In 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered what is largely revered as the most famous speech in US History, The Gettysburg Address.
“Four score 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…”
In only 271 words, it conveyed so much. Mercifully short by 1863 standards. But he was channeling a voice from 2300 years ago, inspired by the much-longer Pericles’ Funeral Oration, given in 431 B.C.
Pericles, the head General and “First Citizen” of Athens during the Peloponnesian War, faced a similar moment. A long, brutal Greek civil war between the Athenian and Spartan alliances that lasted almost three decades.
After a particularly dreadful battle that claimed a lot of Athenian lives, they had a mass-funeral service for their honored dead. (Factoid: As a sign of respect to all those who had fought and died for Athens, everyone was buried in the same mass grave regardless of their rank. Private burials were forbidden, everyone was covered in the same dirt). There, Pericles gave a 2800 word masterpiece that would lay the foundation for Lincoln’s address millennia later.
The gist of it was that while it’s tragic so many lives were lost, we can take comfort in the fact that they died fighting not just for their own personal interests, but for an idea: for the idea of Athenian democracy.
This is a bit like how the Gettysburg Address ends, really.
“…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – 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, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
From the Athenian Agora to the fields of Gettysburg, both men understood a fundamental truth: any social group, be it a business, a community or a civilization, is only as great as the ideas that they’re built upon.
The ideas that people are willing to dedicate their lives to. The ideas that refuse to die.
What are yours?
