Pericles Sentence Examples

In this crisis Pericles induced the Spartan leaders to retreat, apparently by means of.

In his attitude towards the members of the Delian League Pericles likewise maintained a purely Athenian point of view.

Pericles' home policy has been much debated since ancient times.

According to Plutarch he was made an object of attack by the political enemies of Pericles, and died in prison at Athens.

Plutarch gives in his life of Pericles a charming account of the vast artistic activity which went on at Athens while that statesman was in power.

His successor, Pericles, who commonly ranked as the " completer of the democracy," merely developed the full democracy so as to secure its effectual as well as its theoretical supremacy.

The foreign policy of Athens was now directed towards an almost reckless expansion (see Pericles).

No city ever adorned herself with such an array of temples, public buildings and works of art as the Athens of Pericles and Pheidias.

The Attic drama of the period produced many great masterpieces, and the scientific thought of Europe in the departments of logic; ethics, rhetoric and history mainly owes its origin to a new movement of Greek thought which was largely fostered by the patronage of Pericles himself.

The payment for public service which Pericles had introduced may have contributed to raise the general level of culture of the citizens, but it created a dangerous precedent and incurred the censure of notable Greek thinkers.

Before 460 Pericles' influence was as yet too small; 460-451 were years of war.

In connexion with this system of salaries should be mentioned a somewhat reactionary law carried by Pericles in 451, by which an Athenian parentage on both sides was made an express condition of retaining the franchise and with it the right of sitting on paid juries.

In his foreign policy Pericles differs from those statesmen of previous generations who sought above all the welfare of Greece as a whole.

Plato, while admiring Pericles' intellect, accuses him of pandering to the mob; Aristotle in his Politics and especially in the Constitution of Athens, which is valuable in that it gives the dates of Pericles' enactments as derived from an official document, accepts the same view.

In accordance with this scheme Pericles sought to educate the whole community to political wisdom by giving to all an active share in the government, and to train their aesthetic tastes by making accessible the best drama and music. It was most unfortunate that the Peloponnesian War ruined this great project by diverting the large supplies of money which were essential to it, and confronting the remodelled Athenian democracy, before it could dispense with his tutelage, with a series of intricate questions of foreign policy which, in view of its inexperience, it could hardly have been expected to grapple with successfully.

Pericles also incurred unpopularity because of his rationalism in religious matters; yet Athens in his time was becoming ripe for the new culture, and would have done better to receive it from men of his circle - Anaxagoras, Zeno, Protagoras and Meton - than from the more irresponsible sophists.

Pericles likewise is responsible for the epoch-making splendour of Attic art in his time, for had he not so fully appreciated and given such free scope to the genius of Pheidias, Athens would hardly have witnessed the raising of the Parthenon and other glorious structures, and Attic art could not have boasted a legion of first-rate sculptors of whom Alcamenes, Agoracritus and Paeonius are only the chief names.

At the same time, however, the Athenian expedition against the Persians in Egypt ended in a disastrous defeat, and for a time the Athenians returned to a philo-Laconian policy, perhaps under the direction of Cimon (see Cimon and Pericles).

This measure must have had a detrimental effect on the allies, who thus saw themselves excluded still further from recognition as equal partners in a league (see Pericles).

Skulls are rarely visible on a battlefield for more than two or three seasons after the fight, and we may therefore presume that it was during the reign of Inarus (460-454 B.C.), 2 when the Athenians had great authority in Egypt, that he visited the country, making himself known as a learned Greek, and therefore receiving favour and attention on the part of the Egyptians, who were so much beholden to his countrymen (see Athens, Cimon, Pericles).

At Thurii, the colony newly planted on the Tarentine Gulf (see Pericles), the boy may have seen Herodotus, now a man in middle life, and a friendship may have grown up between them.

The archons and members of the boule, who certainly received remuneration in 411, and also some minor magistrates, were perhaps paid for the first time by Pericles.

A scandalous charge against his mistress Aspasia, which he defeated by his personal intercession before the court, was taken very much to heart by Pericles.

A slightly idealized portrait of Pericles as strategus is preserved to us in the British Museum bust, No.

To him are ascribed also the original Parthenon on the Acropolis, afterwards burned by the Persians, and replaced by the Parthenon of Pericles.

The north and Phaleric walls were perhaps founded by Cimon, and were completed about 457 B.C. in the early administration of Pericles; the middle wall was built about 445 B.C. The lines of the north and middle walls have been ascertained from the remnants still existing in the 18th century and the scantier traces now visible.

The town was laid out at great expense in straight, broad streets, intersecting each other at right angles, by the architect Hippodamus of Miletus in the time of Pericles.

