going out of the tranter.
Oh, please. But now that it makes me think back to the archeology, right, where he says, I'm not going to be like Homer and embellish things. Somebody would be very matter of fact. And the way Pericles is claiming to do something similar, right?
I'm just going to describe what they did. And I'm not going to, my skills or chairs, nothing, right? It's their deeds that shine forth. But in a way, it's the skill of the speaker or in two cities, in case the writer that allows you to see the greatness of things, even if you're not embellishing.
Anyway, sorry, that was just a sad thought. No, I think that's right. And just to return then to the ancestors, I'll just read quite this is from section three. Six, uh, part one, two and three.
So he says, first, I'm going to praise the ancient ancestors. It's fitting to praise them first. You hear Lincoln and those there too. And while they deserve praise, the two generations ago still more to our fathers.
So it's more impressive the generation closer to us. But then section three, but most of it, we here now have a quick decision to be most selfish. So it's as you get closer to the present, actually, uh, the more impressive people. So the ancient ancestors weren't very good.
Or is worth it. Does that hurt your feelings as one who is among the ancestral? I mean, it is a little offended. It's very democratic the way that he's not praising the ancestors.
I don't appreciate that very much. The bulk of the war, I mean, this is again, right? This is this is a funeral oration. It's meant to be praising the dead.
The bulk, the overwhelming majority of this oration is devoted to praising the Athenian regime. Right. So it's not it's not a praise of the dead. It's not even a phrase of the Athenians.
It's such it's a praise of their democratic regime, their way of life. I know. Sorry. Yeah.
Yeah. I I feel it. Uh, this speech has always landed so flat with me for that reason. Yeah.
There's it's, uh, it's, uh, a disconnect in my mind where you you at once, like are primed to receive a funeral oration proper, right? As one would expect. And then you get this praise of regime, which seems totally out of place. And one wonders what the effect this would have on the listeners.
Um, if this is in fact the way that Pericles delivered delivered this speech, what's strange? I hate to jump to Getty's, the Gettysburg address again, but the Gettysburg address, I would say, does a similar thing. It seems to by and large be a praise of the American regime, the American way of life, right? Think about the consistency of the principles being articulated in the first paragraph, second paragraph, and then third paragraph.
And I would say it's it actually works for us Americans, right? I'm not so sure it would have consoled people who had immediate family numbers who died. But in, in other citizens, I do think that he folks, uh, a strange form of patriotism in a strange way, because in a way, it makes it maybe to send a bullet away. It makes sense.
Right? Like what do they die for? They died for our way of life. They died for Athens, right?
And so maybe there's a connection there. But I do think that the focus on it really obscures like these guys lost their life and probably they were drafted into service, you know, these, everyone all volunteering. So you get something to say there. Yeah.
But I would also be, uh, it's, I don't know if this is like the Vietnam for the, uh, for the Greeks, but, uh, like the origins of the war, it's less, you know, it's not as clear cut as if there's a Hitler on the scene. No, that's actually really good. I think that's a good analogy, especially as far as it's like, I mean, imagine if Lincoln had stood up and said, yeah, George Washington was fine, but it was more impressive, you know, Jefferson and then still more me, right? Uh, because I'm doing all this stuff.
Yeah, I do see that. Yeah. It is awfully, I guess the way I would put this is it strikes me as extraordinarily irreverent in that regard. It's just not paying sufficient deference to the elderly, the way things used to be.
Is this in a way of paradox of giving a funeral oration, right? On the one hand, you need to praise those who have immediately died. Yeah. On the other hand, uh, their deaths are commendable because they die for the sake of something worthy, right?
And so you're always kind of stuck between praising the old and praising the new and in a way, you know, uh, yeah. So I mean, maybe later we'll talk a little bit about Plato's minxinist, which is a kind of platonic corollary to the speech, but it does seem like you have to end, and to praise the living, uh, adequately might mean to, to have the sort of contemporary, uh, bias right over this event towards the present. Yeah. I can briefly just talk about the, the praise for the Athenian regime and then we can move on to the rest and I'll point out another problem.
I think we move to the next part, but so why is the regime to be praised? Well, it's a, it's to be praised because it's, it's a repeater for all other cities. Uh, they believe in equality. They have freedom.
