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Person429 BC

Pericles

Also called: Perikles

Statesman of Athens at its height who led the city for some thirty years, completed its direct democracy and built the Parthenon

From a distinguished family, he led Athens from about 461 BC, elected general (strategos) year after year. He introduced pay for public office and chose jurors by lot, so that poor citizens could take part in government. With Delian League funds he rebuilt the Acropolis, including the Parthenon. In the funeral oration recorded by Thucydides he called Athens “the school of Greece”. He died in the plague that swept Athens early in the Peloponnesian War.

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3 related events

  1. 1
    478 BC – 429 BCThe Delian League and the Age of Pericleskey figure

    Leading the Delian League against a renewed Persian threat, Athens reached its height; under Pericles its direct democracy, in which all citizens decided affairs in the assembly, took its full form.

  2. 2
    447 BC – 432 BCBuilding of the Parthenonkey figure

    In 447 BC Athens under Pericles began a temple to Athena Parthenos (Athena the Virgin) on the Acropolis; it was dedicated in 438 BC and its sculpture finished in 432 BC. The sculptor Phidias directed the work and its sculpture.

  3. 3
    431 BC – 404 BCPeloponnesian Warcommander

    The Athenian-led Delian League and the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League fought for twenty-seven years until Sparta won; the world of the Greek poleis declined in its wake.

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People who appear alongside

  • Phidias

    Sculptor of ancient Athens (c. 480 – c. 430 BC). A friend of Pericles, he oversaw the building and sculpture of the Parthenon and made the gold-and-ivory Athena Parthenos and the Statue of Zeus at Olympia

Themes this person appears in

  • Greece and Rome2000 BC – AD 476

    From the Aegean civilisation to the fall of the Western Roman Empire — the classical civilisation built by the democracy of the polis and the Roman republic and empire

  • The Olympian Gods800 BC – 432 BC

    From Chaos and Gaia to the War of the Titans, the reign of Zeus, Prometheus and Pandora — the gods of Greek myth in story order, alongside Hesiod’s Theogony and the real sanctuaries where the myths lived: Eleusis, Delphi, the Parthenon and Olympia