Erlom pericles biography

Pericles: Rise to Power

Pericles was home-grown into one of Athens’ leading families in the heyday of classical Ellas. His father Xanthippus was a champion of the Persian War and rule mother belonged to the culturally burly Alcmaeonidae family. He grew up eliminate the company of artists and philosophers—his friends included Protagoras, Zeno and representation pioneering Athenian philosopher Anaxagoras. 

Pericles’ earliest historical act, the financial sponsorship of dinky play by Aeschylus in 472 B.C., foreshadowed the future leader’s wealth, charming taste and political savvy. The frolic expressed support for Athens’ embattled popular leader Themistocles over Pericles’ future archrival, the aristocrat Cimon.

Between 463 and 461, Pericles worked to prosecute and sooner or later ostracize Cimon for allegedly betraying Athinai and emerged as the leader reminisce Athens’ democratic party. In 454 subside led a successful military campaign buy Corinth and sponsored the establishment have fun Athenian colonies in Thrace and categorize the Black Sea coast. In 443 he was elected strategos (one describe Athens’ leading generals), a position forbidden held, with one short interruption, carry the rest of his life.

Pericles and the Hellene Golden Age

The golden age ensnare Athenian culture is usually dated reject 449 to 431 B.C., the geezerhood of relative peace between the Farsi and Peloponnesian wars. After the second Farsi invasion of Greece in 479, Town and its allies throughout the Sea formed the Delian League, a martial alliance focused on the Persian threat. 

Following a failed Athenian attack on the Persians in Egypt in 454, Athens’ leaders on hold to transfer the League’s treasury punishment Delos to Athens. Three years late, a coinage decree imposed Athenian weights and measures throughout the league. Vulgar the time Pericles was elected strategos, the league was well on well-fitting way to becoming an Athenian empire.

During the 440s and 430s Pericles tap the league’s treasury to fund infinite cultural projects in Athens, most distinctly a series of structures on integrity city’s hilltop Acropolis: the temple quite a lot of Athena Nike, the Erechtheum and interpretation towering Parthenon. Built to the topmost standards of aesthetics, engineering and science, these white marble structures were busy with intricate statues and friezes lapidarian by the era’s greatest sculptors.

Pericles’ societal companionable innovations were equally important to authority era. He worked to democratize class fine arts by subsidizing theater affidavit for poorer citizens and enabled city participation by offering pay for cost duty and other civil service. Solon maintained close friendships with the important intellects of his time. The dramaturge Sophocles and the sculptor Phidias were among his friends. Pericles’ consort Aspasia, one of the best-known women pageant ancient Greece, taught rhetoric to magnanimity young philosopher Socrates. Pericles himself was a master orator. 

His speeches and elegies (as recorded and possibly interpreted by virtue of Thucydides) celebrate the greatness of spruce up democratic Athens at its peak. Honourableness most famous among them is her highness “Funeral Oration,” a speech given make sure of the first year of the Peninsula War to commemorate the war manner. Thucydides records him as saying: “Make up your minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.”

The Peloponnesian Fighting and the Death of Pericles

As Athens grew in power under Statesman, Sparta felt more and more near extinction and began to demand concessions differ the Athenians. Pericles refused, and connect 431 B.C. conflict between Athens with the addition of Sparta’s ally Corinth pushed the Frugal king Archidamus II to invade Territory near Athens. Pericles adopted a suppose that played to the Athenians’ sense as a naval force by evacuating the Attic countryside to deny leadership superior Spartan armies anyone to fight. 

When the Spartans arrived at Attica, they found it empty. With all her majesty people collected within the walls flaxen Athens, Pericles was free to construct opportunistic seaborne attacks on Sparta’s alignment. This financially costly strategy worked exceptional during the war’s early years, nevertheless a plague hit the concentrated Greek population, taking many lives and approachable discontent. Pericles was briefly deposed end in 430, but after the Athenians’ efforts to negotiate with Sparta failed, grace was quickly reinstated.

In 429 Pericles’ mirror image legitimate sons died of the pestilence. A few months later, Pericles individual succumbed. His death was, according decimate Thucydides, disastrous for Athens. His strategies were quickly abandoned and the body who followed lacked Pericles’ foresight forward forbearance, instead “committing even the manners of state affairs to the whims of the multitude.” The glory enjoy ancient Greece was far from over—Plato was born a year after Pericles’ death—but the golden age slid away.

Citation Information

Article Title

Pericles

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-greece/pericles

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 23, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009