Pericles biography pdf directory

Their advent will blur for some of you privately the memory of those you have lost, and it will be a twofold advantage to the city in not being emptied of men and for its security. As to the latter, it is not possible for someone to advise on public policy fairly or justly who does not also, when offering counsel, put his own children equally at risk.

Those of you who are past that age believe that the greater part of your life during which you were fortunate was to your gain and that the rest will be brief. Be cheered by the glory of your sons. Love of honor alone is ageless. It is always the custom to praise the one gone, and perhaps in exaggeration of their excellence you may be counted not quite up to them, but a bit inferior.

Envy exists as a stumbling block to the living; the dead receive praise with uncontested goodwill. If it is necessary that I also be mindful of the excellence of the wives who will now be widows, I shall indicate it all with a brief admonition. Great glory will come to you if you live up to your existing natures, and greatest will be hers who is least spoken of among men whether for her excellence or for blame.

The city will raise their children from this time until adulthood at public expense. We award this valuable garland of victory to them and to their survivors because those who bestow the greatest prizes for valor have the best citizens. But now, having mourned for your loved ones, depart. Widows were to raise the children and were not free to remarry.

They had no public role. Then he praises the dead whose heroism has made the city what it is 42 , exhorts the living to be lovers of their city and to emulate these dead, who have received imperishable glory In the end, however, the speech is notable for what it leaves out. Furthermore, Pericles makes almost no mention of any details of present or past campaigns.

We learn nothing about which contingents suffered the greatest casualties and where. Perhaps he felt no need to, for the speech was given just outside the main gate of the city. The Acropolis, then, was in plain view for much of his audience. Even after 2, years these buildings are still impressive. Instead, he focuses in lofty, often abstract language on the present greatness of the Athenians, their government and way of life.

The delivery of the speech itself was an act meant to exemplify Athens. By exalting their city, Pericles exalted its dead, each and every one equally. To have died for such a great city is, as he presents it, both ennobling and, in an abstract way, consoling. As Thucydides presents him here, Pericles comes across as proud and austere. He will not say what the majority has said on these occasions.

His tone toward his audience throughout is didactic. Thucydides details the symptoms of the disease and its inexorable progression both through the bodies of those infected and through the city. Easily spread, the plague had a devastating effect on the populace, who had come in from the countryside and were crowded into the city.

It appears very probable, in view of the fact that many disease-causing microorganisms mutate rapidly, that the particular disease Thucydides described no longer exists or is no longer as virulent. People were dying everywhere; even the sacred places were full of corpses—a terrible violation of ancient religious practice. The disease affected both the spirits and the behavior of the Athenians.

The result was that people thought quick enjoyments best and acted for pleasure only, regarding their bodies and their money as equally ephemeral. No one was ready to take trouble for something that was regarded as noble, in the belief that he might well be dead before attaining it. Whatever was presently enjoyable and anything that contributed to that enjoyment, this was established as noble and worthwhile.

It brings home forcefully the brutal lesson that chance can wreak havoc on the best laid strategy, even that of a leader such as Pericles. Some things cannot be foreseen. The plague started at the onset of the second Peloponnesian invasion in the spring of They 2. Thucydides then includes a short account of military events in the north during the summer of and adds without comment the stark fact that 1, out of 4, foot soldiers on the northern campaign—that is, nearly 40 percent of them!

Moreover, they were agitating for a rapprochement with the Lacedaemonians. In addition, they were sending embassies to them but accomplished nothing. Utterly at a loss for a strategy, they attacked Pericles. When he perceived that they were angered at the present situation and observed them doing exactly as he expected, he called a meeting. He was still serving as a general.

He wanted to give them some backbone and, dispelling their angry disposition, to instill in them greater calm and hope. I have summoned this assembly in order to remind you and also to chide you if in any way wrongly you either get angry with me or give in to your misfortunes. For, though a man does well on his own, if his city falls, he is nonetheless destroyed along with it.

By contrast, if he has misfortune in a city that prospers, he is preserved much more. Overwhelmed by your private sufferings, you abandon the common safety, while you blame me as the one who advised you to go to war, and yourselves for agreeing with me. The one who knows but does not impart it to others clearly might as well be ignorant. The man able at both, but harboring ill will toward his city, similarly would not express anything with suitable concern.