On both sides of the passage were numerous statues, among them that of Athena Hygeia, set up by Pericles to commemorate the recovery of a favourite slave who was injured during the building of the Parthenon, a colossal bronze image of the wooden horse of Troy, and Myron's group of Marsyas with Athena throwing away her flute.

With regard to the buildings on the east end of the Acropolis, where the present museums stand, no certainty exists; among the many statues here were those of Xanthippus, the father of Pericles, and of Anacreon.

Between this precinct and the Propylaea were a number of statues, among them the celebrated heifer of Myron, and perhaps his Erechtheus; the Lemnian Athena of Pheidias, and his effigy of his friend Pericles.

The great engineering works of Cimon provided a suitable area for the magnificent structures of the age of Pericles.

Pericles; a portion of the city wall was razed, the meats of groves of the Academy and Lyceum were cut down, the Roman and the Peiraeus, with its magnificent arsenal and other period.

Under the guidance of Pericles the Athenians renounced the unprofitable rivalry with Sparta and Persia, and devoted themselves to the consolidation and judicious extension of their maritime influence.

The years of the supremacy of Pericles (443-429) are on the whole the most glorious in Athenian history.

The Delian confederacy lay completely under Athenian control, and the points of strategic importance were largely held by cleruchies (q.v.; see also Pericles) and garrisons.

Yet the material prosperity of Athens under Pericles was less notable than her brilliant attainments in every field of culture.

The brilliant summary of the historian Thucydides in the famous Funeral Speech of Pericles (delivered in 430), in which the social life, the institutions and the culture of his country are set forth as a model, gives a substantially true picture of Athens in its greatest days.

The issue of this conflict was determined less by any intrinsic superiority on the part of her enemies than by the blunders committed by a people unable to carry out a consistent foreign policy on its own initiative, and served since Pericles by none but selfish or short-sighted advisers.

In early Attica, and even down to the time of Pericles, the landowners lived in the country.

The date of his death is given by Nepos as 468; at any rate he lived to witness the ostracism of Themistocles, towards whom he always displayed a generous conduct, but had died before the rise of Pericles.

Themistocles was the first to urge the Athenians to take advantage of these harbours, instead of using the sandy bay of Phaleron; and the fortification of the Peiraeus was begun in 493 B.C. Later on it was connected with Athens by the Long Walls in 460 B.C. The town of Peiraeus was laid out by the architect Hippodamus of Miletus, probably in the time of Pericles.

He was a great admirer of Cimon and an opponent of Pericles.

The new settlement was crushed by Crotona, but the Athenians lent aid to the fugitives and in 443 Pericles sent out to Thurii a mixed body of colonists from various parts of Greece, among whom were Herodotus and the orator Lysias.

There is no clear evidence as to when the building was begun, some placing it among the temples projected by Pericles, others assigning it to the time after the peace of Nicias in 421 B.C. The work was interrupted by the stress of the Peloponnesian War, but in 409 B.C. a commission was appointed to make a report on the state of the building and to undertake its completion, which was carried out in the following year.

We must therefore hasten onward to the age of Pericles, in which Hippocrates, already called "the Great," was in medicine as complete a representative of the highest efforts of the Greek intellect as were his contemporaries the great philosophers, orators and tragedians.

It was at this time that Cimon, who had striven to maintain a balance between Sparta, the chief military, and Athens, the chief naval power, was successfully attacked by Ephialtes and Pericles.

An important event must be referred probably to the year 451, - the law of Pericles, by which citizenship (including the right to vote in the Ecclesia and to sit on paid juries) was restricted to those who could prove themselves the children of an Athenian father and mother (E d,u001v avroiv).

Such a fruitage as that of Greek culture of the age of Pericles does not come to maturity without a long period of preparation.

The curse or pollution thus incurred was frequently in later years raked up for political reasons; the Spartans even demanded that Pericles should be expelled as accursed at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war.

Pericles and Alcibiades were both connected with the Alcmaeonidae.

Plutarch (Pericles, II) suggests that Pericles by this means rid the city of the idle and mischievous loafers; but it would appear that the cleruchs were selected by lot, and in any case a wise policy would not deliberately entrust important military duties to recognized wastrels.

The fact that Egypt was then largely under Athenian influence (see Cimon, Pericles) may have induced him to proceed, in 457 or 456 B.C., to that country.

Accordingly, in the spring of the following year he sailed from Athens with the colonists who went out to found the colony of Thurii (see Pericles), and became a citizen of the new town.

Again, in 446, when Euboea endeavoured to throw off the yoke, it was once more reduced by Pericles, and a new body of settlers was planted at Histiaea in the north of the island, after the inhabitants of that town had been expelled.

This event is referred to by Aristophanes in the Clouds (212), where the old farmer, on being shown Euboea on the map "lying outstretched in all its length," remarks, - "I know; we laid it prostrate under Pericles."

