Epitaphios logos ovvero il discorso funebre ateniese: nostalgia di un passato immaginario

The funeral oration (epitaphios logos) is a peculiar literary genre within the epideictic oratory. Since Pericles’ famous speech in the second book of the Histories by Thucydides, all the epitaphs that we have (really pronounced or completely literary) show, among various common features, a strong distortion of both mythology and historic events. Instead of evoking the pain for the dead (completely dehumanized), these works are more likely propaganda documents, eulogies for the city. Therefore the epitaphioi logoi represent the consciously fictitious reconstruction of a past that is more or less distant in time. At the same time they also display a nostalgic look focused on an irrevocable past that should however be recovered. The Menesseno, attributed to Platon, will unmask these fictions, their ambiguities and their rhetoric nonsense.