If, on the other hand, he had the concern but had been bought, the whole enterprise would be sold merely for the money. But if it has become necessary either to be subservient by yielding to a neighbor or to conquer by taking risks, the one avoiding the risk deserves more blame than he who stands up to it. I am the same as I was, and I do not change my advice.

But you have changed, since it has turned out that you were persuaded when things were going well, but, now that you suffer, you regret your decision. For that which is sudden, unexpected, and occurring completely contrary to what we calculated does enslave the spirit. And this has happened to you on account of the plague, not to mention other factors.

It is not right that you take away from the luster of your worth. Mankind, I remind you, judges it equally right to blame him who because of cowardice falls short of the reputation that he has and to hate him who from too much audacity strives for a reputation that is unsuitable. Put off, then, your private anguish, and take up again the common good, the preservation of your country.

I will now reveal a factor existing for you relative to the size of our empire that you appear to me never to have considered, nor I to have mentioned in my previous speeches. I would not now have recourse to it, since it entails a rather boastful claim, if I did not perceive that you are affrighted beyond reason. You consider that you rule only over your allies, but I point out that of the two spheres open for your use, land and sea, you have complete mastery of the one to as great an extent as you now possess and more, if you desire more.

And no one, neither the Great King nor any race on earth, will be able to prevent you from sailing forth with your present naval armada. Moreover, this power is manifest and not dependent on the use of buildings and land of which you think you have been grievously deprived. Indeed, it is not reasonable to fret over these things; rather, make little of them, considering them as a small garden or an expensive trinket compared with our power.

It is more shameful for men who possess things to be deprived of them than to suffer a setback trying to acquire them. This applies to us. Either do not run away from the pains or do not pursue the honors. Do not think that you are contesting over one thing only, slavery or freedom, but also over the loss of empire and the danger from the hatred incurred in it.

You have held it for a long time as a tyranny. To have taken it was, it seems, unjust; to let it go perilous. Very quickly would such men by persuading others destroy a city, even one they inhabited independently on their own. For doing nothing does not survive except by being paired with activity. Doing nothing has no advantage in an imperial city but suits perfectly a subservient one that slaves in safety.

It of all things is the only matter that has occurred beyond our expectation. And for this I know that I am still hated to some degree, unjustly so, unless, when you fare well unexpectedly, you will also impute the credit to me. One must face necessarily what the gods give, courageously the work of the enemy. Know that our city has the highest reputation among all men because it does not yield to misfortunes and has consumed the most lives and labors in war.

And yet men who do nothing would criticize this, but the man who personally strives to accomplish something will emulate it. If someone does not have comparable things, he will be envious. All those who deem it right to rule over others incur hatred and are always troublesome. He has the right plan who accepts the hatred in return for the greatest gains.

Hatred, I remind you, does not last very long, but present distinction and future glory last forever. Do not send more embassies to the Lacedaemonians, and do not let on that you are laboring under your present pains, for the men who are least pained in spirit at their 3. Thucydides represents Pericles here as claiming the empire as a lasting glory for the living Athenians with much the same words he used in the funeral oration to claim the city as a lasting glory for those who died in the war 2.

These men make the strongest cities and individuals. Publicly, they were persuaded by his words and were no longer sending embassies to the Lacedaemonians but were more committed to the war. Privately, however, they were aggrieved by their sufferings: the general populace because, though they started with less, they were deprived even of these things; the powerful because they had lost their possessions in the countryside with their buildings and beautiful accoutrements; but, what was the main consideration, because they had war instead of peace.

Yet, not much later, as the crowd is wont to do, they elected him again general and turned everything over to him, since they felt less strongly the pain of their own losses and thought him best equipped to do what the entire city needed. This last speech, which must be placed in the summer of , shows Pericles as a leader who is not afraid to say publicly what needs to be said.

This was not an easy or safe task. The second Spartan invasion had done great damage over most of the Attic countryside; coinciding with it, the plague had struck. Despite this resounding repudiation, Pericles here rebukes the Athenians in the assembly for blaming him, calling the plague an object of chance that no one could predict or counter.

