thucydides gives pericles very little to say in his funeral oration about the political institutions of Athenian democracy. This is no doubt in keeping with his principle of having the speakers in his history τά δέοντα εìπεĩν that is, speak those things that were suitable for the occasion. For we know that the unwritten rules of the genre required the speaker to cover a good many topics, including the glorious deeds of the ancestors, the nobility of the Athenian character, the bravery of those who fell in battle, and consolation for their grieving families. Yet though the rules of the genre did not permit a full-scale discussion of political institutions, the few sentences devoted to the topic in Pericles' Funeral Oration express an entire philosophy of government. What the florid Isocrates would have taken several pages to explain, the brilliantly concise Thucydides is able to compress into a few carefully worded phrases.