Compare Pericles' speech with excerpts from President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which, too, was a funeral oration for all those who died in the American Civil War:

          Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
          Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure .... We are met on a great battlefield of that war.  We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live ....
          But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot hallow this ground.  The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract .... It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us ... that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

          President John F. Kennedy, in these excerpts of his Inaugural Address (a little over 15 years after the end of World War II), echoed the classical spirit of freedom for the individual in these words:

.... Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world ....
          Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty ....
          And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country ....

QUESTIONS:

1. What were the major themes in the speeches of Pericles, Lincoln, and Kennedy ?
2. What were the ideals/values of the societies from which these men came that were expressed in these excerpts?
3. Were these ideals/values just that--ideals and values--or where they reality?  Explain your position.