Funeral orations, such as the famous speech put into the mouth of Pericles by Thucydides, also partook of the nature of panegyrics.

A colony of Attic cleruchs was established by Pericles, and many inscriptions on the island relate to Athenians.

The festival which had been beautified by Peisistratus was made still more imposing under the rule of Pericles.

This contest took place in the Odeum, originally built for this purpose by Pericles himself.

Cephalus, his father, was a native of Syracuse, and on the invitation of Pericles had settled at Athens.

Prior to these episodes Athens had not been in hostile contact with any of the Peloponnesian confederate states for more than ten years, and Pericles had abandoned a great part of his imperial policy.

The first, intended to inflame the existing hostilities against Pericles (q.v.) in Athens, was that he should be expelled the city as being an Alcmaeonid (grand-nephew of Cleisthenes) and so implicated in the curse pronounced on the murderers of Cylon nearly 200 years before.

Under the guidance of Pericles Athens replied that she would do nothing on compulsion, but was prepared to submit difficulties to amicable arbitration on the basis of mutual concessions.

Meanwhile Pericles had decided to act on the defensive, i.e.

None the less Pericles sailed with i oo triremes, and ravaged the territory near Epidaurus.

The enemies of Pericles, who even with the aid of Spartan intrigue had hitherto, failed to harm his prestige, now succeeded in inducing the desperate citizens to fine him for alleged malversation.

In Lycia, which in spite of " the son of Harpagus " and King Pericles, had never been brought under one man's rule, the Greek influence is more limited.

But the Greek language makes an occasional appearance; Greek names are borne by others beside Pericles.

For Pericles he planned the arrangement of the harbour-town Peiraeus at Athens.

A search for the Odeion of Pericles on the south-east slope of the Acropolis was inconclusive.

The extant temple on the promontory was probably built in the time of Pericles.

Here the product of the age of Pericles remains unsurpassed still; the works of Herodotus and Thucydides standing along with those of Pheidias as models for all time.

Thus it passed into the schools, where text-books still in use devote 200 pages to the Peloponnesian war and two to the Athens of Pericles.

Pericles had introduced the practice of giving a small bounty from the treasury to the poorer citizens, for the purpose of enabling them to attend the theatre at the great festivals, - in other words, for the purpose of bringing them under the concentrated influence of the best Attic culture.

A provision eminently wise for the age of Pericles easily became a mischief when the once honourable name of "demagogue" began to mean a flatterer of the mob.

Wherever the noblest expressions of her mind are honoured, wherever the large conceptions of Pericles command the admiration of statesmen, wherever the architect and the sculptor love to dwell on the masterpieces of Ictinus and Pheidias, wherever the spell of ideal beauty or of lofty contemplation is exercised by the creations of Sophocles or of Plato, there it will be remembered that the spirit which wrought in all these would have passed sooner from among men, if it had not been recalled from a trance, which others were content to mistake for the last sleep, by the passionate breath of Demosthenes.

The insulting dismissal of a large body of Athenian troops which had come, under Cimon, to aid the Spartans in the siege of the Messenian stronghold of Ithome, the consummation of the Attic democracy under Ephi altes and Pericles, the conclusion of an alliance between Athens Training A pothetae (ai 'A-r-o%-raa, from lurOBEros, hidden) .

Pericles learned to love and admire him and the poet Euripides derived from him an enthusiasm for science and humanity.

The ignorant polytheism of the time could not tolerate such explanation, and the enemies of Pericles used the superstitions of their countrymen as a means of attacking him in the person of his friend.

Anaxagoras was arrested on a charge of contravening the established dogmas of religion (some say the charge was one of Medism), and it required all the eloquence of Pericles to secure his acquittal.

He came into notice first as an opponent of Pericles, to whom his advanced ideas were naturally unacceptable, and in his opposition somewhat curiously found himself acting in concert with the aristocrats, who equally hated and feared Pericles.

During the dark days of 430, after the unsuccessful expedition of Pericles to Peloponnesus, and when the city was devastated by the plague, Cleon headed the opposition to the Periclean regime.

Pericles was reinstated, and Cleon now for a time fell into the background.

The death of Pericles (429) left the field clear for him.

The later eminence of Pericles has probably misled historians into exaggerating his influence at this time.

At Tanagra in Boeotia a pitched battle was fought, in which both Pericles and the partisans of Cimon distinguished themselves.

Yet the drain on the country's strength was severe, and when news arrived in 453 that the whole of the Egyptian armament, together with a reserve fleet, had been destroyed by the Persians, a reaction set in, and Cimon, who was recalled on Pericles' motion (but see Cimon), was empowered to make peace with Sparta on the basis of the status quo.

Pericles' foreign policy henceforward underwent a profound change - to consolidate the naval supremacy, or to extend it by a cautious advance, remained his only ambition.