They follow the law, even paracles mentions the unwritten laws, uh, whatever that might mean, something like natural law or something like this. Not entirely sure. Uh, they're also, um, they have sports. They have, uh, they play games and they have, uh, they do the Olympics and these kinds of things.
They have all kinds of leisure activities. We're not the engaging commerce football. Yeah. Right.
So I mean, like we have the best chariot teams with the best Olympic teams. We have commerce, uh, but we have a strong military. Um, and then he praises their education. This is an, uh, to 40.
Um, this is actually a pretty strange line. I think, and I think this is the only time this term occurs in blue cities. I'm not, I'd have to double check that, but I think that this is right. So then section 40, uh, paragraph, paragraph 40, section one, he's praising the Athenian way of education.
He says, we love the beautiful or noble without extravagance and we love wisdom or we philosophize without softness. So somehow they're educated, but they're still manly. And the last thing in praising the regime is, uh, that they are the, the school of all of Greece, we summarize that in paragraph 41. So the regime is impressive.
That's the most impressive part. And then in section 42, he turns to the U of G proper where he praises the dead. If you guys want to get, uh, here's my argument. I don't think this is mine.
I think this is my mother's, but why want to give one's life to one's city or one's country? Paracles answers that question in the speech. And I would say, if you were trying to persuade someone to join the military and to possibly sacrifice his or her life, you might make an appeal to duty. You might make an appeal to God.
Um, paracles, issues, all that. And instead he insists that the reason you ought to sacrifice your life is for the attainment of glory. So he's, he's reorienting. I think he's trying to provide a rational motivation for citizens of Athens to sacrifice their lives.
And he puts it on glory. Now the problem is, is I've already alluded to that might be fine and dandy to, to have glory as your goal, but these average soldiers didn't achieve the glory. I mean, they're nameless. Yeah.
And so I think if I were to point to the one fundamental flaw in this argument or this speech by paracles, it's that it rests on a very faulty argument that glory cannot be a major motivator for most human beings as to why they would support their city. And I think that you already see the decay there, right? Why did the marathon generation fight for Athens and fight for Greece? It wasn't for glory.
It was for freedom or it was because they were self defense. They went to the homeland. Why did they do it because they loved God or they love their country? Here are the ideas you can attain glory.
Um, and I just don't think that's a sufficient motivation for people to join the military. When I was a kid, I remember the army, the US army's had these commercials, you know, join and be all you can be. And there were a lot of the confederate union army, the union army. When I was a kid, yeah, I was a wee lad, but they, um, the emphasis was all on what can you do for your country and this kind of stuff.
But then I remember a change after the Cold War sort of ended and subsided that most of the marketing seemed to be aimed at what can the military do for you? Yeah, we'll pay for call it. Yeah. That's right.
And I just, and I just remember thinking that I don't see how this is going to get attract the right kind of young men and women into service. I mean, that's not, you don't want those types, right? When we're demanding is actually some kind of sacrifice. I had a friend in college.
He, uh, after night, I love him. He joined the military partially with, you know, the financial benefits was school and everything in mind. And I asked him, uh, aren't you afraid to die? Okay.
That's what stopped me. Right. And he, he said, well, somebody has to do it. Right.
And, uh, then he died a few years later. And, uh, it's not clear. It had the free education was worth it. Yeah, he died in Afghanistan.
Yeah. In, in combat. Yeah. Sellacopter was shut down.
United. And this is, and this is maybe a little bit too dark, but talking about glory, I think it's, you know, you do this. You sacrifice, you know, and, you know, they put your name on a website. They need an airstrip after him and his friend who died and helicopter being, uh, bombed, um, and the airstrip in Afghanistan.
It's not really, you know, is that really the compensation, right? Back glory and, you know, the education that you can't use because you're dead. I think you're exactly right. So it's a flawed incentive structure, as we would say.
I wonder what the incentive structure in, I wonder what a similar speech by like a brassitist to the Spartans, a similar, like a funeral or a, oration on the other side would have sounded like they just screened this as far. That's what I got a lot more piety. There's this. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. There's no piety here. Right.