He reiterates baldly that his strategy for the war is best. The war was unavoidable, the plague unpredictable. In phraseology reminiscent of the funeral oration, he calls on them to remember the greatness of Athens and live up to it. In the next elections, however, they elected him general once again for the campaigning season that began in spring He died in late summer or early autumn of that year.

The city became its greatest under him. He lived on for two years and six months, and when he died, even more was his foresight about the war recognized. Their schemes, when successful, brought honor and advantage to individuals; but, when they failed, damage to the war effort befell the entire city. The reason for this is clear. Pericles, powerful because of his prestige, intelligence, and absolute incorruptibility, restrained the multitude with a light touch.

He was less led by it than he himself led it. Those who followed him were more or less equals. Consequently, as is likely to happen in a great city with an empire, many mistakes were made, not least the expedition to Sicily. Indeed, this was not so much a miscalculation regarding the enemy as it was that those who sent out the expedition failed to provide what was needed to the men who went.

It is notable that Thucydides does not mention any of these leaders by name. By comparison with Pericles they are all nameless. Still they did not surrender until they collapsed as a result of their own private squabbles. So overwhelming and so clear were the considerations at the time to Pericles that he knew in advance that his city would very easily be victorious in war against the Peloponnesians alone.

After this tribute, Pericles is named only once more in the History, at 6. This splendid force of men and ships made an impressive sight as it was gathering in the Piraeus. Why include this detail at this important point in the narrative? Negative foreshadowing perhaps? Those previous expeditions were not very successful; neither city had been taken, as the Athenian audience would 5.

This is a reference to the successful attempt by an oligarchy of to seize control of the city in the summer of The number three in our manuscripts of the text of Thucydides is pretty clearly wrong and has been variously emended to ten or eight by scholars. This famous expedition sailed under the leadership of the Athenian generals Alcibiades, Nicias, and Lamachus.

Finally, in , the Syracusans with their allies annihilated the Athenians. Thucydides describes the disaster in books 6 and 7. More pointedly, the mention of Pericles at this juncture reminds the audience of his repeated dictum not to attempt new conquests while the war was in progress. Here in his farewell tribute and throughout Thucydides has presented us with an overwhelmingly powerful portrait of a leader with the vision, the courage, and the power to do what was best, even in the face of very strong popular opposition.

If Thucydides can be trusted, the onset of the plague did not dismay Pericles. He held unwaveringly to a policy that he had carefully thought out and articulated from the outset of the war. He alone provided real leadership and had the courage to stay the course. Those who followed him did not have the ability or the will to provide the necessary leadership.

It has dominated ever since it was written. Thucydides reiterates six times—1. One did not write casually, with the purpose of just giving the facts. He is the spokesman for the Athenians and the architect of their war policy. In the spring of , as the Lacedaemonians and their allies were on the march, Thucydides reports 2. Thucydides has compressed and telescoped events.

It is described, moreover, in clinical detail. The account has special veracity for its audience, for Thucydides explicitly informs us at the end of section 48 that he himself contracted the plague and survived. He rarely injects himself into the narrative by offering a personal comment. That he shares this personal detail is thus very unusual, as well as extremely effective.

Artistically, the historian has fashioned the narration of the plague to give the maximum contrast to the funeral oration. Each gains emphasis by the juxtaposition. The plague narrative also enhances the stature of Pericles. His courage and resolution are not broken in the face of the unstoppable scourge. The entire picture is thus sharpened by the description of the plague.

Did not his strategy, at least after the onslaught of the plague, appear to be a complete failure? After all, it was he who had advised the Athenians to move into the city from the countryside. The consequent crowding surely, as he and others must have realized, exacerbated the effects of the plague. We shall probably never know how things appeared to his contemporaries.

Whatever the truth, there can be no doubt that he was seen by others, not just by Thucydides, as the preeminent leader of the time. The references in the comic poets and Plato prove this. Other passages too seem to indicate knowledge of the outcome of the war. Despite this, on the whole, the History is an austere account that adheres to its primary purpose, to provide a narrative of the events of the war.

