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Possessing Freedom

The Parthenon and the Birth of Democracy in Athens

Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.

PERICLES, “Funeral Oration”

as quoted by Thucydides in the History of the Peloponnesian War

The Acropolis, Athens: 449 BC

Not one column remained standing, nor a single statue on its pedestal. The entire sacred precinct of Athens had been demolished with calculated thoroughness in two vindictive attacks, the first one in September of 480 BC. While most of the population had already been evacuated, a small force of temple stewards remained behind and fought valiantly, but unsuccessfully, to defend their sanctuary. Ten months later, the invaders came back to complete the destruction.

When the Persians attacked, the Athenians were in the process of rebuilding on the great rock that dominated their city. Some five hundred feet tall, with a surface area of almost eight acres, it had been inhabited for centuries and was known as the Acropolis, or “high city,” which functioned as both a citadel and a sacred space. The citizens were starting to construct a grand new temple to Athena, their special protectress, on top of it in thanks for their prosperity and freedom, but the Persians put an end to that project. While they had no love for any of the Greeks, they harbored a special hatred for Athens, which had been the first to assist the Greek colonies of Asia Minor in their rebellion against Persian rule. So they ravaged the entire city – perhaps frustrated by the paucity of human victims. Their devastation of the Acropolis was especially systematic and savage, leaving only the bases of temple columns and a thick layer of dust and ash.

It turned out to be a parting shot. When the small Greek city-states – usually more inclined to attack each other than band together in common purpose – had first begun resisting the mighty Persian Empire in the 490s, the effort seemed futile. But to everyone’s surprise, an unlikely alliance under the leadership of Athens defeated the Persians decisively and forced them out of Greece in 479 BC. The allies took an oath not to rebuild what the Persians had torn down, but rather to leave the ruins on their citadel as a reminder of what they had lost and of the need to remain vigilant in case the Persians returned.

Over the years, the Athenians went about fortifying and rebuilding much of their ravaged city, while the wreckage remained on top of the Acropolis. But after thirty years it was more of an eyesore than a memorial. Peace terms highly favorable to the Greeks had finally been reached with the Persians in 449 BC, and Athens had a leader who was determined to revive and expand the building projects that the Persians had derailed. He was the son of the politician Xanthippus, and his name was Pericles.

The Athenian Ecclesia – the popular assembly of male citizens who were eligible to vote in the city’s democratic system – was meeting in its customary place on the Pynx, an unkempt hillock at the foot of the Acropolis. Pericles had already made the case for a magnificent new complex of buildings and monuments on the citadel, centering on a great temple to Athena. This would only be fitting for the metropolis that was now the undisputed leader of Greece, he had argued. The question before the Ecclesia that day was how to pay for it.

Originally, Pericles had reasoned that the work on his various building projects around the city would provide a way for laborers to earn a share of the public wealth, just as warriors did. It was a savvy move that brought him a well-trained, disciplined workforce and broad political support.¹¹ The Ecclesia had at first approved the expenditures with little question, but the staggering cost of the construction was becoming a scandal.

Plutarch, Pericles 12.

Pericles had enemies, particularly among the old guard – his father’s friends – and they smelled weakness. The traditionalists of Athens disliked the Acropolis rebuilding plan; they thought the rubble should be left as it was. They had even less appreciation for the efforts of Pericles to shift political power from the great families to the wider citizenry. They expected to bring him down a notch or two at this year’s vote over continued funding of the construction on the Acropolis.

When Pericles strolled to the center of the meeting space as if he had not a care in the world, the crowd immediately made room for him. A small man in his mid-fifties with a neatly trimmed beard, his most distinctive physical feature was his unnaturally large head. What was truly remarkable about Pericles, however, was his confidence.

“Friends, I have solved the problem of the building accounts,” he said in a tone so engaging that even his bitter enemies – of whom there were several in the crowd – might feel that he was speaking directly to them. “Surely you can all see it as plainly as I. Why else would Athena have brought us the treasury of the Delian League if not to use it in her honor?”