Yeah. And connecting piety to love like we've done in our symposium, our never ending symposium series, seriously enough, uh, in paragraph 43, section one, paracles calls on the Athenians to have arrows for the city. So it's like he's trying to reorient their deeper longings to the city and we speak a love of our country, love of city, but we don't speak of arrows of the city. It's a really strange, weird turn of phrase for them, you know, be erotically inclined to love your country.
That's a very strange turn of phrase. I think it was strange in Thucydides too, of course. Yeah. Now, why do you think he leaves out the gods?
Are they just too far gone and they're moral decay to like it would sound flat? I mean, it's weird because during the plague, then the Athenians get, um, don't they start blaming things on the gods? Yeah. Like the gods pop up in in Thucydides from time to time at funny times.
I mean, if you want my honesty, I guess this goes away during the. Yeah, going. I think he's silent on Pi. I think that I suspect that paracles thinks that the reason that they've been great is precise is because they're not pious.
And so, uh, in other words, Athens is, has transgressed. The ordinary bounds of decency of morality and piety, right? They have an empire. Somehow that's, that's an offense to the gods, I would say.
It's precise. I think I have this. This is actually the same section, 243 where he talks about their daring, right? So what marks Athens is that they're daring.
And I think that part of that daring is being impious. So for example, uh, earlier in the, oh, it's going to crack man history, but in one part of the Persian wars, when Athens is in danger, they tear down the walls and take to see, right? So they build ships out of their walls, right? Uh, and take to see.
So Athens literally they just abandoned the city. And we read this, we moderns and we're like, that's really innovative. It's really impressive. It's daring.
It's smart. I think for ancient people, this sort of scared the big Jesus out of them. Like they left, like a God founded that city there on that spot of land and they just up and left it. Like their daring is connected to their lack of piety and it's this lack of piety.
That's made them so I think, we're so great because we're not as traditional and we don't have these silly ideas like our ancestors. So conversely, you could say the pious speech would not, would not endorse the plan of action, right? The pious teacher say this is a punishment, right? We've changed grasp.
We've gone too far, you know, a fiend is mad that we were willing to leave the Acropolis behind, right? Right. Um, yeah. So no, that's interesting.
So it was a great question, David, because I think that I think that the lack of piety is connected to the greatness and his idea. And when I taught this, one of the last times I taught this, I interspersed plays that were put on in Athens during the war dramatically when they would have occurred. Ooh, that's good. It's just a fun class.
And I did edifice to ran us, which was set actually shortly after the plague was produced shortly after the plague. And my students saw very clearly something that I hadn't seen that Peter Aron's door if it's seen that I picked up on, but my students saw very clearly that edifice is basically the paraklies figure, right? He's trying to rule rationally. He's trying to forget, give rid of all these superstitious priests and these kinds of things.
Uh, the source of Athenian greatness is the regime and the rulers and how impressive they are. I think that's about it. And he's trying to stop a plague of which he is the cause. Exactly.
So really interesting. Just like Hercules and it claims him as it seems, it claims paraklies. That's what it matters. So I know we got a deep mail bag tonight.
So I'll just quickly get to the last part. Well, there's a sort of funny part. I mean, maybe it says it's humorous, but so after he praises the dead, he then speaks to the various survivors, which is sort of funny, right? So he, he, so the dead, they died.
They, they, they, they tend glory good for them. Those of you out there in the audience, you know what you should do? You should imitate them. Uh, you should go die and get your glory.
If you're too old to fight like me, well, you should go have new kids so that they can go fight for the city. Uh, but if you're not capable of having kids, okay, then there's a problem there, right? Um, it ends and he goes through all these different family members. If you're old, you know, if your children die, if you're old enough to have some more, if you're not, well, if you've got, and he says, there's one group that he simply cannot console and it's, uh, widows, like old women.
And he basically says, just shut up. Like, just don't talk. Nobody wants to talk to you. So he can figure out a way to satisfy everyone.
You got a brother die. Well, just make a friend, right? If you, if your kid died, make a new kid, but if you're an old lady, just be quiet. Well, they can go exercise naked with Socrates, right?
Right. Is that his idea? Or he's his idea for sure. Yeah.
He said young boys and old ladies should work out together in the nude. You did say that. Okay. Draw connection to play those since we've, uh, we're not.
