64 Jerome H. Neyrey In his funeral oration, Lysias (459-380 BCE) follows a convention whereby people were praised in terms of geography, generation and gender (12). When celebrating Athens as the polis of the deceased, he implies that the dead whom he eulogizes share its virtues. His encomium for the fallen, then, is based on praise of their geographical mother, Athens, and the generational ancestors who ennobled the city. It was natural to our ancestors ... to fight the battles of justice, for the very beginning of their life was just.... They were the first and only (prwtoi kai; movnoi) people in that time to drive out the ruling classes ... ' and establish a democracy (Funeral Oration 17-18, emphasis added). Ancestors of these dead fought for Athens’ freedom, just as their descendants now have; but these recently fallen are uniquely honorable: they were the first and only to fight (Funeral Oration 23) in these circumstances. No Greeks elsewhere (oujdeiv") would dare to attempt the deliverance of others. Nowhere else in Greece could one find a government such as Athens had; no other peoples enjoyed such freedom; no one else lived in a democracy. About the fallen, Lysias continued, “it was one thing for them to share their death with many, but prowess with a few” (Funeral Oration 24). Thus men of Athens past and present are honored as the “first and only” or “one of a few”. Thucydides (455-400) praises Athens as the geographical source of nobility of those commemorated in his funeral oration (2.35). In praising those who fell in the Peloponnesian War, he amplifies their greatness by extolling that of Athens, who is the mother of heroes because she is a uniquely noble city: Athenians alone regard the man who takes no part in public affairs, not as one who minds his own business, but as good for nothing (2.40.2). He continues, we alone confer benefits without fear of consequences, not upon a calculation of the advantage we shall gain, but with confidence in the spirit of liberality which activates us” (2.40.5). And finally, he states: For Athens alone (movnh) among her contemporaries ... is superior (kreisswn) to the report of her, and she alone (monh) neither affords v v to the enemy who comes against her cause for irritation at the (12) See B.J. MALINA – J.H. NEYREY, Portraits of Paul. An Archeology of Ancient Personality (Louisville, KY 1996) 3-4, 113-125; see also NEYREY, Honor and Shame in the Gospel of Matthew, 78-80 and 94-97.