The Athenian Funeral Oration: 40 Years after Nicole Loraux

In ancient democratic Athens a funeral oration was delivered annually in honour of the war dead. For the Athenian people it was a vitally important speech, because it reminded them who they were as a democratic society and why they continued to wage back-to-back wars in which their sons died in appalling numbers. The Athenian Funeral Oration Project represents the most-comprehensive study of this genre in almost 40 years. It brings together an international group of scholars from the French-, German- and English-speaking worlds.