Thucydides never alludes to the personal affairs of Pericles. Furthermore, he never speaks directly about the attacks on Pericles and his friends. It is to be noted that he does not mention Pericles by name in these two passages. It depicts a man who was without question an unusually strong leader and who undoubtedly led his city into the war.

At the same time, the historian does not disguise that fact that Pericles behaved auto One could argue that since he believed war with the Spartans was inevitable, Pericles had the audacity to want it to happen while he was in charge and could guide his city to victory. But, in fact, Pericles did not act entirely on his own; he could not. Aristophanes and Old Comedy Caricature and Personal Attack Political leaders the world over are routinely subject to criticism.

It is apparently human nature to attack those in positions of power. Democracies in particular foster climates of free speech, and leaders in democracies, therefore, are often subject to public ridicule. These plays are what we call Old Comedy. The only extant complete examples of Old Comedy are the wickedly inventive plays of Aristophanes, who was born about b.

Politicians often have thick skins, even if they do not always possess a good sense of humor. As a determined leader who was at the helm when the Peloponnesian War broke out, Pericles is naturally blamed for starting the war. This is particularly the case in Old Comedy, since the war dominated the lives of many of the comic poets for more than a quarter century, and consequently their plays often dealt with themes related to it.

They naturally give us a less idealized picture of Pericles than the portraits provided by Herodotus, Protagoras, Sophocles, and especially Thucydides. They often paint Pericles as a tyrannical demagogue; their judgment, in fact, is similar to that of Plato below, pp. Characters in comedies call Pericles a tyrant, describe him as Zeus-like in his aloofness, and attack him for his womanizing a common criticism of powerful men in every age.

Aspasia, his Milesian common-law wife,2 was treated very harshly. Old Comedy may be biased toward aristocrats, for in our evidence it is democratic leaders who are attacked. This is a modern term but clearly represents what Aspasia was to Pericles. Henry concludes that in legal terms in ancient Athens she was most probably a pallake concubine.

Fornara and L. In several fragments, as we shall presently see, Aspasia is called a whore and a madam. Perhaps his head was rather large. In any case, it seems very likely that he had a prominent bald pate about which he was self-conscious and so tried to cover up. In the Acharnians of Aristophanes, performed in , the lowly Athenian citizen Dicaeopolis—the Everyman and hero of the play—gives a mock-epic account of the origin of the war.

Going to Megara, some youngbloods in their cups stole Simaetha, the whore. Thenceforth, the start of the war burst forth on all the Greeks on account of three whores. Thereupon, pissed, his almightiness Pericles lightninged, thundered, and screwed up Greece. Naturally, the ancient audience would immediately think of the cause of the Trojan War.

The Greeks sent a great expeditionary force 3. Garlic was, it seems, a product Megarian farmers were known for. The poet then has Dicaeopolis continue his description of Pericles: And he passed edicts like broadsides proclaiming the Megarians barred from land, from marketplace, from sea, and from the very strand! And so, the Megarians, since they starved, begged the Spartans to see if that decree, the one about the whores, could be reversed.

Hence, there arose the clanging of shields. Dicaeopolis absurdly connects it with the theft of the whores. As the historian Thucydides 1. This made good copy, and so Aristophanes makes use of it, but one cannot credit it completely with causing the war. Megarian interests were only a small part of what lay behind the hostilities. The decree was enacted, it seems, in and forbade Megarian citizens access to the main marketplace in Athens and to the harbors of the Athenian empire.

It was passed apparently in retaliation for Megarian encroachment on sacred lands claimed by the Athenians. Though it is often thought that the motives of the Athenians were economic, that is, to punish the Megarians by excluding them from access to the goods of the empire, this sort of exclusion from particular public areas is usually a punishment for sacrilege.

It is preferable, in my opinion, to understand it in this light, since it apparently applied only to Megarian citizens. There were, after all, many living in Megara who were not citizens, chief among them resident aliens and slaves. They probably continued to have access to the market in Athens and to the harbors of the empire and thus could have blunted much of the economic impact of the decree.

Still it clearly caused some hardship in Megara. The scene at lines — in which the starving Megarian sells his daughters develops from this situation. However, the point of the scene is not to evoke sympathy for the Megarians, but to create raucous verbal and visual humor. The Megarian has disguised his daughters as piglets and offers them for sale to Dicaeopolis, who examines them, sees through the disguise, and comments salaciously on their appearance — especially.

