Not only was Pericles a political and military leader, but he was a cultural leader as well. He created a circle of intellectuals around himself, which included the sculptor Pheidias, the philosopher Anaxagoras, and his own mistress, Aspasia.
When war with Sparta was threatening, Pericles became a staunch advocate of an aggressive war policy. When war broke out in B. The Spartans invaded Attica and besieged Athens in The Peloponnesian Wars lasted from to B.
In the end Sparta defeated Athens, and installed a puppet government in the city. The Plague of Athens contributed to the defeat of Athens. Wars in fifth century Greece were dependant on the size of armies and number of ships.
A smaller, well-trained force could defeat a larger force, as the Greeks demonstrated in the earlier part of the century against the Persians. However, in the Peloponnesian War with well trained Greek against Greek, size of army did matter. Without the plague, Athens might have won the war.
Furthermore, the loss of Pericles, the leading statesman and commander-in-chief of the Athenian forces, contributed to this defeat. Pericles was replaced by lesser men, of less military and political ability. While the Athenians lost the war, within a few years of their defeat they had regained control over their own city, and their power.
They were again strong enough to combat the Spartans and through the fourth century B. The Macedonians were simply too strong and aggressive militarily, to be defeated by Athens. However, had Athens won the Peloponnesian War, the cultural life might have been very different. Fifth century Athens saw the greatest period of creativity in our western history, save for Renaissance Italy and our present 20th century.
The great playwrights, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides wrote during this period. The great works of architecture and sculpture were fashioned by Pheidias. The science of history began with Herodotus, who lived in Athens for a time, and Thucydides, who wrote a history of the Peloponnesian War.
While the 5th century nourished the philosophers Socrates and Plato, they both died in the 4th century. Had Athens won the war, the creative impulse might have continued for another half century. But we will never know. While the river of history would continue on its course, whatever the outcome of the war, the struggle of Athens against Sparta, and its recording by Thucydides, became a paradigm in history of the struggle of democracy versus oligarchy, enlightened and an open society against a dark and repressive society.
Our account of the Plague of Athens is preserved in the writings of the Greek historian Thucydides. Thucydides was born around B. He caught the Plague in Athens, and survived.
In he became a general, but failed in his attempt to save besieged Amphipolis from the Spartans. For his defeat, he was exiled and only returned to Athens 20 years later, after the end of the war in B.
While in exile, Thucydides wrote a monumental history of the war, which became a standard for historical writers in Greek and western history. The Peloponnesian Wars covers the war years down to B. Presumably, Thucydides died before he could complete the work. Thucydides sought to remove the supernatural from his work, to provided an accurate description of events themselves, and the motivations for the events.
He along with Herodotus founded the genre of historical writing. In the fifth century, Greek medicine in the form we know it, was just beginning under Hippocrates. Hippocrates was a rationalist. He was among the first to seek rational explanations, with some physical basis that did not include divine causation.
The miasmatic theory held that an epidemic disease was acquired from an unknown but harmful elements in the air, a miasmus. How the air became poisoned was not known, but later explanations included gases exuded from the ground, or from diseased or dead bodies, that spread widely and whose movements were influenced by climatic, atmospheric and astronomical phenomena.
Though technically incorrect, the miasmatic theory had a rational basis, and was linked to empirical observation. Since to a great extent disease theories in ancient Greece came from observations of airborne communicable diseases, transmitted between persons in close proximity who had no other close physical contact, the miasmatic theory is comfortably close to our current understanding of transmission of some of the same diseases e.
It was observed that when flesh rots due to putrefaction whether of meat, or in a gangrenous limb, or at death it gives off a strong odor detectable at a great distance. By the time Pericles was elected strategos, the league was well on its way to becoming an Athenian empire.
He worked to democratize the fine arts by subsidizing theater admission for poorer citizens and enabled civic participation by offering pay for jury duty and other civil service. Pericles maintained close friendships with the leading intellects of his time.
The playwright Sophocles and the sculptor Phidias were among his friends. Pericles himself was a master orator. His speeches and elegies as recorded and possibly interpreted by Thucydides celebrate the greatness of a democratic Athens at its peak.
As Athens grew in power under Pericles, Sparta felt more and more threatened and began to demand concessions from the Athenians. Pericles refused, and in B. When the Spartans arrived at Attica, they found it empty. A few months later, Pericles himself succumbed. His death was, according to Thucydides, disastrous for Athens.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. The two most powerful city-states in ancient Greece, Athens and Sparta, went to war with each other from to B. The Peloponnesian War marked a significant power shift in ancient Greece, favoring Sparta, and also ushered in a period of regional decline that signaled the The Athenian philosopher Plato c. In his written dialogues he conveyed and expanded on the ideas and techniques of his teacher Socrates.
The Academy he He is largely responsible for rebuilding the city following the devastating Persian Wars of to B. He was also Athens' leader during and probably an agitator of the Peloponnesian War to He died during the Plague of Athens that ravaged the city between and B.
Pericles was so important to classical Greek history that the era in which he lived is known as the Age of Pericles. What we know of Pericles comes from three main sources. The earliest is known as the Funeral Oration of Pericles.
It was written by the Greek philosopher Thucydides B. Pericles gave the speech at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian war B. In it, Pericles or Thucydides extols the values of democracy. The Menexenus was probably written by Plato ca. It, too, is a Funeral Oration citing the history of Athens. The text was partly borrowed from Thucydides, but it is a satire ridiculing the practice.
Its format is a dialogue between Socrates and Menexenus. Finally, and most substantially, in his book "The Parallel Lives," the first century C. Through his mother Agariste, Pericles was a member of the Alcmeonids. This was a powerful family in Athens who claimed descent from Nestor king of Pylos in "The Odyssey" and whose earliest notable member was from the seventh century B.
The Alcemons were accused of treachery at the Battle of Marathon. His father was Xanthippus, a military leader during the Persian Wars and the victor at the Battle of Mycale. He was the son of Ariphon, who was ostracized. This was a common political punishment for prominent Athenians consisting of a year banishment from Athens. He was returned to the city when the Persian Wars began.
Pericles was married to a woman whose name is not mentioned by Plutarch, but who was a close relative. They had two sons, Xanthippus and Paralus, and divorced in B. Both sons died in the Plague of Athens. Pericles also had a mistress, perhaps a courtesan but also a teacher and intellectual called Aspasia of Miletus , with whom he had one son, Pericles the Younger. Pericles was said by Plutarch to have been shy as a young man because he was rich and of such stellar lineage with well-born friends that he was afraid he'd be ostracized for that alone.
Instead, he devoted himself to a military career, where he was brave and enterprising. Then he became a politician. His teachers included the musicians Damon and Pythocleides. Pericles was also a pupil of Zeno of Elea. Zeno was famous for his logical paradoxes, such as the one in which he was said to have proven that motion can't occur.
His most important teacher was Anaxagoras of Clazomenae B. Anaxagoras is best known for his then-outrageous contention that the sun was a fiery rock.
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