The Emancipator and the Ruler of Athens One in National Ideals--Glories of Golden Age of Greece Mirrored in Funeral Oration of 461 B.C.--Are Reborn in Master Intellect of 1863 A.D. and Perfectly Expressed in Famous Gettysburg Address.

By Peter S. Lambros,

Editor of the Greek Star

Although my memory still harks back to the Mediterransan, whose warm sun first shone upon me, I have been an American among Americans for thirty-three years, without the least desire to leave American soil.

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I am often reminded that Athens stands for civilization, Sparta for law and order, the Parthenon for art.

These are matters of history. However, for the sublimest institutions of living men I turn to Columbia.

In this land of promise, where millions of the Old World's oppressed have found home, work, and sanctuary, I know of nothing that has impressed me so much as the Statue of Liberty, the symbol of freedom and justice, Old Glory, the emblem of liberty and protection, and Abraham Lincoln, who marches on in memory as the embodiment of the master principles of our government.

The anniversary of Lincoln's birth, recurring again to-morrow, recalls to us our patriotic duty to pay tribute to the great Emancipator, to share in the privilege of doing homage to his ideals and to glory in the thought that we are heirs to his benign accomplishment.

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The Gettysburg address carries my memory back to ancient Greece. Lincoln's address and Pericles's funeral oration take rank as the world's most notable epitaphs. There is this difference! many of those who have read Pericles' funeral oration do not recall it, but as years roll by, and great events grow dim on history's pages, the Gettysburg address grows only the brighter in the hearts of Americans who idolize the great immortal.

His Precepts.

Duty to country, Americanism, devotion to religion, love for mankind--all are expressed in the words of Lincoln, whose principles of freedom have been carried in triumph to the battle-fields of the new Thermopylae of Europe by the American heroes of the great war.

The Gettysburg oration baffles criticism. It does more than that, for not America nor England nor the whole has produced an epitaph to equal it in thought, sympathy, language or literary merit.

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That speech alone reveals Lincoln as the great President, the lover of humanity, the champion of liberty and justice.

Lincoln, in short, is distinguished as the philosopher of the nineteenth century by this one utterance. Translated into all the languages of the world, it is universally known.

You may say that it was an address, or funeral oration, It was however, some-thing greater than that. It was a masterpiece of eloquence that no man in the past had ever equalled.

The historical records of the world reveal only one funeral oration, pronounced under similar conditions, worthy of comparison with this.

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It was delivered in Athens two thousand years ago by Pericles.

Both men were noted not only for their eloquence but also for their deeds, their devotion to democratic principles, and their intellectual power.

Pericles was the first democratic ruler of Athens and governed it in the most flourishing period of Greek oratory, art, and civilization. His funeral oration remains an historic tribute to freedom, liberty, and democracy.

Gloriesof Nations

Athens under the government of Pericles was that which America is to-day. We acknowledge this when we refer, for example, to Chicago as the new Athens of America, doing homage to the glorious past of Athens as it bore fruit in art, literature, and civilization during the golden era of Pericles.

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The Parthenon, built under his administration, remains the principal monument of his age.

In comparing Pericles' oration with that of Lincoln I mean to say that there was a striking similarity between the two addresses in circumstances and in setting.

Pericles' oration represents the "glory that was Greece," Lincoln's the glory that is America.

Never before in history had there been such progress in civilization as in the golden century of Athens. Pericles' funeral oration stands as an immortal monument to its democracy.

When Pericles entered public life, he found in the noblest democracy the noblest thought.

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In one of his addresses he said, "We enjoy a form of government that is called demou kratos, democracy. It is not for the benefit of the few but for the benefit of the many. All should enjoy equality in the eyes of the law."

In another address he said, "We are all democrats or imperialists, or neither, or both, but in regard to the laws wemust all enjoy equality."

No other man in the history of the world has given so clear a definition of democracy except Lincoln, who said, "Government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."

We may safely say that Pericles was the originator of democracy, Lincoln its perfecter.

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Further comparison of the great oration of 461 B. C. with that of 1863 reveals other remarkable similarities. These great addresses delivered by these two great men were composed for the same purpose,--to pay tribute to the heroic dead and to inspire democracy. Pericles' oration stands as democracy's gospel. Pericles accomplished the absolute democratisation of Athens, Lincoln the perfect democratization of America.

It was Pericles who established the first democratic constitution in the world, demonstrating the value of citizenship and the equality of mankind in rights and in the courts and requiring that the cases of the poor should be tried as well as those of the rich.

