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Pericles's Funeral Oration
"Pericles's Funeral Oration" is a famous speech from Thucydides's ''History of the Peloponnesian War''. The speech was supposed to have been delivered by Pericles, an eminent Athenian politician, at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War (BC 431–404) as a part of the annual public funeral for the war dead. Background It was an established Athenian practice by the late BC 5th century to hold a public funeral in honour of all those who had died in war. The remains of the dead were left in a tent for three days so that offerings could be made. Then a funeral procession was held, with ten cypress coffins carrying the remains, one for each of the Athenian tribes, and another left symbolically empty for the missing or those whose remains were unable to be recovered. Finally they were buried at a public grave (at Kerameikos). The last part of the ceremony was a speech delivered by a prominent Athenian citizen chosen by the state. Several funeral orations from classical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aspasia
Aspasia (; ; after 428 BC) was a ''metic'' woman in Classical Athens. Born in Miletus, she moved to Athens and began a relationship with the statesman Pericles, with whom she had a son named Pericles the Younger. According to the traditional historical narrative, she worked as a courtesan and was tried for ''asebeia'' (impiety), though modern scholars have questioned the factual basis for either of these claims, which both derive from ancient comedy. Though Aspasia is one of the best-attested women from the Greco-Roman world, and the most important woman in the history of fifth-century Athens, almost nothing is certain about her life. Aspasia was portrayed in Old Comedy as a Prostitution, prostitute and madam, and in ancient philosophy as a teacher and rhetorician. She has continued to be a subject of both visual and literary artists until the present. From the twentieth century, she has been portrayed as both a sexualised and sexually liberated woman, and as a feminist role ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hyperbaton
Hyperbaton , in its original meaning, is a figure of speech in which a phrase is made discontinuous by the insertion of other words.Andrew M. Devine, Laurence D. Stephens, ''Latin Word Order: Structured Meaning and Information'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 524. In modern usage, the term is also used more generally for figures of speech that transpose sentences' natural word order, which is also called anastrophe. Etymology The word is borrowed from the Greek ''hyperbaton'' (), meaning "stepping over", which is derived from ''hyper'' ("over") and ''bainein'' ("to step"), with the ''-tos'' verbal adjective suffix. The idea is that to understand the phrase, the reader has to "step over" the words inserted in between. Classical usage The separation of connected words for emphasis or effect is possible to a much greater degree in highly inflection, inflected languages, whose sentence meaning does not depend closely on word order. In Latin and Ancient Greek, the effect o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anastrophe
Anastrophe (from the , ''anastrophē'', "a turning back or about") is a figure of speech in which the normal word order of the subject, the verb, and the object is changed. Anastrophe is a hyponym of the antimetabole, where anastrophe only transposes one word in a sentence. For example, subject–verb–object ("I like potatoes") might be changed to object–subject–verb ("potatoes I like"). Examples Because English has a settled natural word order, anastrophe emphasizes the displaced word or phrase. For example, the name of the City Beautiful urbanist movement emphasises "beautiful". Similarly, in "This is the forest primeval", from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's '' Evangeline'', the emphasis is on "primeval". If the emphasis that comes from anastrophe is not an issue, the synonym ''inversion'' is perfectly suitable. Anastrophe is common in Ancient Greek and Latin poetry, such as in the first line of the ''Aeneid'': :''Arma virumque cano, Troiæ qui primus ab oris'' ::("I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asyndeton
Asyndeton (, ; from the , sometimes called asyndetism) is a literary scheme in which one or several grammatical conjunction, conjunctions are deliberately omitted from a series of related clauses. Examples include ''veni, vidi, vici'' and its English translation "I came, I saw, I conquered". Its use can have the effect of speeding up the rhythm of a passage and making a single idea more memorable. Asyndeton may be contrasted with syndeton (syndetic coordination) and polysyndeton, which describe the use of one or multiple coordinating conjunctions, respectively. More generally, in grammar, an asyndetic coordination is a type of coordination (linguistics), coordination in which no coordinating conjunction is present between the conjuncts. ''Quickly, resolutely, he strode into the bank.'' No coordinator is present here, but the conjoins are still coordinated as adverbs applying to the same verb ("strode"). A syndetically coordinated rephrase of the sentence might be "Quickly and res ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anacoluthon
