aloofness of his bearing and manner, he encouraged and initiated democratic reforms.
His power stemmed from his ability to control the assembly by virtue of his oratory.
He was elected general several times and from 443, after the ostracism of an
opponent, on an annual basis until his death. In 447 he called a Pan-Hellenic congress,
proposing the rebuilding of the temples destroyed by the Persians, freedom of the
seas and a general peace. He was thwarted in this by Spartan opposition. In 446 he
negotiated the Thirty Years Peace in which Sparta recognized Athenian naval
hegemony. He put down attempts by Euboea and Samos to secede from the league
in 446 and 440, and supported the policy of strengthening the empire by establishing
colonies in some existing states. In 437 he himself established a colony at Amphipolis
in northern Greece. Shortly afterwards he extended Athenian influence in the region
of the Hellespont. After the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, which he favoured
at the time and for which he had worked out a strategy, Thucydides represents
Pericles’ thoughts on the Athenian empire as follows:
Then it is right and proper for you to support the imperial dignity of Athens. This is
something in which you all take pride, and you cannot continue to enjoy the
privileges unless you also shoulder the burdens of empire.... Your empire is now
like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go.
(2, 63)Asuccessful general, politician and orator, Pericles was a cultivated man who
numbered among his friends the philosopher Anaxagoras, the playwright Sophocles
and the sculptor Pheidias. In his time Athens became the cultural centre of the Greek
world and the home of visiting intellectuals and artists in all fields. In Periclean Athens,
Socrates began his philosophic mission. A grand programme of public building was
initiated with Periclean support and under the general control of Pheidias. Included
in this was Athens’ most famous building, the Parthenon, the temple of Athena
Parthenos (meaning ‘maiden’) situated on the Acropolis, which was begun in 447 and
completed in 432. In the course of one of the most famous speeches of its kind, the
funeral oration over the Athenian dead in the first year of the war with Sparta in 430,
Pericles, in Thucydides’ words, gives voice to the ideals of his age, stressing the value
of the democratic constitution, equality before the law, the absolute recognition of
merit, the commercial and cultural pre-eminence of Athens, the love of beauty and
philosophy, and the dedication of the individual to the community.
Taking everything together then, I declare that our city is an education to Greece,
and I declare that in my opinion each single one of our citizens, in all the manifold
aspects of life, is able to show himself the rightful lord and owner of his own
person, and do this moreover, with exceptional grace and exceptional versatility.
(2, 41)HISTORY 65