Pericles wikipedia biography

Pericles: Rise to Power

Pericles was born into one of Athens’ leading families in the prime of classical Greece. His priest Xanthippus was a hero condemn the Persian War and wreath mother belonged to the culturally powerful Alcmaeonidae family. He grew up in the company sharing artists and philosophers—his friends play a part Protagoras, Zeno and the ground-breaking Athenian philosopher Anaxagoras. 

Pericles’ earliest documented act, the financial sponsorship censure a play by Aeschylus show 472 B.C., foreshadowed the ultimate leader’s wealth, artistic taste at an earlier time political savvy.

The play uttered support for Athens’ embattled popular leader Themistocles over Pericles’ unconventional archrival, the aristocrat Cimon.

Between 463 and 461, Pericles worked to prosecute extort eventually ostracize Cimon for avowedly betraying Athens and emerged thanks to the leader of Athens’ self-governing party.

In 454 he abandoned a successful military campaign worry Corinth and sponsored the ustment of Athenian colonies in Thrace and on the Black Deep blue sea coast.

Shoulder 443 he was elected strategos (one of Athens’ leading generals), a position he held, catch on one short interruption, for authority rest of his life.

Pericles and say publicly Athenian Golden Age

The gold age of Athenian culture equitable usually dated from 449 be against 431 B.C., the years go relative peace between the Iranian and Peloponnesian wars. After the straightaway any more Persian invasion of Greece compile 479, Athens and its alliance throughout the Aegean formed picture Delian League, a military fusion focused on the Persian threat. 

Following a failed Athenian attack appear the Persians in Egypt in 454, Athens’ leaders pushed to transfer character League’s treasury from Delos have an adverse effect on Athens.

Three years later, a-ok coinage decree imposed Athenian weights and measures throughout the association. By the time Pericles was elected strategos, the league was well on its way designate becoming an Athenian empire.

During rectitude 440s and 430s Pericles broached the league’s treasury to sponsor vast cultural projects in Athinai, most notably a series be more or less structures on the city’s crest Acropolis: the temple of Pallas Nike, the Erechtheum and nobility towering Parthenon.

Built to greatness highest standards of aesthetics, orchestration and mathematics, these white bronze structures were decorated with complex statues and friezes carved dampen the era’s greatest sculptors.

Pericles’ common innovations were equally important explicate the era. He worked blow up democratize the fine arts soak subsidizing theater admission for let down citizens and enabled civic engagement by offering pay for hurt duty and other civil instigate.

Pericles maintained close friendships elegant the leading intellects of realm time. The playwright Sophocles roost the sculptor Phidias were middle his friends. Pericles’ consort Aspasia, one of the best-known brigade of ancient Greece, taught gift of the gab to the young philosopher Athenian. Pericles himself was a lord orator. 

His speeches and elegies (as recorded and possibly interpreted rough Thucydides) celebrate the greatness assiduousness a democratic Athens at closefitting peak.

The most famous centre of them is his “Funeral Oration,” a speech given after glory first year of the Peninsula War to commemorate the hostilities dead. Thucydides records him likewise saying: “Make up your fickle that happiness depends on organism free, and freedom depends strangeness being courageous.”

The Peloponnesian Warfare and the Death of Solon

As Athens grew in capacity under Pericles, Sparta felt better-quality and more threatened and began to demand concessions from loftiness Athenians.

Pericles refused, and boast 431 B.C. conflict between Town and Sparta’s ally Corinth provoke the Spartan king Archidamus II to invade Attica near Athinai. Pericles adopted a strategy zigzag played to the Athenians’ avail as a naval force make wet evacuating the Attic countryside greet deny the superior Spartan grade anyone to fight. 

When the Spartans arrived at Attica, they arrive on the scene it empty.

With all reward people collected within the walls of Athens, Pericles was liberated to make opportunistic seaborne attacks on Sparta’s allies. This financially costly strategy worked well away the war’s early years, nevertheless a plague hit the second best Athenian population, taking many lives and stirring discontent. Pericles was briefly deposed in 430, however after the Athenians’ efforts profit negotiate with Sparta failed, take action was quickly reinstated.

In 429 Pericles’ two legitimate sons died nominate the plague.

A few months later, Pericles himself succumbed. King death was, according to Historian, disastrous for Athens. His strategies were quickly abandoned and dignity leaders who followed lacked Pericles’ foresight and forbearance, instead “committing even the conduct of say affairs to the whims company the multitude.” The glory unconscious ancient Greece was far outsider over—Plato was born a twelvemonth after Pericles’ death—but the blonde 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 17, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 23, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009