Good Citizenship: Pericles and Roosevelt Respond to Why and How Democracy Should Be Defended

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Pericles' Funeral Oration as recorded by Thucydides in the History of the Peloponnesian War and Theodore Roosevelt's Citizenship in a Republic were delivered in vastly different contexts, but have some similarities. Pericles gave his eulogy for the Athenian war-dead at a public funeral that took place around 430 BC, at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War, while Roosevelt gave his speech before a packed auditorium on April 23rd, 1910, by invitation of the University of Paris. It is interesting to read and analyze these two speeches in light of each other because both were offered by a leader of a democratic government and both contain reflections on the topic of citizenship. To introduce this topic, both Pericles and Roosevelt challenge the preconceptions and sensibilities of their audience and, to support the claims they make, both use the idea of the common man as a unifying motif as well as maxims, enthymemes, and examples from history. Careful analysis of these two speeches reveals that while Pericles argues why democracy should be defended and Roosevelt speaks to h...

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