In Perikles' famous funeral oration in Book 2 of Thucydides's History, Perikles consoles the bereaved by emphasizing that the deceased will be famous: "They shall have a sepulchre [sêma] in that noblest of shrines wherein their glory is laid up to be eternally remembered upon every occasion on which deed of story shall call for its commemoration. For men of brilliance have the whole earth for their tomb; and in lands far from their own, where the column with its epitaph declares it [declares a sêma], there is enshrined in every breast a memory [mnêmê] unwritten with no tablet to preserve it, except that of the heart."
Notice that Perikles is here punning on the multiple meanings of sêma: both a fallen soldier's tomb, and the meaning of the tomb for the democracy of Athens. Compare this with Clinton's funeral oration over the dead soldiers of the U.S.S. Cole, bombed in its harbor in the Middle East. Like Perikles, Clinton loves to engage in antitheses; like Perikles, in a time of remembrance, he focuses on abstract values to provide consolation for the bereaved: "They have given us their deaths; let us give them their meaning." In ancient Greek, the word for 'meaning' would be a form of sêma. Clinton goes on to say that the soldiers' deaths constitute a victory for liberty, and for peace; in fact, though, it's more important that the deaths meaning something--anything--than that they mean one specific thing.
In essence, the logos of both Clinton and Perikles creates a sêma for the dead--in both senses of sêma--and their orations therefore constitute rhetorical monuments that preserve the dead in the memory [mnêmê] of the auditor. (And thereby aim at immortality.)