Whatever the effect of the decree, no Megarians starved, anymore than they were deprived of land; the comic exaggeration is plain to see. He now accuses Pericles of starting it as a smokescreen to distract attention from charges of embezzlement made against Phidias, because he feared that he too would be implicated in the affair.

Next Pericles, fearful he might share his misfortune, afraid of your nature and carping manner, before he suffered something terrible, lit up the city by tossing in the small spark of the Megarian decree. And he fanned up so great a war that all the Greeks, those there, those here, are teary-eyed with the smoke. This treaty was called the Peace of Nicias; it aimed to reestablish the status quo between the two sides but was inconclusive and lasted only a few years.

Phidias was apparently charged with making off with some of the valuable materials gold and ivory that had been issued to him to use in the chryselephantine statue of Athena, which he made to adorn the interior of the Parthenon. Similar accusations of using war and other events to divert public attention from their own problems have in recent years been leveled at U.

Yet the hero of the comedy, Trygaeus, responds: By Apollo, I never learned this from anyone nor heard before how Phidias was related to Peace. Unless these lines were uttered completely tongue in cheek and with dripping sarcasm, they appear to indicate rather clearly that the connection between Phidias and the decree is a particularly outrageous twist that Aristophanes exploits at this point for laughs.

Aristophanes does not, we can see from these passages, treat the dead Pericles with a great deal of respect. He plays the theme for laughs, but the barb of seriousness—Pericles caused the war— remains. He implies that the whole tawdry mess could have been avoided if Pericles had been less trigger-happy. In addition, Aristophanes made a number of derogatory references to the pay of three obols that Pericles instituted so that the poor could serve on juries.

Aristophanes was apparently one of the upper classes who disliked pay for jury duty enough to ridicule it publicly. See, for example, Knights 50—51, —, —, —; Clouds ; Wasps —, , —, —, — He often took extreme positions; it was he, for example, who proposed that all the Mytilinean men who had revolted from Athens be executed. The Athenians repented and overturned that decision the next day Thucydides 3.

Cleon fell in battle at Amphipolis in Neither Thucydides nor Aristophanes liked him. In his Moirai of , another of the comic poets, Hermippus, attacks Pericles for his bold talk about the war and mocks him for cowardly lack of action. The satyrs were known for their unbridled lust, so this attack also needles Pericles for his alleged sexual improprieties.

Satyr King, how come you never wish to draw your sword, but brave words you brandish on the war? Yours is the spirit of a draft dodger. It was not a comic poet, however, but the contemporary pamphleteer Stesimbrotus, the Thasian, who voiced the ultimate slander against Pericles. Stesimbrotus was apparently a scandalmonger. Indeed, it may well have been Cratinus who created this extremely negative depiction of Aspasia, which predominates in our sources.

Despite her alleged activities as a madam, for Plato she was accomplished in the art of rhetoric. Many have thought, following Plutarch Pericles 3, that the source of these jokes was that Pericles had a misshapen head. This seems unlikely. Cratinus seems to have written several plays that had as their primary subject the lampooning of Pericles and his circle.

Other references—in fact, most references—were probably, like those in Aristophanes, merely passing jokes. These references in comedy provide an intimate sense of the man that we cannot get from other sources. They by no means present an accurate picture, for they create laughter through distortion and exaggeration. Like political cartoons published in modern newspapers and magazines such as Newsweek and the New Yorker, they are topical and one-dimensional by nature.

They are effective, they strike a nerve, because they contain some readily recognizable grain of truth that is humorously exaggerated or distorted. But he was no all-powerful Zeus. By the force of his own Indeed, he treats the plays as political allegories that revolve around Pericles and his ward. This is a provocative but unconvincing approach.

In a sense then he did cause the war, but not on the grounds of slights aimed at Aspasia or Phidias. Still, people blamed him for it. In general, the attacks in Attic Old Comedy reveal that Pericles either was perceived or could be believably portrayed as rather aloof, not someone who enjoyed rubbing shoulders with the masses. It appears that he was also rather sensitive about his head, particularly his baldness.

