Confronting Consumption

How does the funeral oration relate to democracy in ancient Greece? How did the deathof an individual citizen-soldier become the occasion to praise the city of Athens? In The Inventionof Athens, Nicole Loraux traces the different rhetoric, politics, and ideology of funeralorations--epitaphioi--from Thucidydes, Gorgias, Lysias, and Demosthenes to Plato. Arguing that theceremony of public burial began circa 508-460 BCE, Loraux demonstrates that the institution of thefuneral oration developed under Athenian democracy. A secular, not a religious phenomenon, aliterary genre with fixed rhetoric effects, the funeral oration was inextricably linked to theepainos--praise of the city--rather than to a ritualized lament for the dead as is commonly assumed.Above all, the funeral oration celebrated the city of Athens and the Athenian citizen.Lorauxinterprets the speeches from literary, anthropological, and political perspectives. She explains howthese acts of secular speech invented an image of Athens often at odds with the presumed ideals ofdemocracy. To die in battle for the city was presented as an act of civic choice--the "fine" deaththat defined the citizen-soldier's noble, aristocratic ethos. At the same time, the funeral orationcultivated an image of democracy at a time when there was, for example, no formal theory of arespect for law and liberty, the supremacy of the collective and public over the individual and theprivate, or freedom of speech.This new edition of The Invention of Athens includes significantrevisions made by Nicole Loraux in 1993. Her aim in editing the original text was to render thisgroundbreaking work accessible to nonspecialists. Loraux's introduction to this revised volume, aswell as important revisions to the 1986 English translation, make this publication an importantaddition to scholarship in the humanities and the social sciences.