Politicians / Ancient Greek
Pericles
Greece -0493-01-0 ~ -0428-01-0
Athenian statesman and general (c.495-429 BC). He led Athens through its Golden Age, paid citizens for public service, and funded the Parthenon. His Funeral Oration remains a founding text of democracy.
What You Can Learn
Pericles offers three lessons. First, lower the cost of participation. He paid jurors so the poor could govern; the real barrier in modern boards is time and money, not eligibility. Second, strategic patience under public pressure: he held the defensive line while citizens demanded battle. Third, the public story. The Funeral Oration turned a military rite into a civic charter; anniversary speeches still do this. Against these stands a warning: the redirected Delian funds seeded the overreach that ruined Athens.
Words That Resonate
Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people.
ἐς ὀλίγους ἀλλ' ἐς πλείονας οἰκεῖν, δημοκρατία κέκληται.
We do not regard the man who takes no interest in politics as one who minds his own business; we regard him as a useless character.
貧しいことは恥ずべきではない。恥ずべきは貧しさから脱しようと努めず安住することだとアテナイ人は考える。
Poverty is no disgrace; the disgrace is in failing to struggle against it.
アテナイでは政治に関心を持たない者は、市民として意味を持たない者と見なされる。
Time is the wisest counsellor of all.
時の言うことをよく聴け。時はもっとも賢明なる法律顧問である。
Life & Legacy
Pericles was born around 495 BC into the Alcmaeonid clan. His father Xanthippus had commanded at Mycale; his mother Agariste was a niece of the reformer Cleisthenes. Tutored by Anaxagoras, he became a reserved, calm orator unusual among Athenian politicians.
In 461 BC he and Ephialtes stripped the aristocratic Areopagus of most of its powers, moving authority to the popular assembly. Ephialtes was murdered, Cimon was ostracised, and Pericles emerged as Athens's leading figure. He was elected strategos every year for nearly three decades — a continuity that says as much about charismatic dependence as about democratic strength.
His policies cut both ways. On one side, democratic deepening: he paid jurors and officeholders so working citizens could serve, and subsidised theatre tickets for the poor. Plato later complained he had made Athenians slothful and avaricious; Thucydides judged that he led the people rather than followed them. On the other side, empire. The Delian League's treasury was moved from Delos to Athens in 454 BC and used to fund the Parthenon and Acropolis programme from 447 BC. He also restricted Athenian citizenship in 451 BC to those of Athenian parentage on both sides — and would later petition for an exception so his son by Aspasia of Miletus could inherit.
When the Peloponnesian War began in 431 BC, Pericles chose a defensive strategy: evacuate the countryside inside the long walls, refuse pitched battle with Sparta, raid the enemy coast by sea. If we avoid defeat, he argued, we will win. Then plague struck Athens, killing tens of thousands including his two legitimate sons. The assembly stripped him of his generalship and fined him; within a year he was reinstated, only to die of the plague himself in 429 BC. Plutarch records his deathbed reply when friends listed his trophies: no Athenian, he said, had ever put on mourning because of him.
Expert Perspective
Pericles embodies the tension between charisma and institution. He won the assembly year after year for four decades; the system could not sustain itself once his judgement was gone. The Funeral Oration is still recited; the embezzlement of allied funds is equally part of his legacy.