Read Pericles' oration and Lincoln's address, and you will not find a word of one repeated in the other.

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You will find, however, what I might call an identity of philosophy, for the thought and the occasion were the same in both. The similarity is not in phraseology, it is rather in the conditions which prevailed and in the ideals which inspired both Pericles and Lincoln.

Tribute to Heroes

Pericles delivered his famous oration over the graves of the Greek heroes who gave their lives in the civil war between the North and the South of Greece--between Athens and Sparta.

Greek fought against Greek, brother against brother, as Americans fought against Americans in our own Civil War, to preserve the democratic ideals of Athens.

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In the American South there were slaves; in Sparta there were Helots. The Helots were the property of their masters. They were bound to serve and to bear arms for their masters' profection.

They were not admitted to the full dignity of citizenship. They rose against their masters, but they were defeated time and time again.

It was the ambition of Pericles to abolish slavery and oligarchy and to establish a democratic government in Greece.

Lincoln's dream was to abolish slavery and to preserve the Union. Pericles made Athens the center of ancient civilization; Lincoln made America the new Athens of the world, the center of democratic thought and action.

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Lincoln, the great American, believed that all men were born equal. Pericles said, "As regards the laws of Athens, all enjoy equality."

The simplicity of the civilization of ancient Greece and of modern America may be inferred from the fact that both countries endured civil wars to establish perfect democracy. Both nations had the same attachment to democratic principles, the same love of liberty, the same sympathy for the oppressed, the same enthusiasm for the brave men who fought for the supremacy of democracy.

The object of Pericles in his funeral oration was not only to pay tribute to the dead but also to instill patriotism in the hearts of the citizens.

It was not actually a funeral oration, for the soldiers had been buried long before he delivered his address.

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It was rather a memorial address, involving the exhibition of the bones of the dead Warriors, that their relatives might participate and have the opportunity to witness their remains, so paying tribute to their memory; and further, that they might make offering to the gods of Greece and pray that they would not forget to punish the enemy. After being exhibited for three days the remains of the dead heroes were placed in cypress coffins and carried back to the public cemetery.

Lincoln's oration, in the National Park at Gettysburg, dedicated a national cemetery.

It was a funeral oration over the graves of 3,629 American heroes who died in the Civil War, nearly half of them unidentified.

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Gettysburg had been selected for the cemetery because the battle there was one of the most important in the Civil War; indeed, it was the turning-point in the long struggle for the preservation of the Union.

Our analysis of Pericles' oration and of Lincoln's reveals a paychological under-current which connects these two great men in principles, in eloquence, and in democratic traditions, though two thousand years lay between them.

Pericles began his oration thus; "I will begin then with our ancestors. Our fathers inherited a country with everything, so as to be self-sufficient both for peace and for war."

"Our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty," said Lincoln.

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"The country was brought to a test by the Peloponnesian War, and it must prove superior to its fame," Pericles spoke.

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether a nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure," said Lincoln.

"It was for such a country that these dead heroes nobly resolved to fight and fell fighting for freedom," was Pericles' tribute.

"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," was Lincoln's.

When Pericles'referred to the bravery of the dead, he said, "When men have shown themselves brave by deeds, they should be honored also by deeds," which is similar to Lincoln's remark, "The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our power to add or to detract."

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Pericles, continuing, stated, "I shall not offer condolence so much as consolation. Happy are the men who have died as they have for freedom, the most glorious death,--to whom life has been so justly measured that they were both happy in their life and happy in their death."

Lincoln's Gettysburg address reads as follows: "From these honored dead let us take increased devotion for that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotien."

Pericles, realizing the most importance of the historical event, said, "The bravery of great heroes is attended with such renown that they never grow old." Lincoln said, "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."

Aside from these addresses both men reveal their philosophical similarity in other speeches.

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Lincoln said, " I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true." Pericles said, "Where the greatest prizes are accorded to virtue, there also the most virtuous men are to be found among the citizens."

Neither Lincoln nor Pericles was a soldier; Pericles did not wear the uniform of Themistocles, nor did Lincoln carry the sword of Washington. Each fought in spirity however, in the councils of state, bearing the responsibility of a great war each endured disappointment and sorrow; each was an apostle of democracy.

Great as was Pericles in his age, however, immortal as were the precepts which he uttered, a study of his thought has been and probably will continue to be confined largely to the scholar.

To the majority of us modern Americans he remains the misty and almost mythical embodiment of great ideals.

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Lincoln, on the other hand, lives as clearly in our memory as did his person in the love of his associates. His life remains the leading spirit and the guiding star of American traditions.