Pericles , Greek statesman of the 5th century BC. C. The apogee of the cultural and political evolution of Athens coincides with the period in which Pericles exercised the leadership of the city government. His statesmanship was aimed at consolidating the sovereign rule of the people, with which he created the foundations of the first democracy in the history of the West. He knew how to expand and sustain the ideal of justice of the popular party, which he directed for many years and with total subordination of his personal interests. Admired by the popular classes and much criticized among the aristocrats, he has lent his name to the century that sheltered him, the century of Pericles .
ImportanteventsinthelifeofPericles
- 495 BC He is born in Athens.
- 461 BC He reaches the leadership of the popular party
- 459-446 BC He directs the military operations against Sparta.
- 451 BC He enacts the citizenship law.
- 443 BC He is elected strategist, a position he holds until his death.
- 429 BC He dies from a plague epidemic.
Heir to a family with a vast democratic tradition, Pericles was the son of General Xanthippus, the victor of Micala, and Agaristé, the niece of the reformer Cleisthenes . By maternal line he descended from the Alcmaeonids, who despite being members of the old Athenian nobility had excelled in the fight against the tyrant Pisistratus. He was the second son of the marriage, and it is believed that he was born in 495 BC A famous bust of Cresidas shows his dashing head covered by a helmet, which, according to the jeers of the comic authors of the time, hid a peculiar onion-shaped skull. His teachers, among whom the philosophers Zeno of Elea, Damon of Oa and Anaxagoras stood out, taught him the power of dialectics and to respect the gods without falling into superstition.
The Olympic , a nickname he had earned for his intelligent gifts and brilliant eloquence, began to intervene in the political life of the city at the age of thirty, supporting the popular or democratic party in the fight against the aristocrat Cimón and in the weakening of the old court of character. for life, the Areopagus. In a few years he knew how to gain solid prestige and popularity, so that when, in 461, the head of the popular party, Ephialtes, was assassinated, Pericles took over his position. From that moment he directed Athenian politics, with the fundamental objective of deepening the democratic system through laws that were approved by the popular assembly:he extended the executive power, the archonate —until then chosen among the members of the two superior classes—, to all the citizens; he granted a diet to all those who actively participated in the politics of the State; he restricted citizenship to those born to an Athenian mother and father, and established free access for the poor to performances, among other reforms.
In foreign policy, Pericles set out to consolidate the hegemony of Athens with respect to its allies in the Hellenic Confederation, and return to Greece the lands conquered by the Persians in their own territory and in Asia Minor, with which access to the Black Sea. After signing the peace of Callias with the Persians in 449 and the thirty-year peace with Sparta in 446, Pericles discarded war as a method of domination and used only the weapons of peace . Among his colonial initiatives, the most adventurous was the sending of an expedition to Taranto, in southern Italy, to found the model colony of Turi, under the direction of the architect Hippodamus of Miletus.
The real power of the state had been drifting towards the college of strategists, made up of ten generals, one from each tribe, who were elected by a show of hands. Since Pericles reached the position of strategist and president of said council in 443, a position he held until his last days, the preponderance of Athens over the other Greek cities was based on his artistic and cultural prestige. The works of his friend Phidias, including the famous Acropolis; the theater of Sophocles and Euripides, also that of Aristophanes, who in many of his satires ridiculed the Olympian, and the development of philosophical thought from Socrates, constitute the great legacy of the "century of Pericles" to Western culture.
A wealthy man of impeccable honesty, he nevertheless offered a target to his enemies in his family life:Pericles had married at a very young age an elderly woman with whom he had two children. Xanthippus, the eldest, was wasteful and used to complain about the austere organization that his father imposed on the home. He died in a battle, and shortly after his younger brother died in an epidemic. Pericles separated from his wife and brought Aspasia, a courtesan from Miletus of great intelligence and beauty, to live in her house. She was the mother of his son Pericles (450-406) and the brilliant and refined companion who participated in all the intellectual and political interests of the strategist. Pericles' opponents brought various legal proceedings against her and other members of the 'Aspasian circle', such as Phidias and Anaxagoras. Then they went on to attack the financial policy of the Olympian, but the latter remained faithful to his democratic ideals without falling into any totalitarian temptation. When he died, in 429, victim of a plague epidemic, they say that he said by way of farewell. "No Athenian has ever had to mourn
because of me.”