Moreover, the conclusion of the ceremony was a speech delivered by a top Athenian citizen. Even though, Thucydides records the speech from Pericles in first person, there can be some uncertainty that he wrote every single thing Pericles. Thucydides himself says that the speeches are not exact, but are meant to symbolize the key thoughts of what was said. Pericles was perhaps one of the most important and powerful Greek statesman, speaker and general during the Peloponnesian war. Pericles' funeral oration comes from Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, published in 431 BC. In the beginning of Pericles’s speech, he starts by praising the custom of the funeral for the dead, by honoring the ancestors and the achievement of the empire.
