Pericles (c. 495-429 BC) was an Athenian politician and strategist of Ancient Greece. Re-elected strategist without interruption between 443 and 431 BC. J.-C., Pericles is the outstanding figure of Athens of the 5th century and gives its name to this sumptuous period. In the city, which politically dominates all of Greece, democracy is fully functioning, the greatest artists and philosophers are present there. Moreover, with the treasure of the league of Delos, Athens offers itself sumptuous constructions, like the Parthenon, which make the city the most beautiful city of Antiquity. He died in - 429 of the plague, while his city was besieged by Sparta during the Peloponnesian War.
Origin of Pericles and first steps in politics
Pericles, of aristocratic origin, was born around 492 in Athens. His father, Xanthippe, was one of the victorious strategists of the Persians at Cape Mycale (479); he belonged to an old family of Attic nobility but had been one of the leaders of the democratic party. Through his mother he is descended from the noble family of the Alcmaeonids, and his great-uncle was the legislator Cleisthenes, who overthrew the Pisistratids.
In his youth, his main mentors were Zeno of Elea and Anaxagoras, who made him a rationalist but focused on action and the great affairs of the city. He seems to have been eager from an early age to play a public role, and, despite his "extreme repugnance for the people" (Plutarch), he chose to serve the democratic party, perhaps out of fidelity to the example of his relative Cleisthenes. , perhaps because he himself had felt the lightness of the small clans of aristocrats he had frequented since childhood.
As early as 463, he was seen attacking the leader of the conservative party, Cimon, who was ostracized two years later. Around 461, at the age of thirty, Pericles had already secured a preponderant position both in the democratic party and in the city, which he dominated by his eloquence.
Pericles, the champion of Athenian democracy
Apart from a brief eclipse of a few months (430/29), he remained until his death the main leader — one could say the "tyrant" — of democracy athenian. For more than thirty years he saw his functions as strategist renewed annually, thus becoming a sort of commander-in-chief and permanent prime minister, with a continuity unique in Athenian history. Invested in popular confidence, Pericles gave full development to the democracy of Athens, by making all the citizens participate more effectively in the exercise of sovereignty.
As early as 462, when he was still only the deputy of Ephialte, who was soon to assassinated, he had been the instigator of the reforms limiting the powers of the Areopagus. Pericles opened the arenontat to citizens of the third class (zeugites), and, in fact, even the proletarians, the thetes, could become archons. He generalized the drawing of lots, which became the essential part of democracy.
So that the participation of the poorest in the magistracies did not remain theoretical, he voted from 451 onwards allowances for the members of the Council of Five Hundred, for the archons, the judges at the tribunal of the heliasts, for the strategists, for the participation of the citizens in the various civic festivals:this is what is called mistophoria. However, this progress of democracy remained strictly limited to the only citizens, that is to say to a very small minority of the population of Athens (approximately 30,000 citizens out of 400,000 inhabitants towards the middle of the 5th century).
In 451, Pericles even passed a law recognizing Athenian citizenship only to those who were born of two citizen parents, which marked a serious setback compared to the legislation of Solon, which granted the right of citizenship to the sons born of a marriage of a citizen with a foreigner.
A great strategist
An unequal society, the Athens of Pericles was also an imperialist society. The allies of the league of Delos were reduced to subjection, the common treasury was transferred to Athens (454), the Athenian ecclesia replaced the council of the league as the governing body, the rebellions of the allies - in particular that of the Euboea (446) and that of Samos (440) - were mercilessly punished. Pericles personally led the effort for hegemony in mainland Greece, the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea. He unsuccessfully led an expedition to the Gulf of Corinth and northwestern Greece (454), then commanded the fleet that sailed to the Crimea and secured Sinope, on the coast of Asia Minor (437).
During its rule, Athens found itself engaged in a series of wars:against Sparta and Corinth (First Peloponnesian War, 459-446); against the Persians (disastrous expedition to Egypt, 454); against the rebellious allies. The Peace of Callias (449) ended the Persian Wars and eliminated Persia from the Aegean. With Sparta, the Thirty Years' Truce was concluded (446) but the continuation of Athenian expansion made the resumption of hostilities inevitable:in 431 the Second Peloponnesian War began, which was to end in 404, with the defeat of Athens. Pericles died at the beginning of the conflict, not without having seen the confidence that the citizens had granted him until then weaken.
Fall and death of Pericles
The early setbacks of the conflict and the plague epidemic that broke out in Athens in 430 AD carried a serious a blow to the prestige of Pericles, and the latter was even condemned to a fine of 50 talents; he was however re-elected strategist in the spring of 429, but he was in turn to be swept away by the epidemic the following autumn. He still had the glory of having carried Athens to the height of its power and of having presided over the blossoming of the best of Greek civilization.
The “Century of Pericles” (460-430) saw the last works of Aeschylus, the beginnings of Sophocles and Euripides, Herodotus' stay in Athens, the influence of sophistry, but it is in the field of art that he left his main testimony. Thanks to the tribute of the allies, the reconstruction of the sanctuaries of the Acropolis destroyed by the Persians began around 450, under the direct control of Pericles who was able to bring together and inspire artists such as Phidias, Callicrates, Ictinos, Mnesicles. The splendor of the Parthenon, the Propylaea, the Erechtheion, gave Athens the dignity of "school of Greece".
Bibliography
- The True Story of Pericles, biography of Jean Malye. The Beautiful Letters, 2008.
- Pericles:Athenian democracy put to the test by the great man, by Vincent Azoulay. Armand Colin, 2016.
- The Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides. Folio, 2000.