Volta
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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2 related events

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

    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
    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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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