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‘THEIR MEMORIES WILL NEVER GROW OLD’: THE POLITICS OF REMEMBRANCE IN THE ATHENIAN FUNERAL ORATIONS*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2013

Julia L. Shear
Julia L. Shear*
Affiliation:
American School of Classical Studies at Athens
*
julialshear@googlemail.com
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Extract

Every winter in the classical period, on a specifically chosen day, Athenians gathered together to mourn the men who had died in war. According to Thucydides, the bones of the dead killed in that year lay in state for two days before being carried in ten coffins organized by tribe to the dêmosion sêma where they were buried and then a speech was made in honour of the dead men by a man chosen by the city. As his description makes clear, this ceremony was a public event attended not only by citizens and foreigners, but also by the female relatives of the dead men. Other sources report that the polemarchos put on the agôn for those who died in the war and these contests included musical, athletic and hippic competitions. The war-dead also received sacrifices. The occasion combined burial with cult and games usually afforded to the divine, although how exactly this combination worked in practice is not clear because Thucydides, our single best source for the Epitaphia, focusses on the burial and the oration given by Pericles in the winter at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , December 2013 , pp. 511 - 536
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2013 

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Footnotes

*

The quotation is from Lys. 2.79. In the course of this project, I have benefited from the help and advice of various friends and colleagues, especially: Nathan Arrington, Simon Goldhill, Jon Hesk, Alex Long, Robin Osborne, Robert Parker, Ian Ruffell, Michael Scott, John Tully and James Watson. Earlier versions were presented at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and, in a rather different form, at ‘Re-inventing Athens after Loraux: a workshop on the funeral oration’ at the University of Glasgow; I would like to thank the participants on both occasions for their comments. Any remaining mistakes are, of course, my own.

References

1 Thuc. 2.34.1–8. On the location of the dêmosion sêma, see Arrington, N.T., ‘Topographic semantics: the location of the Athenian public cemetery and its significance for the nascent democracy’, Hesperia 79 (2010), 499–539CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the selection of the orator, see below, n. 114.

2 [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 58.1; Pl. Menex. 249b3–6; Lys. 2.80; cf. Dem. 60.13, 36; Pritchett, W.K., The Greek State at War 4 (Berkeley, 1985), 106–24Google Scholar; Parker, R., Athenian Religion: A History (Oxford, 1996), 131–9Google Scholar; Parker, R., Polytheism and Society at Athens (Oxford, 2005), 469–70Google Scholar; Todd, S.C., A Commentary on Lysias, Speeches 1–11 (Oxford, 2007), 273Google Scholar. On the textual problems of Ath. Pol. 58.1, see Rhodes, P.J., A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (Oxford, 1981), 650–1Google Scholar and the apparatus criticus of Chambers' Teubner edition.

3 Pl. Menex. 244a3–6; Dem. 60.36; G. Ekroth, The Sacrificial Rituals of Greek Hero-Cults in the Archaic to the Early Hellenistic Periods (Liège, 2002), 84–5, 197, cf. 203–4.

4 Cf. Parker (n. 2, 2005), 469. He suggests that the ‘commemorative festival’, i.e. the sacrifices and games, probably followed the burial rituals. Lys. 2.80 and Pl. Menex. 249b3–6 support this sequence, but Loraux and Tsitsiridis separate the burial from the other events; Loraux, N., The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City (Cambridge, MA, 1986), 37–9Google Scholar; Tsitsiridis, S., Platons Menexenos: Einleitung, Text, und Kommentar (Stuttgart, 1998), 409–12.Google Scholar

5 Gorgias: DK6 82B5–6. Pericles' Samian oration: Plut. Per. 8.9 (= Stesimbr. FGrH107 F 9), 28.4–7 (28.7 = Ion FGrH 392 F 16); Mor. 350E; Arist. Rh. 1.7.34, 3.10.7. It is not quite clear from Plutarch's description whether the burial of the dead from Samos took place immediately after the surrender in the spring of 439 or in the following winter (of 439/8), as Thuc. 2.34.1 would suggest was normal.

6 Lys. 2; Dem. 60; Hyp. Epit. (text as Herrman, J. [ed.], Hyperides: Funeral Oration [Oxford, 2009])Google Scholar; Pl. Menex.

7 Herrman (n. 6), 14.

8 Demosthenes: Herrman, J., ‘The authenticity of the Demosthenic Funeral Oration’, AAntHung 48 (2008), 171–8Google Scholar with further references; Lysias: Todd (n. 2), 157–64 and Grethlein, J., The Greeks and their Past: Poetry, Oratory, and History in the Fifth Century bce (Cambridge, 2010)Google Scholar, 107, both with further references. The authenticity of these two speeches does not affect my argument here.