Yeah. So play the way to dial call the mix in which, uh, Socrates claims to have learned, you know, some bits about a funeral orations from a spaceship, right? Of course, and associated with paracles. Now maybe you know the relationship better, but one of the weird things about this dialogue, so when Exodus says, Hey, I'm going to go see, they're going to choose who's going to give the funeral oration.
And Socky says, uh, so it's talking to him and he gives a basically a mock funeral oration on the fly. It seems like, right? Built out of some parts he says and extemporizing a bit. And one of the weird things about this is that socks is scraps, scraps, right?
Build up scraps scraps and made up stuff on the fly up. So he, he then said, he goes through it. And one of the weird things is he starts talking about events that happen after his death. He's going through the history, like paracles does.
But then he goes past the United States. Some scholars say, Oh, well, the Academy had these things, but none of it's after Plato died. So there's something on also right when he goes from stuff, he did witness to stuff. He died.
He says, we who are alive, right? So he's explicitly drawing attention to this fact that he's alive. And one of the implications here, what I think, make of it is that well, Socky's is saying these kinds of fuel arrangements necessarily involve a praise of the city, right? And Socrates would appraise the city.
He would not have died. So the Socrates who gives this speech continues to live. And but one of the things that comes out is that this is connected to paracles of the funeral oration, I think is Socrates has to praise the city, but in terms of the present, right? And since it's near the Peloponnesian War, or he has to take into account the Peloponnesian War, he actually has to discount the Spartan accomplishments during the Greco-Persian Wars.
And what ends up happening is the same same problem that you were talking about, Greg, where the praise of the present necessarily involves the kind of blame of the past and looking to yourself. And this kind of this movie ends up being just a kind of flattery, right? And it's kind of solipsistic to the present and therefore loses the actual nature of things, I think. So people are interested in reading paracles, funeral oration, read it and then take a look at Plato's minxiness.
It's also quite short. There's actually a great addition that has both of them from focused philosophical life. Empire and the ends of politics. Great.
You are I think something for focus, but then they seem to have forgotten your contribution, right? Well, they buried the lead. Yeah. But don't worry, focus on the first time else number.
So I guess Cornell's. Yeah. So so Greg, Greg gets a lot of hate from the process he publishes from. So he publishes a translation of the Euthademus with Mary Nichols and Denise Shafer.
Then they put that blurb in the front and they put all the names in everybody. They dropped Denise and Greg. Then he's not the only ones. Yeah.
And then he only one admitted. Yeah, then you publish a fester for Charles Butterworth and how do they spell your name like Greg McDurger or something? They got a complete area that's very close. Or than what they did.
Yeah. And now you published the shortest of credit ratings with Cornell. I can't wait to see what they do to you. It's going to be bad.
It's going to be bad. Second edition, my guess is that edition, they drop your intro. These they ask, hang on the right something and you get thrown into the dusty history. It's going to be pre and bar.
It's going to be true. Let's do some mail. Well, he's really quick before the I like your suggestion, Alex, about pairing, but you could just pair this or funeral oration with other great funeral orations in history. So Greg brought up Gettysburg, but there are other there are many such cases, as they say, do you see playing for your impact?
That's that's, yeah, that hits so close to home. You have listeners don't understand, but now they don't. OK. Yeah.
I am actually dying. What other do you have? 20. No, I don't know, man.
I don't know. Like 20th century funeral relations, like from other countries too. And you have to do a little bit of research, but I would love to, you know, like, like how an African tribe would eulogize a great warrior, like, like a Zulu warrior. I would sure he'd be, you know, eulogized and just do it across countries or like a samurai house, a samurai eulogized.
It's just it's interesting kind of education as is deaf is. I mean, it's a dark place, but has either of you ever given an eulogy? I don't know. My enemies, but never, never have you given them?
I have. I have. Yeah. Yeah.
I have. Who did you eulogize? A friend of mine. Yeah.
It's quite, I don't take this as serious, but it's quite a daunting task to give it. It really is. I was perhaps a little too hard on paraclys. I mean, it is not an easy thing to do.
So yeah. Well, when you look as long as I have, she's correct. Really. Yeah.