The attacks on his sexual life and on Aspasia reveal that in Old Comedy, as in modern adult comedy, no holds were barred. Moreover, his liaison with Aspasia, a non-Athenian woman, gave the comedians an inviting opening that some of them enjoyed exploiting. Whether in fact Pericles was guilty of sexual misconduct we have no way of knowing. Clearly, the allegations were not so absurd in his case as to be totally unbelievable.

We do not know exactly when Herodotus was born, but a date around b. He died around , or slightly later. Herodotus also spent considerable time in Athens, where, it is reported, he gave readings from his account of the Persian Wars, which has a distinctly pro-Athenian bias. He there recounts that a young and impressionable Thucydides accompanied his father to a reading by Herodotus that so moved him that he cried.

This is no casual or passing reference. The lion is, among other things, an important symbol of ruling power. He was named for his maternal grandfather from Sicyon. Megacles also had another son, Hippocrates, and Hippocrates in turn [fathered] another Megacles and another Agariste, who was named for her grandmother, Agariste, the daughter of Cleisthenes.

She married Xanthippus son of Ariphron and, being with child, saw a vision in her sleep—she imagined that she bore a lion. And a few days later she produced Pericles for Xanthippus. He places Cleisthenes, 2. I have published an expanded and somewhat different version of this in Noctes Atticae: Studies Presented to Jorgen Mejer Copenhagen, — The birth of Cypselus, tyrant of Corinth, is likewise heralded in this way in an oracle reported by Herodotus 5.

He is, of course, referring to himself in an attempt to persuade Demos to prefer him. Paralus Figure 8. Each is thus emphasized by position. The victory at Marathon then was instrumental in preserving Greek freedom. By placing it last, however, the historian endows it with unusual structural emphasis. Sestos was the most important city on the western, that is, European, side of the Hellespont see map 2 and controlled the main crossing point.

It and the surrounding district were under the control of Artayctes, a subordinate of Xerxes. Herodotus was clearly sensitive to the structure of his great work. The center and turning point, the fulcrum, as it were, is the Ionian rebellion described in book 5, the central book of the nine. The books before it deal with Persia, Egypt, and Scythia; the books after, with the campaigns in Greece.

He is singled out twice in the account as Xanthippus the general 9. Thucydides in his brief account of the Persian campaigns 1. In any case, the fact that the Athenians and their allies stayed in the area suggests that they had some serious strategic goals in mind. Artayctes and his son escaped from the besieged city but were soon caught and returned to Xanthippus at Sestos.

Artayctes offered the Athenians talents to spare his life and that of his son. Xanthippus refused and executed them both at or near the site where Xerxes had constructed the bridges for his troops to cross the Hellespont into Greece. Xanthippus then sailed home with the cables of the bridges as part of the booty from the siege. Thus Herodotus ends his great narration of the events of the Persian Wars.

Why does Herodotus bring his account of the wars to a close with this seemingly minor military operation? Herodotus here, then, explicitly portrays Xanthippus as the initiator of the aggressive policy that 6. When Herodotus composed his history is a matter of discussion. The latest event he mentions, at 7. Thus he was still at work on his Histories in that year.

When he began, whether he composed the books in order, how much he revised his account are all complex issues and beyond the scope of this study. There is, notably, no sentimentality in the account; rather, the historian highlights the harsh work required. Do not be corrupted by your enemy; wipe him out branch and root. In ending his account in this manner, the historian looks ahead, ahead to the developed might of the Athenian empire and to Athens under the son of Xanthippus, Pericles.

In a last coda 9. Not coincidentally this moment in the history of the Persians bears a strong similarity to the situation in b. Surely we are meant to remember the words with which Herodotus had ended the proem to his grand account: 7. To return to Cyrus, to end where he had begun, is a mannerism of epic poetry known as ring composition.

Protagoras Protagoras of Abdera, the most famous sophist of the age, visited Athens on several occasions, probably for extended periods of time. He came once about b. Pericles almost certainly picked him for the task. Plato in his Protagoras records another visit about Protagoras, who was born about and died about , was just slightly younger than Pericles and probably knew him very well.