9 Thuc. 1.22.1. The speech's relationship to its historical context has been stressed by Bosworth who would like to see it as a distillation of Pericles' actual speech; Bosworth, A.B., ‘The historical context of Thucydides' Funeral Oration’, JHS 120 (2000), 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Sicking, C.M.J., ‘The general purport of Pericles' funeral oration and last speech’, Hermes 123 (1995), 404–25.Google Scholar

10 Todd (n. 2), 153–4 with further references; Loraux (n. 4), 94, 324–5, 327; Tsitsiridis (n. 4), 88–92; for the Menexenus as evidence, cf. Loraux (n. 4), 10–11, 94.

11 Herrman (n. 6), 16; C. Carey, ‘Epideictic oratory’, in Worthington, I. (ed.), A Companion to Greek Rhetoric (Malden, MA, 2007), 236–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 242, 243.

12 Mourn the dead: Lys. 2.81; depart: Thuc. 2.46.2; Dem. 60.37; Pl. Menex. 249c6–8.

13 Loraux (n. 4), originally published in 1981 as L'invention d'Athènes: histoire de l'oraison funèbre dans la ‘cité classique’.

14 e.g. Loraux (n. 4), 251, 263 and cf. 75, 145, 171, 177, 192, 198, 200, 218, 220, 243, 314, 331; Thomas, R., Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, e.g. 14, 213, 229, 232, 236; Grethlein (n. 8), e.g. 2, 121, 129, 134, 139, 178, 221; see also Walters, K.R., ‘“We fought alone at Marathon”: historical falsification in the Attic funeral oration’, RhM 124 (1981), 199–211Google Scholar, at 211; Boedeker, D., ‘Presenting the past in fifth-century Athens’, in ead. and Raaflaub, K.A. (edd.), Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens (Cambridge, MA, 1998), 185–102Google Scholar, at 191; Todd (n. 2), 150.

15 ‘Athenian history of Athens’: Loraux (n. 4), 132–71; development of memory studies: e.g. Cubitt, G., History and Memory (Manchester, 2007), 1–3.Google Scholar

16 Todd (n. 2), 149–286; Herrman (n. 6); Grethlein (n. 8), 117; Thomas (n. 14), 236 with 213; cf. Loraux (n. 4), 143. Thomas defines ‘oral tradition’ as statements orally ‘transmitted over at least a generation’; Thomas (n. 14), 13 with 3, 10. Consequently, they may overlap with memories, but they may also be used in contexts which have no memorializing function, such as law court speeches. See also below, n. 23.

17 Therefore, we cannot necessarily distinguish between collective memory as ‘very often ideological’ and individual memory as ‘more personal’. As we shall see below, an individual's remembrances may also be ideological. Quotation: Olick, J.K., The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility (New York, 2007)Google Scholar, 34. Individual vs. collective/social memory: e.g. Fentress, J. and Wickham, C., Social Memory (Oxford, 1992), ix–xGoogle Scholar; Olick, J.K. and Robbins, J., ‘Social memory studies: from “collective memory” to historical sociology of mnemonic practices’, Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998), 105–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 111; Alcock, S.E., Archaeologies of the Greek Past: Landscape, Monuments and Memories (Cambridge, 2002), 15Google Scholar; Young, J.E., The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven, 1993), xi–xiiGoogle Scholar; Geary, P.J., Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, 1994), 10–12Google Scholar; Cubitt (n. 15), 14; contra: Olick (n. 17), 10, 11, 34–5. Individual in society: Cubitt (n. 15), 73–4, 118–25, 141; Olick (n. 17), 34–5; cf. Assmann, J., Religion and Cultural Memory (Stanford, 2006), 3.Google Scholar

18 Definition: Olick (n. 17), 98; cf. 38, 55–6, 117.

19 In this sense, collective remembrance is an agglomeration of individual memories. Collective/social memory: e.g. Fentress and Wickham (n. 17), ix–x, 25–6; Young (n. 17), xi, 6–7; Cubitt (n. 15), 10–20; Olick (n. 17), 17–35; Shear, J.L., Polis and Revolution: Responding to Oligarchy in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 2011)Google Scholar, 7; cf. Olick and Robbins (n. 17), 111–12. In discussing the memory of groups, I do not find Assmann's ‘cultural memory’ helpful. As most expansively formulated, it is opposed to ‘communicative memory’ and its characteristic features include a content of mythic history about origins which are at least one hundred years before the present, formal institution, (religious) ritual, stability, a canon, written texts and promulgation by specialists in the tradition; Assmann, J., La mémoire culturelle: écriture, souvenir, et imaginaire politique dans les civilisations antiques (Paris, 2010), 43–51Google Scholar, 53–4. As so defined, it is unified rather than multiple and contested, and a thing rather than a process, two of Olick's ‘pernicious postulates’ about memory; Olick (n. 17), 89; cf. Winthrop-Young, G., ‘Memories of the Nile: Egyptian traumas and communicative technologies in Jan Assmann's theory of cultural memory’, New German Critique 96 (2005), 103–33Google Scholar, at 123. Studies drawing on Assmann's formulation may also suffer from these problems; cf. Flashar, M., ‘Die Sieger von Marathon – zwischen Mythisierung und Vorbildlichkeit’, in Flashar, M., Gehrke, H.-J., and Heinrich, E. (edd.), Retrospektive: Konzepte von Vergangenheit in der griechisch-römischen Antike (Munich, 1996), 63–85Google Scholar; Gehrke, H.-J., ‘Marathon (490 v. Chr.) als Mythos: Von Helden und Barbaren’, in Krumeich, G. and Brandt, S. (edd.), Schlachtenmythen: Ereignis, Erzählung, Erinnerung (Cologne, 2003), 19–32Google Scholar. Additionally, there are issues relating to the independence of ‘cultural memory’ from other cultural forms and its mimetic directness; cf. Olick (n. 17), 89. As formulated, this ‘cultural memory’ is largely based on Egyptian models which may not be relevant for all cultures; cf. Winthrop-Young (n. 19), 119–23, 130–3. For ancient Greece, it functions at the Panhellenic level, but not at the level of individual cities so that its applicability is actually quite limited; Assmann (n. 19), 241–8. Imposed apparently from the top down, ‘cultural memory’ fits poorly with democracies such as Classical Athens.