Turning to Pericles' policy towards the members of the Delian League, we find that he frankly endeavoured to turn the allies into subjects (see Delian League).

A conflict between Corcyra and Corinth, the second and third naval powers of Greece, led to the simultaneous appearance in Athens of an embassy from either combatant (433) Pericles had, as it seems, resumed of late a plan of Western expansion by forming alliances with Rhegium and Leontini, and the favourable position of Corcyra on the traderoute to Sicily and Italy, as well as its powerful fleet, no doubt helped to induce him to secure an alliance with that island, and so to commit an unfriendly act towards a leading representative of the Peloponnesian League.

The confused story of Philochorus and Plutarch, by which 4760 citizens were disfranchised or even sold into slavery in 445, when an Egyptian prince sent a largess of corn, may refer to a subsequent application of Pericles' law, though probably on a much milder scale than is here represented.

A further embassy calling upon the Athenians to expel the accursed family of the Alcmaeonidae, clearly aimed at Pericles himself as its chief representative, was left unheeded, and early in 431 hostilities began between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies (see Peloponnesian War).

At the end of the first year of war (early in 430) Pericles made a great appeal to the pride of his countrymen in his well-known funeral speech.

Under Pericles Athens also attained her greatest measure of commercial prosperity, and the activity of her traders all over the Levant, the Black Sea and the West, is attested not only by literary authority, but also by numerous Attic coins, vases, &c.

These measures have been interpreted as an appeal to the baser instincts of the mob, but this assumption is entirely out of keeping with all we know of Pericles' general attitude towards the people, over whom Thucydides says he practically ruled as a king.

We must, then, admit that Pericles sincerely contemplated the good of his fellow-countrymen, and we may believe that he endeavoured to realize that ideal Athens which Thucydides sketches in the Funeral Speech - an Athens where free and intelligent obedience is rendered to an equitable code of laws, where merit finds its way to the front, where military efficiency is found along with a free development in other directions and strangles neither commerce nor art.

The first important recorded act of Pericles falls in 463, when he helped to prosecute Cimon on a charge of bribery, after the latter's Thasian campaign; but as the accusation could hardly have been meant seriously Pericles was perhaps put forward only as a lay-figure.

In 455 Tolmides ravaged Laconia and secured Naupactus on the Corinthian gulf; in 4544 Pericles himself defeated the Sicyonians, and made a descent upon Oeniadae at the mouth of the gulf, and in 453 conducted a cleruchy to the Thracian Chersonese.

Pericles may now have hoped to resume his aggressive policy in Greece Proper, but the events of the following years completely disillusioned him.

In his home policy Pericles carried out more fully Ephialtes' project of making the Athenian people truly self-governing.

Pericles now seemed to have made up his mind that war with Sparta, the head of that ' The date can hardly be fixed; probably it was after 440.

At the same time, Pericles was being sorely hampered by his adversaries at home.

As a patron of art Pericles was a still greater force.

Plutarch (Pericles) gives many interesting details as to Pericles' personal bearing, home life, and patronage of art, literature and philosophy, derived in part from the old comic poets, Aristophanes, Cratinus, Eupolis, Hermippus, Plato and Teleclides; in part from the contemporary memoirs of Stesimbrotus and Ion of Chios.

If Plutarch tells us that he superintended the great works of Pericles on the Acropolis, this phrase is very vague.

He was a friend of Pericles and a, man of prudence and moderation.

Not long after, however, when Ephialtes fell by the dagger, Pericles undoubtedly assumed the leading position in the state.

Pericles himself led out a fleet against the seceders and, after winning a first engagement, unwisely divided his armament and allowed one squadron to be routed.

It has been doubted whether Pericles favoured this enterprise, but among its chief promoters were two of his friends, Lampon the soothsayer and Hippodamus the architect.

In this crisis Pericles persuaded the wavering assembly that compromise was useless, because Sparta was resolved to precipitate a war in any case.

Pericles led a large squadron to harry the coasts of the Peloponnese, but met with little success.

On his return the Athenians sued for peace, though without success, and a speech by Pericles had little effect on their spirits.

But the plague, which had carried off two of his sons and a sister, had left its mark also on Pericles himself.

If we now endeavour to give a general estimate of Pericles' character and achievements, it will be well to consider the many departments of his activity one by one.

For Pericles' buildings, see C. Wachsmuth, Gesch.

Pheidias introduced his own portrait and that of Pericles on the shield of his Parthenos statue.

And it was through Pheidias that the political enemies of Pericles struck at him.

It thus abundantly appears that Pheidias was closely connected with Pericles, and a ruling spirit in the Athenian art of the period.

The name is especially given to the great entrance hall of the Acropolis at Athens, which was begun in 437 B.C. by Pericles, to take the place of an earlier gateway.