When Pericles Spoke

To the Editors:

In his review of Lincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills [NYR, July 16], James M. McPherson makes an apt comparison between Lincoln’s speech and the Funeral Oration of Pericles as reported by Thucycides. But I noticed, and I suppose many other readers noticed, that he assigns the Periclean speech to 531 BC, a whole century too early.

We can at least be thankful that no classical author ever claimed that Pericles jotted down his notes for the Funeral Oration on the verso of a used sheet of papyrus.

Gordon M. Messing
Emeritus Professor of Classics and Linguistics
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York