20 Multiplicity and inseparability: Olick (n. 17), 89. As Olick points out, collective memory is also ‘essentially contested’.

21 Cubitt (n. 15), 133.

22 Quotation: Fentress and Wickham (n. 17), 25; see also Cubitt (n. 15), 125–40, 170, 222–3; Olick (n. 17), 29, 86–7; Shear (n. 19), 7.

23 Young (n. 17), x, 2; Fentress and Wickham (n. 17), x, 29; Alcock (n. 17), 17; Cubitt (n. 15), 16, 18, 158–9, 202–3, 214; Olick (n. 17), 12, 55–6, 82, 89–118; Shear (n. 19), 7. Consequently, ‘oral tradition’, a thing or noun, cannot be synonymous with ‘memory’ which is both a noun (remembrance) and a verb (to remember). Such an approach falls into the trap of at least two of Olick's ‘pernicious postulates’ about memory (unity and tangibility); Olick (n. 17) 89. Hobsbawm particularly stresses the fixity of ‘tradition’; Hobsbawm, E., ‘Introduction: inventing traditions’, in id. and Ranger, T. (edd.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983), 1–14Google Scholar, at 2.

24 On forgetting, see e.g. Fentress and Wickham (n. 17), 39–40; Cubitt (n. 15), 52–5, 75–7, 223–4; Geary (n. 17); Loraux, N., The Divided City: On Memory and Forgetting in Ancient Athens (New York, 2002)Google Scholar; Connerton, P., ‘Seven types of forgetting’, Memory Studies 1 (2008), 59–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vivian, B., Public Forgetting: The Rhetoric and Politics of Beginning Again (University Park, PA, 2010)Google Scholar; Shear (n. 19), 7–8. Vivian particularly stresses the importance of forgetting.

25 Young (n. 17), 6–7; Fentress and Wickham (n. 17), ix–x; Cubitt (n. 15), 129, 132–4, 137–9; Olick (n. 17), 5, 29–30, 55–83, 86, 104–7. As his emphasis on Bakhtin and dialogue show, Olick regards communication as a particularly important aspect of creating memory.

26 Ritual and remembering: Connerton, P., How Societies Remember (Cambridge, 1989), 39–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cubitt (n. 15), 166–7, 181; Shear (n. 19), 10; cf. Olick (n. 17), 58, 105.

27 Shear (n. 19), 10; for rituals and the past, see also Connerton (n. 26), 61–71; Cubitt (n. 15), 181; Assmann (n. 17), 10–11.

28 Young (n. 17), 6–7; Shear (n. 19), 10; cf. Cubitt (n. 15), 220–1; Olick (n. 17), 56–7, 77–8, 80.

29 Connerton (n. 26), 49–50; Cubitt (n. 15), 181; Shear (n. 19), 10; cf. Olick (n. 17), 86.

30 Young (n. 17), 6, 280–1; Shear (n. 19), 10.

31 Cubitt (n. 15), 222–3; Shear (n. 19), 10–11.

32 Other studies of memory: e.g. Hedrick, C.W. Jr., History and Silence: Purge and Rehabilitation of Memory in Late Antiquity (Austin, 2000)Google Scholar; Alcock (n. 17); Loraux (n. 24); Wolpert, A., Remembering Defeat: Civil War and Civic Memory in Ancient Athens (Baltimore, 2002)Google Scholar; Gowing, A.M., Empire and Memory: The Representation of the Roman Republic in Imperial Culture (Cambridge, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Flower, H.I., The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture (Chapel Hill, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Luraghi, N., The Ancient Messenians: Constructions of Ethnicity and Memory (Cambridge, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grethlein (n. 8); Shear (n. 19).

