Who is Pericles from The World's Great Speeches and what is their importance?

The author of a famed funeral oration, he is a famous Athenian who speaks of the need to balance the words of a eulogy based on what the audience expects and will believe. It is Pericles who points out that the people who know and love the deceased are biased, as are those who did not, and that his role as orator on this occasion is to "procure, as far as I am able, the good-will" of those listening.