Pericles

Life and legacy

Pericles was born around 495 BCE into one of Athens's most distinguished aristocratic families. His mother, Agariste, was the niece of the reformer Cleisthenes, who had established Athenian democracy a generation earlier. Pericles received an exceptional education, studying with the philosopher Anaxagoras, whose rationalist approach to nature deeply influenced his intellectual outlook. He entered public life in the 460s BCE and gradually became the leading figure in Athenian politics.

From around 461 BCE until his death in 429 BCE, Pericles was elected strategos (general) almost continuously - an extraordinary record in a democracy that prized rotation of office. He used this position to pursue three great projects: the deepening of Athenian democracy, the beautification of Athens, and the consolidation of Athenian imperial power. He introduced pay for jury service, enabling poorer citizens to participate in the courts, and he championed the building program that produced the Parthenon, the Propylaea, and other monuments on the Acropolis - funded controversially from the treasury of the Delian League, Athens's alliance against Persia.

The age of Pericles was one of the most remarkable cultural flowerings in human history. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides wrote their tragedies; Aristophanes his comedies; Phidias sculpted the Parthenon friezes; Herodotus and Thucydides wrote their histories; and Socrates began his philosophical mission in the agora. Pericles was personally connected to many of these figures and actively fostered the cultural environment that produced them. His companion Aspasia of Miletus was herself a noted intellectual.

Pericles' Funeral Oration, delivered in 431 BCE over the Athenian dead from the first year of the Peloponnesian War and recorded by Thucydides, is one of the great political speeches in history. In it, Pericles articulated an ideal of democratic citizenship - open, tolerant, devoted to both public service and private excellence - that has resonated through the centuries and influenced democratic thought from the American founders onward.

The Peloponnesian War, which Pericles helped precipitate through his uncompromising stance toward Sparta, ultimately proved Athens's undoing. A devastating plague struck Athens in 430 BCE, killing perhaps a quarter of the population. Pericles himself succumbed to the plague in 429 BCE. Thucydides judged that under Pericles, Athens was "in name a democracy, but in fact ruled by its first citizen" - a tribute to his singular authority and vision, however ambiguous its implications for democratic theory.

Key accomplishments

• Led Athens during its Golden Age (~461-429 BCE), the greatest cultural flourishing of the ancient Greek world
• Directed the building of the Parthenon and the monumental beautification of the Acropolis
• Deepened Athenian democracy by introducing pay for civic service, enabling broader political participation
• Delivered the Funeral Oration (431 BCE), one of the most influential statements of democratic ideals in history
• Fostered the cultural environment that produced the tragedians, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Socrates

Quotes

We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 2.40 (Pericles' Funeral Oration)

Our city is an education to Greece.

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 2.41 (Pericles' Funeral Oration)

Related figures