The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City

"This remains my favourite book in the field. The Invention of Athens really got me interested in this time period and in the question, ‘How were the Athenians just so capable of convincing not only other people who lived in their own time, but even people in later generations, that their city was so profoundly special?’ I, personally, am very sceptical of this idea that there was something in the water that made them exceptionally smart. But they were extremely canny at creating this propaganda about their city. In the book, Nicole Loraux looks at the institution of the Athenian funeral oration. We catch a glimpse of it in Thucydides Book II, with Pericles’s funeral oration, where he lays out this vision of the ideal city. That was a regular occurrence in Athens after the end of the Persian Wars: whenever there had been a major campaign or big battle, the city would gather and select someone whom they esteemed very greatly to deliver an oration over the dead. It was a time for the city to articulate who it felt that it was, to give a version of its own history, and to lay out this map of Athenian exceptionalism. “ The Invention of Athens really got me interested in this time period and in the question, ‘How were the Athenians just so capable of convincing not only other people who lived in their own time, but even people in later generations, that their city was so profoundly special?’” And these orations became profoundly influential and have a lot of very interesting points of contact with other major Athenian cultural institutions—everything from the buildings and the monuments, and what was depicted on them. We see those myths mentioned in the funeral orations. There were also a lot of connections between the funeral orations and tragedy. So what Loraux does in this book is gives us a really lyrical insight into the way that the Athenians crafted this fantasy about themselves and the city through these funeral orations. I do. I know that people today are interested in these particular moments and contexts that produce people of great genius, but what the Athenians really excelled at was the spin. Which in itself is productive, because if they can convince other people that the city is so fantastic, that will then draw people to it. It’s a canny strategy."