Michael Doyle's fine recent book on the importance of the classical political thinkers to conceptualization of international politics today has a long and useful section on Thucydides as well as discussions of Rousseau, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Locke and others.  On this page I provide two quotations, the first  to indicate how important Thucydides is to the realist tradition in political science, the second to indicate that the language of what Doyle calls "liberalism" seems quite applicable to the Athenian political world sketched in the Funeral Speech.

It could be productive to give students the second passage and ask them to find illustrations of it in the Funeral Speech.

Michael W. Doyle, Ways of War and Peace (NY: Norton, 1997):

The Realist’s worldview was shaped by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, writing twenty-five hundred year ago [and Machiavelli, Hobbes and Rousseau].  They hold in varying degrees that the best description of world politics is a "jugnle" characterized by a "state of war," not a single continuous war but the constant possibility of war among all states.  Politics is gripped by a "state of war" because the nature of humanity, or the character of states, or the structure of international order (or all three together) allows wars to occur.  This possibility of war requires that states follow "realpolitik": be self-interested, prepare for war, and calculate relative balances of power…. "In the struggle between nationalities, one nation is the hammer, the other the anvil; one is the victor, the other the vanquished."  [Prince Bernhard von Bulow, 1914]  This attitude has led to violent changes of national aggrandizement and imperialism.   But it also shapes desperate efforts to preserve peace through isolation and minimal conceptions of national security.  Realist international political science has led the study of international relations for a generation. It underlies Kissinger’s [thinking].  Although Realists often portray themselves as being free of idealism, accompanying Realist analysis is Realist moral philosophy, which holds that individuals should accept the "national interest" as an ideal, a one true guide to the formulation of the public policy of states in this dangerous political system.  Failing to accept the national interest, or reason of state, is a prescription for national disaster, an increase in global violence, and an irresponsible act of statesmanship that places private interests or ideals above public needs.  Science and morals are not separate endeavors.  Realist moral philosophy makes Realist political science coherent; Realist political science provides an essential description that is needed to justify Realist ethics.

        (page 19)

A threefold set of rights forms the foundation of an ideal version of Liberalism.  Liberalism calls for freedom from arbitrary authority, often called negative freedom, which includes freedom of conscience, a free press and free speech, equality under the law, and the right to hold, and therefore to exchange, property without fear of arbitrary seizure.  Liberalism also calls for those rights necessary to protect and promote the capacity and opportunity for freedom, the "positive freedoms."  Such social rights as equality of opportunity in education and such economic rights as health care and employment, necessary for effective self-expression and participation, are thus among Liberal rights.  A third Liberal right, democratic participation or representation, is necessary to guarantee the other two. To ensure that morally autonomous individuals remain free in those areas of social action where public authority is needed, public legislation has to express the will of the citizens by making laws for their own community.

…

These principles and institutions have shaped two high roads to Liberal governance.  In order to protect the opportunity of the citizen to exercise freedom, laissez-faire Liberalism has leaned toward a highly constrained role for the state and a much wider role for private property and the market.  In order to promote the opportunity of the citizen to exercise freedom, welfare Liberalism has expanded the role of the state and constricted the market….

        (page 207)