The assembly was shocked into silence. The money in the Delian treasury had been deposited by the various city-states in the league – the alliance that had expelled the Persians – in return for Athenian protection. Traditionally housed on the island of Delos, this money had recently been moved to Athens, ostensibly so it could be better secured.

Pericles’ enemies pounced. “Now you have gone too far!” thundered one old man, who by tradition spoke first because of his age. “They already suspect us for moving the treasury in the first place. What will they say when they learn we have used the money they have entrusted to us for waging war instead to bedeck Athens as if she were some whore, bedecked not with gems but with statues and temples?”²² The word “whore” was a personal insult to Pericles, an intensely private man whose divorce of his wife and longstanding affair with the foreign-born Aspasia were subjects of considerable public gossip.

Plutarch, Pericles 12.

Pericles, son of Xanthippus, Athenian. Roman copy after a Greek original, c. 430 BC.

“You misunderstand me,” replied Pericles, showing no sign of irritation. “I believe our responsibility to protect the Delian League is a sacred obligation, and I would never shirk it. But our duty is to provide protection in the form of soldiers and ships, which we have done and will do. And if we are providing it, what grounds would the league have to grumble?”

The opposition was having none of it. The crowd grew restive.

“Well then,” continued Pericles, “if you are convinced we cannot use the Delian treasury, even though the city is so stocked with armaments that we will not have to purchase more for a generation, then I will pay for the rebuilding on the Acropolis myself. I rather like the idea of having the name ‘Pericles’ across the pediment of Athena’s temple!”

At first there were some cheers. Pericles was fabulously rich; he could afford it. Then the idea sank in. The temple was still in the planning phase, but it was obviously going to be spectacular, the largest and the most elegant of its type. If Pericles got his way, rather than being a monument to Athens and her people it would be a monument to one wealthy man who might start to think of himself as a king. Suddenly, using the Delian treasury seemed like the prudent course.

It was often like that when you argued with Pericles. One of his toughest political opponents – an Olympic wrestling champion – once said that even if Pericles were wrestled to the ground he could convince everyone standing around looking at him lying on his back that he had actually won the match.³³

Plutarch, Pericles 8. Pericles’ chief political opponent was named Thucydides (possibly related to the historian of the same name).

“Fine,” spat the old man, “get on with it, and spend what you like, as long as not one piece of silver comes out of your blasted pockets.”

The Acropolis: the dawn of time

“I saw it first, Athena,” said Poseidon testily, “and it’s mine.”

It was true. As the lord of the ocean cavorted in the sea one day, a gleaming white rock about a mile ashore caught his attention. Upon further investigation, he found the site to be not only beautiful but also strategic, commanding broad views of the surrounding plain. Poseidon resolved that it should be sacred to him, and the few rude humans who had been living there would worship him.

Then Athena arrived to see what had captured her uncle’s notice. As goddess of both wisdom and war, she quickly recognized the value of the Acropolis and laid claim to it as well.

Poseidon’s anger at Athena’s challenge set off earthquakes, and the fur-clad humans who witnessed this standoff muttered uneasily as the rock moved beneath them.

Athena was unimpressed. Instead, she gestured toward the men. “Why not let them choose? They are the ones who will be worshipping one or the other of us, so they may as well have a voice in the matter.”

Poseidon thought for a moment, then grasped his trident and jabbed it deep into the rock. A spring gushed forth – salt water, the men discovered when they stuck their hands in it to be sure it was real. Poseidon folded his arms smugly as they marveled at his power.

Amasis Painter, olpe with the contest between Athena and Poseidon, c. 540 BC.

Athena stretched out her hand. At first nothing happened, and Poseidon looked even more smug. Then a small rock tumbled over. A green shoot appeared where it had been and promptly grew into a small but sturdy tree with silvery leaves and green fruit.

Athena beckoned to the men. “This,” she said, “is an olive tree.”