Protagoras enjoyed high repute during his lifetime. He was an agnostic for whom suspension of judgment about the existence or nonexistence of the gods was the only possible course. His ideas stirred up much controversy. Plato especially found such teachings very dangerous, for if taken to their logical conclusion, especially in a political setting, the result is anarchy.

For he clung to a tranquillity that every day contributed greatly to his own good fortune and self-composure, as well as to his esteem among the people. For each man, as he saw him enduring his sufferings so steadfastly, considered him to be heroic, brave, and superior to himself, knowing well what his own desperation would be in similar circumstances.

While we cannot discount the possibility that this account is secondhand—that is, based on what Protagoras had heard from others—it certainly purports to be his own observations. If so, 1. On the teachings of Protagoras, see W. Guthrie, The Sophists London, esp. For the fragments, see H. Diels and W. See Diels and Kranz, vol. Protagoras writes in a prose style that is rather poetic.

Not only has Pericles suffered such a loss, but doubly so— he has lost both of his sons—and in the space of just eight days. Protagoras leaves unsaid what everyone knew, namely, that these young men were his only legitimate heirs. He kept absolute control of his emotions. It is little wonder, then, that his contemporaries, especially the comic poets, found him aloof and remote.

They were also almost exact contemporaries, Sophocles being perhaps a year or two older than Pericles. Although Sophocles was primarily a poet and Pericles a statesman, they knew one another very well, having served together as generals in putting down the Samian revolt in — b. IG I3 line The anecdote is preserved in Plutarch; see above, pp. The city in question is Thebes, which was founded in Boeotia by Cadmus and, as the play opens, is now ruled by Oedipus.

A decisive and compelling leader, Oedipus dominates the stage. The city was still reeling from the many deaths caused by the plague. It seems, therefore, inevitable that some in the audience will have seen in the character of Oedipus aspects of Pericles. It is by no means a straightforward portrait, and some, wrongly in my view, doubt it completely.

How far the character of Oedipus can be interpreted as a portrait of Pericles is not clear. As the play opens, Oedipus addresses the Chorus as follows: 3. By contrast, in his interesting book Sophocles and Pericles Oxford, , V. In essence, then, Ehrenberg suggests that Sophocles represents conservative forces, and Pericles progressive passim and esp.

The city teems all at once with incense and with cries for healing and with groans. But, old sir, tell me, since your years suit you to speak for these, why do you sit here so? What do you fear or want? Once the tyranny had collapsed, in B. Pericles was related to Cleisthenes the reformer and so belonged to an extremely prestigious family. However, very little is known of his youth except that he probably spent a few years in exile, as his father Xanthippus was banished by the Athenian people when he was ostracized.

Pericles grew up against the background of this struggle, which was, right from the start, an unequal one. But the Second Persian War was a far greater confrontation. By land and by sea, the Persian forces invaded the territory of continental Greece and, in the face of this threat, no more than thirty-one cities—out of the hundreds that then made up Hellas—united to resist the ofensive.

Although Sparta was nominally in command of the Greek forces, Athens controlled most of the leet, the construction of which had been inanced by the silver extracted from the Laurium mines, in southern Attica. At this stage, nothing precise is known about the young Pericles, and it would be another twenty years before he came to the fore of the political scene.

Ever since the ostracism of hemistocles, who was accused in B. Ater the Second Persian War, Athens had in efect taken the lead in an alliance designed to prevent a return of the Persians to the Aegean. Although it began as an alliance freely joined, the league soon developed into an instrument in the service of the Athenians, who exploited the allied cities on the pretext of defending them against the Persian threat.

Although the Athenian poorer citizens derived considerable material proit thanks to this advantageous position, their political inluence within the city remained limited. It was within that roughly sketched-in context that, in B. Once he had kicked this bothersome rival decisively into touch, there followed thirty or so years in the course of which Pericles clearly took over all the major roles in the city, while the democracy gradually became stronger.

All the same, his authority at no point went unchallenged. Even ater the ostracism of this dangerous rival, in B. Introduction 7 census disqualiications that had been established at the beginning of the sixth century were progressively removed, although access to the post of archon continued to be denied to the thetes. From being purely a formality, democracy gradually became a reality.