33 Thuc. 2.36.1, 41.4, 43.2, 43.3, 44.2, 45.2; Lys. 2.3 (3 instances), 6, 20, 24, 39, 61, 63, 67, 74, 79, 81; Pl. Menex. 236e2, 238c1, 239c4, 239c5, 239d3, 241a5–6, 241d4, 241e2, 242c2, 243c7, 244b7, 246a3, 246b3, 246c1, 246d8, 247d2, 249a7–8 (and beyond the speech, note also 235c3); Dem. 60.6, 9, 12, 16 (2 instances), 29, 31 (2 instances), 36; Hyp. Epit. 4, 6, 8, 18, 29, 30 (2 instances), 41.

34 Pl. Menex. 236d4–e3. This passage is as close as the orators come to linking memory with the everlasting fame which a narrator confers on his subject, an association which would seem obvious to us; cf. Dem. 60.14.

35 Pl. Menex. 236a8–c2, d2–3.

36 Lys. 2.1–2.

37 Lys. 2.2; cf. Pl. Menex. 246a5–b1.

38 Lys. 2.3; on the problems of the text, see Todd (n. 2), 214–15; Grethlein (n. 8), 118 n. 37. On φήμη, see the discussion below.

39 Mikalson, J., Honor Thy Gods: Popular Religion in Greek Tragedy (Chapel Hill, 1991), 183–202Google Scholar; Nagy, G., The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Baltimore, 1999 2), 118–19Google Scholar with n. 2; Ekroth (n. 3), 199–206.

40 Lys. 2.80; note also the use of τιμή and τιμάω here in reference to cult. The verb ὑμνέω is rare both in the funeral orations and in the orators more generally.

41 Indeed, it is hard to identify another occasion for such songs. They will have accompanied the sacrifices, as hymns regularly do; Furley, W.D. and Bremer, J.M., Greek Hymns: Selected Cult Songs from the Archaic to the Hellenistic Period 1: The Texts in Translation (Tübingen, 2001), 28–9, 32.Google Scholar

42 Dem. 60.6.

43 Dem. 60.9.

44 Dem. 60.10–11.

45 Thuc. 2.36.4.

46 Hyp. Epit. 4; cf. Lys. 2.54.

47 Hyp. Epit. 6.

48 Hyp. Epit. 6–9. Ancestry: Thuc. 2.36.1–2; Lys. 2.17, 20; Pl. Menex. 237a6–c4; Dem. 60.3–4, 6; Loraux (n. 4), 148–50, 152; Ziolkowski, J.E., Thucydides and the Tradition of Funeral Speeches at Athens (New York, 1981), 90, 120–1Google Scholar; Thomas (n. 14), 208–9, 212–13. Education: Thuc. 2.39.1–4; Lys. 2.69; Dem. 60.16; cf. Pl. Menex. 238b1–c1; Loraux (n. 4), 144–5, 151–3; Ziolkowski (this note), 90–1, 121; and the discussion below.

49 Dem. 60.15.

50 Pl. Menex. 239b3–c7.

51 The great exception is Hyperides' funeral oration with its focus on Leosthenes; Herrman (n. 6), 61–2; cf. Ziolkowski, J.E., ‘National and other contrasts in the Athenian funeral orations’, in Khan, H.A. (ed.), The Birth of European Identity: The Europe-Asia Contrast in Greek Thought, 490–322 b.c. (Nottingham, 1994), 1–35Google Scholar, at 9–10. Other Athenians named in the orations: Themistocles: Lys. 2.42; Hyp. Epit. 37; Myronides: Lys. 2.52; Miltiades: Hyp. Epit. 37; Harmodius and Aristogiton: Hyp. Epit. 39. Like Leosthenes, all these men were dead when the speech was given. Of Athenians from the deep past, only the eponymous heroes and their relatives are named: Dem. 60.27–31.

52 Above, n. 38. Grethlein also notes the general pedagogical function of Lysias' speech; Grethlein (n. 8), 119, 120–1.

53 Above, n. 42. The educational aspect of the epitaphios is also stressed by Thucydides; see Thuc. 2.42.1.

54 Thus the dynamics of remembrance explain why the orations' pedagogical functions, which Grethlein, Carter and Loraux have noted, actually work to educate listeners; Grethlein (n. 8), 119, 120–1; Carter, M.F., ‘The ritual functions of epideictic rhetoric: the case of Socrates' funeral oration’, Rhetorica 9 (1991), 209–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 228–30; Loraux (n. 4), 49.

55 Lys. 2.49–53. In Thucydides' narrative, the parallel passage is 1.105.3–106.2. Grethlein also notes the pedagogical function of this passage; Grethlein (n. 8), 116.

