Had he quoted the speech verbatim, he would have written ' τάδε' ('this', or 'these words') instead of ' τοιάδε' ('like this' or 'words like these'). 'Pericles, son of Xanthippos, spoke like this'. Nevertheless, Thucydides was extremely meticulous in his documentation, and records the varied certainty of his sources each time. It is possible that elements of both speeches are represented in Thucydides's version. Another confusing factor is that Pericles is known to have delivered another funeral oration in 440 BCE during the Samian War. We can be reasonably sure that Pericles delivered a speech at the end of the first year of the war, but there is no consensus as to what degree Thucydides's record resembles Pericles's actual speech. Thucydides says early in his History that the speeches presented are not verbatim records, but are intended to represent the main ideas of what was said and what was, according to Thucydides, 'called for in the situation'.

Although Thucydides records the speech in the first person as if it were a word for word record of what Pericles said, there can be little doubt that he edited the speech at the very least. The Funeral Oration was recorded by Thucydides in book two of his famous History of the Peloponnesian War. Several funeral orations from classical Athens are extant, which seem to corroborate Thucydides' assertion that this was a regular feature of Athenian funerary custom in wartime. The last part of the ceremony was a speech delivered by a prominent Athenian citizen chosen by the state. Finally they were buried at a public grave (at Kerameikos).

Then a funeral procession was held, with ten cypress coffins carrying the remains, one for each of the Athenian tribes, and another left symbolically empty for the missing or those whose remains were unable to be recovered. The remains of the dead were left in a tent for three days so that offerings could be made. It was an established Athenian practice by the late 5th century BCE to hold a public funeral in honour of all those who had died in war. Main article: Funeral oration (ancient Greece)

Thucydides on the peloponnesian war