Student Essay on Pericles' Funeral Oration

This essay is a critique of the funeral oration that the Athenian leader Pericles' once made.

Success often leads to overconfidence and an artificial blindness that prohibits people from realizing the threats they face and how those threats will affect what will happen in their future. In the case of Pericles, a great Athenian man at the helm of one of the greatest Democratic societies of all time, overconfidence and arrogance led to the eventual demise of the Empire he helped to build. During the Peloponnesian War, as the dead bodies began to pile up and defeat for the Athenians became more and more likely, Pericles made a speech, known as the Funeral Oration that was designed to gain support and increase moral in remaining troops. He described Athens as a wonderful place to live, for everyone, and portrayed its citizens as tolerant, courageous and rightful. What Pericles' failed to mention was.....