56 Thuc. 1.105.4: οἵ τε πρεσβύτατοι καὶ οἱ νεώτατοι; Lys. 2.50: οἱ γεραίτεροι καὶ οἱ τῆς ἡλικίας ἐντὸς γεγονότες.

57 Lys. 2.51, 52, 53.

58 These dynamics also allow Lysias to describe the dead in childhood as ‘educated in the good deeds of their ancestors’; Lys. 2.69.

59 Above, n. 55.

60 Dem. 60.32, 37; cf. Lys. 2.69.

61 Speaker: Pl. Menex. 248e2–3. Fathers: ibid. 247a2–4.

62 Pl. Menex. 247a6–b4.

63 Thuc. 2.43.4.

64 I imagine the ideal funeral oration as consisting of an introduction, a praise section with a historical narrative, and an address to the survivors which focusses on the deeds of the dead, i.e. the form of Lys. 2 and Menexenus. The specificity of the final section will depend on the success of the campaign: a more successful year will generate more detail, as in Hyperides' oration, while an unsuccessful or disastrous one will lead to the suppression of specific information, as in Demosthenes' and Lysias' speeches. More recent events are mentioned by both Lysias and in Menexenus; Lys. 2.58–66; Pl. Menex. 244b3–246a4. On the process of composition, see the discussion below.

65 Cf. Hyp. Epit. 8.

66 Lys. 2.72.

67 Dem. 60.27–31; Thuc. 2.42.4

68 Fathers ventriloquized: Pl. Menex. 246d1–248d6; speaker's claims: ibid. 246c2–7, 248d7–e2.

69 Thuc. 2.44.1 with 2.43.2, 2.44.4; cf. 2.42.2, 4; Hyp. Epit. 41; Loraux (n. 4), 49. The end of Hyperides' speech is not preserved and the extant text only addresses the survivors en masse. It is not clear to me how much text is missing from the end of the speech as it is now preserved. On the relationship of §§ 41–3, which were quoted by Stobaeus, to the speech as preserved by the papyrus (§§ 1–40), see Herrman (n. 6), 105–6, 106–7.

70 Dem. 60.36.

71 Thuc. 2.45.1.

72 Hyp. Epit. 10–11. For the historical circumstances, see Herrman (n. 6), 12–14, with further references.

73 Hyp. Epit. 12, 14.

74 Hyp. Epit. 23.

75 Dem. 60.18–24. As Frangeskou has observed, this oration must contend with the fact that it celebrates a terrible defeat which the speaker's policy helped to create; V. Frangeskou, ‘Tradition and originality in some Attic funeral orations’, CW 92 (1998–9), 315–36, at 329–30, 335. Forgetting is very much at work here. For similar tactics, compare also Lys. 2.67–70.

76 Dem. 60.27–31. ᾔδεσαν: Dem. 60.27 (Erechtheidae), 30 (Cecropidae); οὐκ ἠγνόουν: Dem. 60.28 (Aegeidae); παρειλήφεσαν: Dem. 60.28 (Pandionidae); ἠκηκόεσαν: Dem. 60.29 (Leontidae); ἐμέμνηντο: Dem. 60.29 (Acamantidae), 31 (Hippothontidae); οὐκ ἐλάνθανεν: Dem. 60.30 (Oeneidae), 31 (Aeantidae); οὐκ ἠμνημόνουν: Dem. 60.31 (Antiochidae).

77 Dem. 60.27.

78 Above, n. 76.

79 Above, n. 76; LSJ9 s.v. παραλαμβάνω I.4.

80 Dem. 60.29.

81 Objects and memory: cf. Cubitt (n. 15), 140. Note that here we have the memory of a single, individual survivor. Since her remembrance intersects with memories created by the orations, we see the impossibility of segregating individual and collective remembering completely. The family is, of course, both a group in its own right and a sub-group of the city. It is only through repetition in family rituals that the funeral speeches can be understood as creating ‘family pride’.

82 Contestation: e.g. Cubitt (n. 15), 206–14, 222–31; Olick and Robbins (n. 17), 126–8; Appadurai, A., ‘The past as a scarce resource’, Man 16 (1981), 201–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Olick (n. 17), 188. For contestation of rituals, see e.g. Cressy, D., ‘The Fifth of November remembered’, in Porter, R. (ed.), Myths of the English (Cambridge, 1992), 68–90Google Scholar, at 81–3; Olick (n. 17), 55–83.

83 Lys. 2.32–43.

84 Lys. 2.32.

85 Lys. 2.34–9.

86 Rhetorical questions: 2.39–40.

87 Lys. 2.40–3. Herodotus makes no mention of official awards for the contingents from individual cities and he concentrates on the rewards for individuals; Hdt. 8.123.1–124.2; Todd (n. 2), 245–6.

88 For similar rhetorical slides in the fifth century, cf. Boedeker (n. 14), 196.

89 Todd (n. 2), 241.

90 Lys. 2.37–9.

91 On the interpretation of this passage, see Todd (n. 2), 244. The children, wives, mothers and fathers constitute the survivors who are particularly addressed in the funeral orations.

