Pericles, Funeral Oration

Pericles begins the “Funeral Oration” with the trope of false modesty or false humility. He suggests that his own public speaking is insufficient to honor the Athenian dead, saying, “I could have wished that the reputations of many brave men were not to be imperiled in the mouth of a single individual, to stand or fall according as he spoke well or ill” (2.35.1). This kind of understatement, or intentionally portraying something as less significant or of lesser quality than it actually is, is a common rhetorical device that accentuates the gap between the orator’s words and reality. As a politician and the general leading the war efforts against Sparta, Pericles is an admired and accomplished figure who is respected for his skills as a speaker and controls the narrative regarding the fallen soldiers. Thus, their reputations are not at risk of being “imperiled” by his speech. Pericles’s intentional diminishment of his own abilities is intended to emphasize the profundity of the fallen soldiers’ sacrifice and to shift his audience’s focus from his individual prestige to their shared victory and identity.