An anacoluthon (; from the Greek , from 'not', and 'following') is an unexpected discontinuity in the expression of ideas within a sentence, leading to a form of words in which there is logical or grammatical incoherence of thought. Anacolutha are often sentences interrupted midway, where there is a change in the syntactical structure of the sentence and of intended meaning following the interruption. As rhetorical or literary device, anacoluthon may be used to demonstrate emotion or the natural patterns of spoken discourse. An example is the Italian proverb "The good stuff – think about it." This proverb urges people to make the best choice. When anacoluthon occurs unintentionally, it is considered to be an error in sentence structure and may result in incoherent nonsense. However, it can be used intentionally as a rhetorical technique to challenge the reader to think more deeply, or in stream-of-consciousness literature to represent the disjointed nature of associativ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antithesis
Antithesis (: antitheses; Greek for "setting opposite", from "against" and "placing") is used in writing or speech either as a proposition that contrasts with or reverses some previously mentioned proposition, or when two opposites are introduced together for contrasting effect. Antithesis can be defined as "a figure of speech involving a seeming contradiction of ideas, words, clauses, or sentences within a balanced grammatical structure. Parallelism of expression serves to emphasize opposition of ideas". An antithesis must always contain two ideas within one statement. The ideas may not be structurally opposite, but they serve to be functionally opposite when comparing two ideas for emphasis. According to Aristotle, the use of an antithesis makes the audience better understand the point the speaker is trying to make. Further explained, the comparison of two situations or ideas makes choosing the correct one simpler. Aristotle states that antithesis in rhetoric is similar to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhetorical Devices
In rhetoric, a rhetorical device, persuasive device, or stylistic device is a technique that an author or speaker uses to convey to the listener or reader a meaning with the goal of persuading them towards considering a topic from a perspective, using language designed to encourage or provoke an emotional display of a given perspective or action. They seek to make a position or argument more compelling than it would otherwise be. Sonic devices Sonic devices depend on sound. Sonic rhetoric is used as a clearer or swifter way of communicating content in an understandable way. Sonic rhetoric delivers messages to the reader or listener by prompting a certain reaction through auditory perception. Alliteration Alliteration is the repetition of the sound of an initial consonant or consonant cluster in subsequent syllables. Assonance Assonance is the repetition of similar vowel sounds across neighbouring words. Consonance Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classical Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic or Homeric period (), and the Classical period (). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period (), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek, which is regarded as a separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek, and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Equal Justice Under Law
Equal justice under law is a phrase engraved on the West Pediment, above the front entrance of the United States Supreme Court building in Washington D.C. It is also a societal ideal that has influenced the American legal system. The phrase was proposed by the building's architects, and then approved by judges of the Court in 1932. It is based upon Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence, and has historical antecedents dating back to ancient Greece. Proposed by architects and approved by justices This phrase was suggested in 1932 by the architectural firm that designed the building. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and Justice Willis Van Devanter subsequently approved this inscription, as did the United States Supreme Court Building Commission which Hughes chaired (and on which Van Devanter served). The architectural firm that proposed the phrase was headed by Cass Gilbert, though Gilbert himself was much more interested in design and arrangement, than in meaning. Thus, acco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and communities. Prior to the Roman period, most of these regions were officially unified only once under the Kingdom of Macedon from 338 to 323 BC. In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period. Three centuries after the decline of Mycenaean Greece during the Bronze Age collapse, Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and the colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the age of Classical Greece, from the Greco-Persian Wars to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, and which included the Golden Age of Athens and the Peloponnesian War. The u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
