Classics Research Seminar - Dr David M. Pritchard

The Athenian Funeral Oration after Nicole Loraux

You are cordially invited to the next Classics Research Seminar taking place on Wednesday 28 October, 4pm, ARMB 2.50

Dr David M. Pritchard, University of Queensland/Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh, will be speaking about The Athenian Funeral Oration after Nicole Loraux:

In classical Athens, a funeral speech was delivered for dead combatants almost every year, the most famous being that by Pericles in 430 BC. In 1981, Nicole Loraux – the great French ancient historian – transformed our understanding of this genre. Her The Invention of Athens showed how the funeral oration reminded the Athenians who they were as a people. Loraux demonstrated how each speech helped them to maintain the same self-identity for two centuries. But The Invention of Athens was far from complete. I have directed a large project in France to complete systematically The Invention of Athens. Cambridge University Press has recently published the 19 chapters coming from our project. The Athenian Funeral Oration: After Nicole Loraux answers the important questions about the numerous surviving funeral speeches that Loraux ignored. It also undertakes a comparison of the funeral oration with other genres that is missing in her famous book. What emerges is a speech that had a much greater political impact than Loraux ever thought. This paper explores how our new volume puts the study of war in Athenian culture on a completely new footing.