Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- List of Figures and Maps
- Preface
- Important Dates
- INTRODUCTION Biography and History
- ONE To Be an Athenian
- TWO Curses, Tyrants, and Persians (ca. 500–479)
- THREE Early Career: The Dominance of Kimon (ca. 479–462/1)
- FOUR The Democratic Revolution (ca. 462/1–444/3)
- FIVE A Greek Empire (ca. 460–445)
- SIX Pericles and Sparta: The Outbreak of the Great War (444/3–431)
- SEVEN Pericles and Athenian Nationalism: The Conquest of History
- EIGHT Athenian Culture and the Intellectual Revolution: Pericles and the People
- Epilogue The Periclean Tradition
- Appendices
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
SIX - Pericles and Sparta: The Outbreak of the Great War (444/3–431)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2015
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- List of Figures and Maps
- Preface
- Important Dates
- INTRODUCTION Biography and History
- ONE To Be an Athenian
- TWO Curses, Tyrants, and Persians (ca. 500–479)
- THREE Early Career: The Dominance of Kimon (ca. 479–462/1)
- FOUR The Democratic Revolution (ca. 462/1–444/3)
- FIVE A Greek Empire (ca. 460–445)
- SIX Pericles and Sparta: The Outbreak of the Great War (444/3–431)
- SEVEN Pericles and Athenian Nationalism: The Conquest of History
- EIGHT Athenian Culture and the Intellectual Revolution: Pericles and the People
- Epilogue The Periclean Tradition
- Appendices
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The Periclean policy of “no concessions to the Peloponnesians” and the related efforts to make Athens predominant in and around the Aegean resulted in the outbreak of the great Peloponnesian War in 431. A careful analysis of our sources shows that Pericles deserves the chief credit (or blame) for convincing the Athenians that the dream of dominance and a place in history justified a protracted war with Sparta. Pericles’ relationship (probably marriage) with the notorious Aspasia of Miletus came to figure prominently in popular discussions of the war's causes, but our evidence suggests that attacks on this relationship and on other supporters of Pericles stemmed largely from his political enemies’ inability to thwart the statesman directly. Pericles’ speeches in Thucydides present us with a baldly nationalistic and statist vision that encouraged war with Sparta and that apparently resonated deeply with the Athenian people.
Greeks had lived in the central Mediterranean from at least the eighth century BC. Cities like Chalkis, Eretria, Corinth, and even Sparta established colonies in southern Italy (which the Romans would eventually call “great Greece”: magna Graecia) and Sicily. Yet Athens played no role in this early Hellenic expansion to the west. The Athenians, as we have seen, apparently spent the eighth and seventh centuries consolidating their unusual, direct control of the large territory of Attica. Although the Athenians would ultimately claim that Athens had launched the Ionian Greeks on their ancient colonization of the islands and Asia Minor, the early Athenians could claim to be metropolis (“mother city”) of no Greek state founded in historical times.
By the mid-fifth century this situation had changed. In the 440s Athens played the leading role in the foundation of the colony of Thurii in southern Italy. The colony was unusual. A number of cities provided colonists, and the settlement was to occupy the site of the ancient Greek city of Sybaris, infamous for its luxurious lifestyle (giving us the term “sybaritic”) and torn by factional battles that had led to the city's destruction. The Greek intellectual and town planner Hippodamus of Miletus apparently played a role in designing the layout of the new settlement (as he had apparently designed the Athenians’ Peiraeus harbor). A late authority reports that the philosopher Protagoras made laws for the new city.
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- Pericles and the Conquest of HistoryA Political Biography, pp. 126 - 153Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016