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Pericles

Pericles
Copy of Kresilas · Public domain · source

Overview

Pericles ( ; Ancient Greek: Περικλῆς; c. 495–429 BC) was a Greek statesman

and general during the Golden Age of Athens. He was prominent and influential in Ancient Athenian politics, particularly between the Greco-Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War, and was acclaimed by Thucydides, a contemporary historian, as "the first citizen of Athens". Pericles turned the Delian League into an Athenian empire and led his countrymen during the first two years of the Peloponnesian War. The period during which he led Athens as its preeminent orator and statesman, roughly from 461 to 429 BC, is sometimes known as the "Age of Pericles", but the period thus denoted can include times as early as the Persian Wars or as late as the following century.

Pericles promoted the arts and literature, and it was principally through his efforts that Athens acquired the reputation of being the educational and cultural centre of the ancient Greek world. He started an ambitious project that generated most of the surviving structures on the Acropolis, including the Parthenon. This project beautified and protected the city, exhibited its glory, and gave work to its people. Pericles also fostered Athenian democracy to such an extent that critics called him a populist. Pericles was descended, through his mother, from the powerful and historically influential Alcmaeonid family. He, along with several members of his family, succumbed to the Plague of Athens in 429 BC, which weakened the city-state during a protracted conflict with Sparta.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Pericles is discussed.

  1. If it is the part of a good general, not only to provide for the present, but also to have a clear foresight of things to come, in this point Pericles is the superior; for he admonished the Athenians, and told them beforehand the ruin the war would bring upon them, by their grasping more than they were able to manage. But Fabius was not so good a prophet, when he denounced to the Romans that the undertaking of…

    Plutarch, Plutarch

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  2. PERICLES. I thank you, sir. SECOND FISHERMAN. Hark you, my friend; you said you could not beg? PERICLES. I did but crave. SECOND FISHERMAN. But crave! Then I’ll turn craver too, and so I shall ’scape whipping. PERICLES.

    William Shakespeare, Pericles, Prince of Tyre

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  3. Pericles was of the tribe of Acamantis, and the township Cholargus, of the noblest birth both on his father's and mother's side. Xanthippus, his father, who defeated the king of Persia's generals in the battle at Mycale, took to Wife Agariste, the grandchild of Clisthenes, who drove out the sons of Pisistratus, and nobly put and end to their tyrannical usurpation, and moreover made a body of laws, and settled a…

    Plutarch, The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch

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  4. But they could only get him to promise that he would become their King, if at the end of a year Pericles did not come back. Moreover, he sent forth messengers far and wide in search of the missing Pericles. Some of these made their way to Pentapolis, and finding their King there, told him how discontented his people were at his long absence, and that, Antiochus being dead, there was nothing now to hinder him from…

    E. Nesbit, Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare

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  5. So long, however, as Pericles was leader of the people, things went tolerably well with the state; but when he was dead there was a great change for the worse. Then for the first time did the people choose a leader who was of no reputation among men of good standing, whereas up to this time such men had always been found as leaders of the democracy.

    Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution

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Philosophers who discussed Pericles

Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Anaxagoras.

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