92 We are here at the very limits of Assmann's ‘communicative memory’, which has an upper limit of eighty to one hundred years; Assmann (n. 19), 45–6, 51; cf. id. (n. 17), 24. Lysias' treatment of this battle, although longer and more detailed, does not differ significantly from his narratives of the battles in the deep past, which Assmann would presumably describe as ‘cultural memory’; Lys. 2.4–16. Furthermore, the ritual necessary for promulgating memories of Salamis belongs with ‘cultural memory’, not ‘communicative memory’.

93 Lys. 2.71–3; for similar slides, see Thuc. 2.43.1–45.2; Dem. 60.32–3, 35–7.

94 Loraux (n. 4), 172–220.

95 e.g. IG I3 1144.54; 1147.1–4; 1162.5, 10, 16, 18, 20, 25, 32, 37, 43, 52, 55, 57, 59, 61, 63, 65, 68, 70, 72, 74, 80, 85; 1163.1; 1166.3; 1168.17, 23; 1169.6; 1175.6, 12; 1183.4, 11, 13; 1184.6, 13, 20, 30, 32, 59, 63, 68; 1186.18, 42, 78, 137; 1190.149, 157, 166, 170, 178, 189, 192; 1191.31, 55, 103, 196; 1193.1, 78.

96 Cf. Loraux (n. 4), 22; Low, P., ‘Commemoration of the war dead in classical Athens: remembering defeat and victory’, in Pritchard, D.M. (ed.), War, Democracy and Culture in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 2010), 341–58Google Scholar, at 343. IG I3 1191, which lists trierarchs and other officials at the top of each tribe's column, is an exception to this general rule. For some other exceptions, see IG I3 1147.62, 129; 1157.4; 1162.4; 1166.2; 1186.75, 77, 79, 80, 108; 1190.3, 42, 179; 1192.8, 34, 158.

97 Sacrifices: above, n. 3. Dynamics of sacrifice: Detienne, M., ‘Culinary practices and the spirit of sacrifice’, in id. and Vernant, J.-P. (edd.), The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks (Chicago 1989), 1–20, at 3–4Google Scholar; M. Detienne, ‘The violence of wellborn ladies: women in the Thesmophoria’, ibid. 129–47, at 131–2; J.-L. Durand, ‘Greek animals: toward a topology of edible bodies’, ibid. 87–118, at 104; Rudhardt, J., Notions fondamentales de la pensée religieuse et actes constitutifs du culte dans la Grèce classique: étude préliminaire pour aider à la compréhension de la piété athénienne au IVme siècle (Geneva, 1958), 289–90Google Scholar; Jameson, M.H., ‘Religion in Athenian democracy’, in Morris, I. and Raaflaub, K.A. (edd.), Democracy 2500? Questions and Challenges (Dubuque, IA, 1998), 171–95, at 178Google Scholar; Osborne, R., ‘Women and sacrifice in classical Greece’, in Buxton, R. (ed.), Oxford Readings in Greek Religion (Oxford, 2000), 294–313, at 311–12Google Scholar; Parker (n. 2, 2005), 37, 42–5. That the sacrifices are described as thusiai should indicate that the meat was distributed in the normal way; Ekroth (n. 3), 84–5, 197, 303–4. On the complexities of sacrifice, see helpfully Parker, R., ‘ὡς ἥρωι ἐναγίζειν’, in Hägg, R. and Alroth, B. (edd.), Greek Sacrificial Ritual, Olympian and Chthonian (Stockholm, 2005), 37–45Google Scholar, with further references.

98 Foreigners: Thuc. 2.34.4, 36.4; Pl. Menex. 235b2–8; Dem. 60.13; cf. Lys. 2.3.

99 Since theôriai with sacrificial animals are unattested at the Epitaphia. These delegations' most important role was to bring gifts and particularly sacrifices which enabled the group's participation in the central moment of the ritual; Perlman, P., City and Sanctuary in Ancient Greece: The Theorodokoi in the Peloponnese (Göttingen, 2000), 46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parker (n. 2, 2005), 79.

100 For the dynamics involved, see further Shear (n. 19), 15–16, 200–7.

101 Thuc. 6.8.4–15.1, 19.2–25.2; note especially 6.15.1, which indicates that other Athenians also opposed the expedition at this point in the debate.

102 Bosworth (n. 9), 6–9; cf. Sicking (n. 9), 406–9.

103 Demosthenes further attempts to limit negative reactions by ascribing the defeat to a daimôn (60.19, 21, 37), misfortune (60.19, 21) and the Theban commanders (60.22), none of which was likely incite dissent. He does not mention either himself or the Athenians.

