Pericles

per'i-klez (493?-429 B. C.), the leading statesman of Athens. He was born at Athens. He was liberally educated, his chief instructor being no less than the philosopher Anaxagoras. Though of wealthy family he appeared in public life as the leader of the people. His opponent was Cimon, the leader of the aristocratic party. The latter was ostracized, leaving Pericles full sway. Athens was at this time a democracy governed by a general assembly by whom a body of generals was appointed. Pericles was elected leader of the generals fifteen consecutive times and was for a period of thirty years the real ruler of Athens. He was careful not to assume arbitrary authority. All his measures were proposed first in the popular assembly. He was an orator of consummate art, and succeeded in keeping the people on his side. All acts of government were performed through and by order of the popular assembly in the eye of the people, whose idol he was. Pericles was merely an executive officer, carrying the popular will into effect.

The ancient council of the Areopagus was set aside. He adopted a vigorous foreign policy. He extended the commerce of Athens, making surrounding states and cities tributary. From the mines of Thrace, the tribute exacted from allied cities, and from customs, he raised a revenue of $1,000,000 a year. A large part of this sum was spent in building and maintaining a navy. A part was spent in building the Long Walls connecting the port of Piraeus with the city, and vast sums were spent in beautifying and adorning Athens. He induced the Athenians to spend a greater part of the revenue in beautifying the city than has been known in a republic before or since. The Parthenon and the other architectural ornaments of the Acropolis were erected in his day. The masterpieces of Phidias, the greatest of sculptors, belong to this period. Speaking of this period, historian Abbott says:

No description can give anything but a very inadequate idea of the splendor, the strength, the beauty, which met the eye of the Athenian, whether he walked around the fortifications, or through the broad streets of the Piraeus, or along the Long Walls, or in the shades of the Academy, or amidst the tombs of the Ceramicus; whether he chaffered in the market place, or attended assemblies in the Pnyx, or loitered in one of the numerous porticoes, or watched the exercises in the Gymnasia, or listened to music in the Odeum or plays in the theaters, or joined the throng of worshippers ascending to the great gateway of the Acropolis. And this magnificence was not the result of centuries of toil; it was the work of fifty years.

The age of Pericles was also the period of the greatest development in Grecian literature. The three Greek tragedians, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, together with Aristophanes, the writer of comedy, belong here. The theater of Dionysius, the greatest in the world, was constructed during this period. It was capable of seating the entire body of Athenian voters. The masterpieces of the great tragedians were acted here at state expense. Free tickets of admission were issued to all citizens. This policy of Pericles has been assailed vigorously as tending to foster a spirit of pauperism. It has been compared to the distribution of free wheat by the rulers of Rome. The historians of this period are Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon. The great philosophers belong to a later period.

Ere Pericles laid down the reins of office Athens had been unfortunate in wars with her neighbors and had lost most of her possessions. The Peloponnesian War, coming soon after his death, reduced Athens to a secondary position in point of political influence. The city of Pericles continued, however, to be the intellectual and artistic center of Greece for many generations.

The private life of Pericles appears to have been commendable from the Greek point of view. He was, of course, the object of many a jibe and was more than once accused of serious public offenses. It does not appear, however, that he was ever guilty, let alone convicted, of dishonesty or mismanagement of public affairs.

From the point of view of modern times his domestic life was not what it ought to be. He divorced his wife for the purpose of living with Aspasia, a brilliant woman whom the laws of Greece did not permit him to marry legally. She was considered the most intellectual and attractive woman of the day. Pericles was a patron of arts, a lover of beauty. Such talk on art, literature, and politics, as may very naturally have passed between two such gifted minds as those of Pericles and Aspasia, form a delightful feature of Walter Savage Landor's Imaginary Conversations.

Our knowledge of Pericles is derived chiefly from Plutarch's Lives. Plutarch, in turn, drew from the writings of Thucydides and other contemporaries of the great statesman. None of Pericles' orations have been preserved. One alleged saying from a funeral oration delivered over Athenians who had died in war, "The world is the burial place of great men," is worthy certainly of preservation. As he lay on his deathbed his friends were consoling themselves with remarks relative to the great accomplishments of his lifetime. He is said to have aroused himself sufficiently to call their attention to the fact that, although he had been in supreme power for three decades, "No Athenian ever put on mourning through act of mine."

See Athens