The age of Pericles: Athens in its golden age

Pericles was an Athenian from a noble family. His father, Xanthippus, was a general in the Persian Wars, and his mother, Agariste, came from the family of Cleisthenes, the man who had founded Athenian democracy. Pericles was not a king and not a tyrant. He was an ordinary citizen who was very good at speaking and at persuading the assembly.

His official job was general, στρατηγός. Every year the Athenians elected ten generals, who led the army and the fleet. Most other officials in Athens were chosen by lot, but generals were elected, because the city needed skilled leaders. Pericles was elected again and again: Plutarch writes that, after his rival Thucydides (not the historian) was ostracised, Pericles was general for fifteen years in a row.

Historians call the decades of his leadership, until 429 BC, the age of Pericles or the “golden age” of Athens. These are modern names: the Athenians did not use them.

Pericles made democracy open to poorer citizens. According to the Constitution of the Athenians (27), he was the first to give jurors a wage, a μισθός, so that a farmer or a craftsman could spend a day in court without losing his income. His rival Cimon was very rich and won friends with gifts; Pericles answered by paying citizens from public money. Critics said that this filled the courts with people who only wanted the pay.

In 451/0 BC Pericles also proposed a law that a citizen must have an Athenian father and an Athenian mother (Constitution of the Athenians 26.3). Being a citizen became more valuable, and harder to obtain.

How much power did one man have? Thucydides, who lived through these years, wrote that Athens was “in name a democracy, but in fact the rule of the first citizen” (2.65.9). Still, Pericles had to win every vote in the assembly, and in 430 BC the angry Athenians even fined him. Women, foreigners and enslaved people had no political rights at all.

After the Persian Wars, many Greek cities joined Athens in an alliance, a συμμαχία, which we call the Delian League. Each member sent ships or paid a yearly tribute, a φόρος. The treasury was first kept on the island of Delos, but in 454/3 BC it was moved to Athens. From then on, a sixtieth of the tribute was given to the goddess Athena, and the lists of these payments were carved on a huge marble stone on the Acropolis, which still survives.

With this wealth Athens rebuilt the temples that the Persians had burned. The Parthenon, the Παρθενών, was built in 447–432 BC by the architects Ictinus and Callicrates. The sculptor Phidias oversaw the whole work and made the great gold and ivory statue, the ἄγαλμα, of Athena inside. The Propylaia, the gateway of the Acropolis, were finished in five years by Mnesicles.

Plutarch (Pericles 12) reports that Pericles’ opponents said Athens was decorating itself with the allies’ money. Pericles replied that the allies paid for protection, and that the building work gave a wage to thousands of stonecutters, carpenters, sailors and porters.

Pericles lived among remarkable people: Phidias, the philosopher Anaxagoras, who taught new theories about the Sun and the sky, and Aspasia, a clever woman from Miletus who was his partner. Plutarch (Pericles 31–32) tells that his enemies attacked him through them: Phidias was accused of stealing gold from Athena’s statue and later jailed, Aspasia was tried for impiety, and Anaxagoras had to leave Athens. Plutarch himself admits that “the truth is not clear”, and many historians doubt some of these stories, which come partly from comic poets.

In 431 BC the Peloponnesian War with Sparta began. Pericles’ plan was to bring the country people inside the city walls and fight at sea. In the first winter he gave the famous funeral speech, the ἐπιτάφιος, for the fallen (Thucydides 2.35–46). But in 430 BC a terrible plague broke out in crowded Athens. Pericles was fined, then elected general once more. He died in 429 BC, two years and six months after the war began (Thucydides 2.65.6). Athens lost the war in 404 BC.