104 Lys. 2.2, 54; Pl. Menex. 246a5–b2; Dem. 60.15; Hyp. Epit. 4; cf. Dem. 60.6; cf. Loraux (n. 4), 142.

105 Above, n. 38.

106 LSJ9 s.v. φήμη I.1, II.1. For the second meaning, LSJ specifically cite this passage. The word φήμη can also mean common report or rumour and its overlap with malicious accusation (συκοφαντία) may need to be clearly demarcated, as it was by Aeschines in his speech on the embassy; Aeschin. 2.145.

107 Thuc. 2.36.4.

108 Thuc. 1.73.2–74.4, 89.1–117.3.

109 These dynamics are now most visible in the repetition of events from the deep past (Amazons: Lys. 2.4–6; Pl. Menex. 239b3–5; Dem. 60.8; Seven against Thebes: Lys. 2.7–10; Pl. Menex. 239b5; Dem. 60.8; Heracleidae: Lys. 2.11–16; Pl. Menex. 239b5–6; Dem. 60.8), the stress on the fact that the Athenians fought alone at Marathon (Lys. 2.23; Pl. Menex. 240c4–d1; Dem. 60.10–11) and the repetition of rhetorical commonplaces, for which see Ziolkowski (n. 48), 132–7, 161–3.

110 Lys. 2.2. For a modern example of these processes, see Olick (n. 17), 60–83.

111 Lys. 2.54; Pl. Menex. 246a5–b2; Dem. 60.6; Hyp. Epit. 4.

112 Lys. 2.61–6; Pl. Menex. 243d7–244b3.

113 Above, n. 110; see also Loraux (n. 4), 240–1.

114 Pl. Menex. 234b4–10; the men named are Archinus and Dion. Since Thucydides describes the orator as chosen by the city and Demosthenes says that he was elected by the dêmos, it seems likely that the boulê made a recommendation to the assembly which then voted on it; Thuc. 2.34.6; Dem. 18.285, 287; Walters, K.R., ‘Rhetoric as ritual: the semiotics of the Attic funeral oration’, Florilegium 2 (1980), 1–27, at 1.Google Scholar

115 Dem. 18.285.

116 Frangeskou (n. 75), 329–30, 335; Bosworth (n. 9), 5–6; Sicking (n. 9), 406–7.

117 Lys. 2.68–9, but note that the text at the end of 2.68 does not quite make sense as transmitted; Todd (n. 2), 267–8. Grethlein identifies the context as a ‘failed expedition in support of the Corinthians’; Grethlein (n. 8), 113.

118 The end of the Peloponnesian War presented no problems: both Lysias and Plato contrive to present it as an Athenian victory; Thomas (n. 14), 230–1; Shear (n. 19), 304. So malleable is memory!

119 I use here Olick's terms, for which see Olick (n. 17), 92–104.

120 Chariot: Hdt. 5.77.3–4; Paus. 1.28.2; IG I3 501; cf. POxy. 2535.7–19. Corporate group: Shear, J.L., ‘Cultural change, space and the politics of commemoration in Athens’, in Osborne, R. (ed.), Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution: Art, Literature, Philosophy and Politics 430–380 bc (Cambridge, 2007), 91–115, at 105–6Google Scholar; cf. Aeschin. 3.183, 185–6. That the chariot was considered an important monument is shown by the dedication in the middle of the fifth century of a replacement for the original destroyed by the Persians.

121 Aeschin. 3.183–5; the texts were also quoted with slight variations by Plut. Cim. 7.4–8.1.

122 Hyp. Epit. 35; Plut. Per. 28.7; Plut. Mor. 350E; cf. Dem. 60.10; Bosworth (n. 9), 3–4.

123 Paus. 1.15.1–3. Since the date of the battle of Oenoe remains controversial, so also is the date of the painting; see with further references: Taylor, J.G., ‘Oinoe and the Painted Stoa: ancient and modern misunderstandings?’, AJPh 119 (1998), 223–43Google Scholar; Sommerstein, A.H., ‘Argive Oinoe, Athenian epikouroi and the Stoa Poikile’, in Keay, S. and Moser, S. (edd.), Greek Art in View: Essays in Honour of Brian Sparkes (Oxford, 2004), 138–47Google Scholar; Stansbury-O'Donnell, M.D., ‘The painting program in the Stoa Poikile’, in Barringer, J.M. and Hurwit, J.M. (edd.), Periklean Athens and its Legacy: Problems and Perspectives (Austin, 2005), 73–87, at 74–81Google Scholar; D. Castriota, ‘Feminizing the barbarian and barbarizing the feminine: Amazons, Trojans and Persians in the Stoa Poikile’, ibid. 89–102, at 90–2. Scholars wishing to date the battle, and therefore the painting, after the middle of the fifth century need to explain the arrangement of the four paintings together as an interlocking set of pendant pairs.

124 Amazons: Lys. 2.4–6; Pl. Menex. 239b3–5; Dem. 60.8. Marathon: Lys. 2.20–6; Pl. Menex. 240c2–e6; Dem. 60.10–11; Hyp. Epit. 37–8.