A man picked one of the fruits and took a bite, which he quickly spit out. Rinsing his mouth with the salt water, he sputtered, “It’s terrible! Must be poison.”

“It is nothing of the sort. It just needs to be prepared correctly,” Athena replied. Poseidon yawned. She glared at him and went on: “The fruits are hard and bitter now, but if you cure them in salt they become delicious and will last a long time. Or you can press them and they’ll give you a wonderful oil that can be used for everything from cooking to dressing your hair. The tree itself can grow out of a rock and it takes care of itself.”

Athena let the men come to the obvious conclusion. While a salt spring might be impressive, it was of little practical use since the water couldn’t be drunk. This tree, on the other hand, offered shade from the sun as well as food and oil. In the end, the men voted unanimously to accept Athena’s gift. Athens had her patroness.

So goes the myth of the founding of Athens, setting the stage for the great developments that took place in the city from the sixth to the fourth century BC – developments that reverberate through Western culture to the present day. The Athenians viewed themselves as being specially favored by the goddess of wisdom and war, and they believed that as long as they and their exceptional city were under her protection they would excel in both. But as legend told them, they had not passively received favors from the Olympians; they had made the crucial decision about the destiny of their city themselves.

The Theater of Dionysus: April 472 BC

“A curse is a heavy thing, Pericles,” sighed Aeschylus.

“Don’t I know it,” Pericles replied wryly.

“It’s certainly not something to joke about,” the older man scolded. “I know more about curses than any other man in Athens.” He was, after all, the city’s foremost writer of tragedy.

The revered playwright and the young politician were sitting on wooden seats above the circular stage of the Theater of Dionysus, watching the final dress rehearsal for The Persians. The annual drama festival would begin the next day, and a trio of tragedies by Aeschylus were considered frontrunners for the top prize. The Persians in particular was attracting attention because it featured a contemporary event – the invasion of Greece by the Persian Empire – rather than a traditional subject such as the affairs of the gods or the legendary deeds of ancient heroes. Comedies, another innovation, had recently brought a lighter note to the popular theater festivals, but Athenians always preferred the tragedies, the darker and more heartrending the better. They appear to have reveled in painful topics, relishing the sight of the powerful and wellborn grappling with the same merciless fate that beset the common people.

Pericles was serving as the choregos, or producer, for Aeschylus at the Festival of Dionysus.⁴⁴ The Athenian governing council, the Boule, honored selected wealthy citizens by allowing them to pay for the plays. The choregos was also responsible for hiring the actors, training the musicians, and overseeing the sets. Pericles had recently received a substantial inheritance when his father died, and he was delighted to have been chosen as the producer for Aeschylus.

Stephen V. Tracy, Pericles: A Sourcebook and Reader (University of California, 2009), 15, 22. Of the three tragedies that Aeschylus presented at this festival, only The Persians survives. The first play, Phineas, and the third, Glaucus, apparently both dealt with more traditional, mythological subjects.

Modern remains of the Theater of Dionysus, originally constructed in the 4th century BC.

Then in his early twenties, Pericles had been considered a shy boy, hardly noticed in the shadow of his politician father and patrician mother. But in fact he had spent his time preparing, studying everything from philosophy to military tactics to human nature. He knew that some people joked about his mother’s account of dreaming she had given birth to a lion the night he was born, but Pericles took the story seriously. Now he was ready to start making a name for himself.

Everything he had observed over his first two decades convinced Pericles that his city’s achievements – culminating in the defeat of the Persians – were attributable to the unique form of government that had taken shape in the previous century. After the Greeks had emerged from the murky period that followed the breakup of the Mycenæan civilization around 1100 BC, Athens was ruled by a series of aristocratic clans who raised armies and dispensed justice. These families also enriched themselves by assuming the debts of the less fortunate, and eventually taking their freedom when they were unable to repay. More and more of the population lived in a condition of virtual slavery, as wealth and power were concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer families.

