Funeral Oration

Hypereides lived during the time of Alexander the Great’s conquer of much of the known world, including Greece, and nobody at the time could speak of it as well as Hypereides could. 

Little is known about his Hypereides’ early life, but he became one of Athens’ best orators and speech writers, which placed him in the middle of important events and made him an authority. Hyperiedes spoke out against Macedonian rulers beginning with Phillip II, Alexander’s father. After Alexander died, Hypereides spoke in favor of war against the Macedonians, and his speeches are credited with the outbreak of the Lamian War in 323 B.C. 

When the Greeks lost their bid for independence, the Macedonians and their supporters condemned Hypereides to death. In 1856 a considerable portion of a eulogy for Leosthenes and his comrades who had fallen in the Lamian war was found, forming the Funeral Oration. It remains Ancient Greece’s best surviving example of a eulogy.