Athenians relished festival displays and executed them with a solemnity displayed in the declamation of appropriate oratorical speeches. With the same solemnity, and at public expense, they buried their fallen in battle, in whose honour some distinguished citizen declaimed the Funeral Oration. Hence there came to be a category of display oratory named (depending on its purpose) panegyrics or funeral speeches.

We have specimens of panegyrics by Isocrates: their content is highly 'political'. Lysias wrote funeral speeches (for the fallen of the Corinthian War); so did Hyperides (for the fallen of the Lamian War); and Plato (with his dialogue Menexenus). (This last speech was never delivered. It could be thought that the philosopher wrote it as a parody of funeral orations). As for the famous Funeral Oration in Thucydides (2, 36-46), we do not know (and this has often been discussed by scholars) whether it was a transcript of an actual speech by Pericles about the first casualties of the Peloponnesian war, or a construct by the historian.