Pericles' Funeral Oration for the Athenians who had died in the Samian War, a campaign in the First Peloponnesian War, is one of the greatest speeches recorded.

It was an Athenian tradition to eulogise their war dead, and Pericles, the great democratic leader of Athens in the war against Sparta, speaks with unparalleled eloquence of the greatness and glory of Athens.

This is an excerpt from Thucydides' The History of the Peloponnesian War, approximately 430 BC.