Meanwhile, Pericles initiated a policy of major public works, the building of the Parthenon between and B. In this respect, internal democratization and external imperialism kept in step as they developed. So it was by no means by chance that Pericles also became a passionate defender of Athenian interests within the Delian League. In, at the latest, B.

Now the Athenians could draw on it as they wished, in order to inance the functioning of their democracy. But among their allies, these developments gave rise to discontent that was all the more fervent given that the Persian peril had been dispelled as early as the s. With the swearing of the Peace of Callias in B. However, Athens refused to dissolve this alliance, from which it acquired substantial proits; and Pericles had no compunction about putting down the uprisings that followed, in Euboea in B.

Meanwhile, over and above these sporadic revolts, the democratic city had to cope with the growing hostility of Sparta and its Peloponnesian allies.

Pericles biography pdf directory

It was to last for twentyseven years and end in the defeat of Athens in B. No decree proposed by Pericles has come down to us, and he is mentioned by name in only two inscriptions. Topping the list is Herodotus, an author whose loyalties remain hard to pin down. Even if he admired the city that emerged victorious from the Persian Wars, he expressed barely veiled criticisms of the imperialist power that, guided by Pericles, oppressed the Ionian Greeks within the framework of the Delian League.

As a native of Halicarnassus, he was well placed to see that his own community had simply exchanged one form of domination for another, when it passed from Persian control into that of the Athenians. However, hucydides, the historian of the Peloponnesian War, was clearly full of admiration. Most of those comedies have come down to us only as fragments, but they nevertheless do allow us to sense the virulence of the accusations launched against Pericles.

On the stage, Pericles was represented sometimes as an all-powerful leader, sometimes as a puppet manipulated by his friends such as Damon or his lovers such as Aspasia. Ion of Chios, who was contemporary with Pericles, excelled in a range of public genres, including tragedy and dithyrambs. When he visited Athens, he was a guest of Cimon, whom he describes in lattering terms, whereas he denigrates the behavior of Pericles, particularly at the time of the war against Samos.

In his treatise on hemistocles, hucydides, and Pericles, he launches into a classic attack on these three Athenian political leaders, criticizing both their upbringing and their characters. In efect, Pericles takes on the foremost roles only at the end of book I and already disappears halfway through book II 2. With very few exceptions, the attitude of the philosophers is negative.

Introduction 11 Antisthenes — , an admirer of Sparta and full of contempt for democracy, criticizes Pericles openly and showers insults upon his companion, Aspasia. In this way, he picks up the Platonic line. In this succession of ancient texts, there is one that, although late, is a decisive link in the chain: he Life of Pericles by Plutarch A.

When setting up this particular parallel between a Greek and a Roman, Plutarch chose, in the name of the prudence that characterized them both, to compare Pericles and Fabius Maximus. In the irst place, his work is marked by a desire to construct a unifying framework—a Life—drawing on material that, although abundant, is heterogeneous.

On the one hand, he is clearly intent on celebrating the man behind the great architectural works—the monuments that, at the time when he was composing his Lives,26 testiied to the ancient power of Greece; yet, at the same time, as a good disciple of Plato and an admirer of Cimon, he wanted to denigrate Pericles, the democrat. To resolve this contradiction, Plutarch divides the life of his hero into two artiicially opposed parts.

He suggests that at irst Pericles behaved as a demagogue, showering gits upon the masses and thereby fostering pernicious habits among them 9. Because he lived at the time of the Caesars, he does not always understand the facts that he claims to describe. A few decades ater the death of Plutarch, Aelius Aristides A. While happy to praise the military exploits of hemistocles, Xanthippus, and Cimon against the Persians 8.

Introduction 13 iteenth century, at which point the humanist Leonardo Bruni, inspired by the writings of hucydides and Aelius Aristides, revived it. What do we really know of his life between and ? Does this amount to an insurmountable defect that rules out writing any book about Pericles? Not at all. A perusal of the ancient sources in fact indicates another, surely more fruitful avenue of research.

Is Pericles an all-powerful igure or simply a ventriloquist who expresses the aspirations of the people? Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art. Internet Arcade Console Living Room. Open Library American Libraries. Search the Wayback Machine Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Sign up for free Log in. It appears your browser does not have it turned on.

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