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
THREE - Early Career: The Dominance of Kimon (ca. 479–462/1)
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
Our sources provide very little evidence about Pericles’ early career. Yet the historical context of these years provides crucial insight into the statesman Pericles became in later life. Between 480 and about 462/1, Athens was allied with Sparta (against Persia) and Pericles’ marriage relation Kimon – a pro-Spartan conservative – served as Athens’ most important leader. During these years Kimon and his supporters created the Athenian empire, converting what had been an alliance against Persia into a tool for bringing Athens’ long-standing ambitions in the Aegean to fruition by planting Athenian settlements and by collecting revenues from increasingly recalcitrant allies. Pericles undoubtedly served in the Athenian military in these years and may have been elected general, but his first certain appearance as a political figure appears in a (failed) prosecution of Kimon, an event that provides us with an opportunity to explore the Athenian people's eagerness for expansion as well as the extremely complicated relations between Kimon's and Pericles’ families. Kimon's fall from political power and his exile from Athens in 462/1 opened the door for Pericles and the more progressive faction (or, rather, signaled that they had already asserted themselves).
The end of the Persian Wars created two superstars in Greece. In Sparta, the regent Pausanias, acting as one of Sparta's two kings in the place of his underaged cousin, had gained unprecedented prestige after his victory over the Persians at Plataea (just north of Attica) in 479. The Athenians and Spartans alike recognized Athens’ general Themistocles as a hero of the war against the invaders, since he was credited with the naval strategy that led to the Persians’ defeat at Salamis just off the cost of Attica in 480.
In 479 any observer would have predicted that Pausanias and Themistocles were likely to influence the political scenes in Sparta and Athens respectively for the foreseeable future. However, this was not to be. Although Pausanias continued to command the Greek allies in their mopping-up efforts against any remaining Persian outposts in the Aegean (and as far away as Cyprus) in the year 478, by the next year he had been replaced. It is likely that he had come under suspicion for treason: some believed Pausanias had undertaken illicit negotiations with the Persian Great King and eventually some alleged that he had offered to help the Persians bring Greece under his control.
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- Pericles and the Conquest of HistoryA Political Biography, pp. 53 - 76Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016