125 Paus. 1.15.4; IG I3 522. Sphacteria: Pl. Menex. 242c5–d8.

126 IG I3 522; Shear (n. 120), 106.

127 For the problems of interpreting these friezes, see O. Palagia, ‘Interpretations of two Athenian friezes: the temple on the Ilisos and the temple of Athena Nike’, in Barringer and Hurwit (n. 123), 177–92, at 184–9. As her discussion makes clear, the west frieze probably showed a historical battle certainly between Greeks, while the north frieze most likely showed a battle from the deep or mythical past. On the north frieze, see now Schultz, P., ‘The north frieze of the temple of Athena Nike’, in Palagia, O. (ed.), Art in Athens during the Peloponnesian War (Cambridge, 2009), 128–67.Google Scholar

128 Persians: Castriota, D., Myth, Ethos, and Actuality: Official Art in Fifth-Century b.c. Athens (Madison, WI, 1992), 134–229Google Scholar; past and present: J.L. Shear, ‘Polis and Panathenaia: the history and development of Athena's festival’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2001), 738–9, 760–1, 766–7. Of the battles in the epitaphioi, the Amazonomachy appeared on the west metopes and the sack of Troy on the north metopes.

129 Cf. Herodotus' rendition of the Athenians' speech before the battle of Plataea; Hdt. 9.27.1–6; cf. T. Hölscher, ‘Image and political identity: the case of Athens’, in Boedeker and Raaflaub (n. 14), 153–83, at 174.

130 Lys. 2.21–6; Pl. Menex. 240c2–e6; Dem. 60.10–11; cf. Hyp. Epit. 37–8; Loraux (n. 4), 157–8; Walters (n. 14) 206; Thomas (n. 14), 221–2.

131 Paus. 1.15.3; cf. [Dem.] 59.94; Walters (n. 14), 207.

132 Lys. 2.61–6; Pl. Menex. 243d7–244b3; Shear (n. 19), 303–5.

133 Shear (n. 19), 294–301, 306.

134 Aeschin. 3.187–91 with 183–6; Shear (n. 19), 305. The monument is partially preserved by SEG XXVIII 45. The two other memorials which Aeschines discusses here are the Eion herms and the Marathon painting in the Stoa Poikile.

135 Changes in commemoration: Shear (n. 120), 107–13.

136 Isoc. 8.82; Aeschin. 3.154; Lys. fr. LXIV.129 lines 30–8 (Carey); Goldhill, S., ‘The Great Dionysia and civic ideology’, in Winkler, J.J. and Zeitlin, F.I. (edd.), Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in Its Social Context (Princeton, 1990), 97–129, at 105–14Google Scholar; id., ‘Civic ideology and the problem of difference: the politics of Aeschylean tragedy, once again’, JHS 120 (2000), 34–56, at 46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shear (n. 19), 149–50, 153, 291–2. This ritual was clearly a thing of the past when Isocrates referred to it in 355 in his speech on the peace. It is mentioned in Menexenus and thus the ceremony was still being performed in the years after the King's Peace in 387, the period to which the dialogue is to be dated; Pl. Menex. 249a6–b1.

137 Pl. Menex. 249a6–b1. The thoughts, but not the vocabulary, are close to the herald's announcement as reported by Aeschin. 3.154.

138 Aeschin. 3.154; cf. Lys. fr. LXIV.129 lines 30–8 (Carey). On the term andres agathoi, see Loraux (n. 4), 98–101, 103–6.

139 Shear (n. 19), 149–50.

140 Thuc. 2.46.1. He does not, however, mention the announcement specifically.

141 [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 58.1; Xen. Hell. 3.2.12; Plut. Mor. 349E, 862A, B–C; Parker (n. 2, 2005), 461–2.

142 Xen. Hell. 2.4.39; Lys. 13.80–1; Plut. Mor. 349F; Shear (n. 19), 287–90.

143 Plut. Mor. 349F; Phoc. 6.7. In the Moralia, Plutarch's use of the present tense for the verb suggests that this ritual was a long-standing one, but, in his life of Phocion, the libation is connected specifically with Chabrias, as if it did not continue after his death. At some point, but perhaps not until after the Classical period, the Mounichia on 16 Mounichion became associated with the battle of Salamis; Plut. Mor. 349F; Parker (n. 2, 1996), 187; Parker (n. 2, 2005), 231 n. 59, 475–6. On the Athenians' sacrifices for military victories, see also Pritchett, W.K., The Greek State at War 3: Religion (Berkeley, 1979), 171–83.Google Scholar

144 e.g. IG I3 82; RO 73, 81.

145 Regrettably, such complexity is not accommodated in Assmann's more recent formulation of types of memory and their dynamics; Assmann (n. 17), 1–30. Thus, while he now admits collective memory as a valid category, its task ‘above all, is to transmit a collective identity’; Assmann (n. 17), 6–7. As the funeral orations demonstrate clearly, the roles of collective memory are considerably more complex.