At the end of the sixth century, the situation came to a head. Cleisthenes, of the powerful Alcmæonid family (from which Pericles was descended through his mother), attempted a thorough overhaul of the government to outlaw the practice of enslavement for debt and to extend voting rights to a broader base of citizens. This would effectively disenfranchise the council of nobles, who were used to a more exclusive authority. Not surprisingly, the oligarchs objected, and a few established themselves as tyrants. Cleisthenes was exiled.

Then a remarkable thing happened. The rest of the upper classes allied with the common people and rose up against the tyrants. Besieged in the old temple on the Acropolis, the former oppressors had to sue for mercy before being exiled themselves. In 505 BC, Cleisthenes made a triumphant return, after which he codified his reforms in the Athenian constitution.⁵⁵ According to this document, Athens was ruled by the Ecclesia, or people’s assembly, which voted directly on legislation and was open to all male citizens with two years of military experience. A smaller group of five hundred, the Boule, was chosen from the Ecclesia to prepare and propose the laws. The Ecclesia also elected the magistrates who ran the legal system and the military, as well as a large pool of jurors to serve at trials. The entire enterprise was based on the novel premise of isonomia, the equality of all citizens before the law.

Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution 3.17; see also Peter J. Brand, “Athens and Sparta: Democracy vs. Dictatorship,” Ancient World Online, available via https://umdrive.memphis.edu/pbrand/public/.

The result was the unprecedented participation of Athenians in their government, which became known as demokratia – rule by the demos, the free citizens in assembly. Over the centuries, critics have maintained that Athens was not a true democracy because slavery still existed and women were excluded from participating, as were those unable or unwilling to serve in the military. Even so, what was practiced in Athens became the paradigm of democracy in the West, the model that all future free systems would reference in some way. Cleisthenes’ reforms, moreover, ushered in a dazzling burst of creative excellence, producing seminal achievements in art, drama and philosophy. The tragedies that Aeschylus was presenting at the Theater of Dionysus were a part of this broader cultural ferment.

The playwright kicked at the wooden theater benches. “Not so many years ago,” he said, “we didn’t have seats at all. We sat on the ground and that was good enough for us. Now everything is fancy.”

“It can’t be too fancy for me,” Pericles replied. “I want to do your plays justice! They are noble things; the dignity of Darius is particularly impressive. But with all their wisdom and majesty, the Persians never understood that the root of their failure was to attack Athena’s city in the first place.”

“You may be an Athenian, but you should be careful assuming that you know what the gods are about, Pericles. Especially since your family . . . ” Aeschylus’s voice trailed off.

“Yes. The Alcmænidæ were once under a curse. I know that is what you were hinting at.”

“They murdered their enemies in Athena’s temple. No matter what the reason, that is an unforgivable sacrilege, like a child killing his parent.”

“But what if the parent committed a worse crime? Circumstances always matter. And our curse was lifted, so what my ancestors did couldn’t have been so very bad.” Pericles looked up at the ruins on the Acropolis. “Maybe one day I can wipe that slate completely clean.”

“What do you think Athena would say?” Aeschylus asked. “She would want her people to avoid these crimes and honor each other as they honor her. That’s more important than any passing political glory.”⁶⁶

This sentiment is expressed by the goddess herself when she appears in the final act of Aeschylus’s Eumenides, the third in his trio of plays about the curse on the house of Agamemnon.

Pericles drew the playwright’s attention to the beautiful singing voice of the boy who was playing the part of Atossa, the Persian queen mother. But he could not help noting to himself that pericles literally meant “surrounded by glory.”

When The Persians made its formal debut the following day, Atossa came onto the stage consumed with worry. The expedition led by her son Xerxes against the Greeks should have been an all-but-certain victory, for he took with him the cream of the military force of the mightiest empire on earth. But Atossa received the shocking news that the Persian fleet had been devastated by the Greeks at Salamis.

The queen went to the tomb of her husband, Darius, who had been defeated by the Greeks in the first Persian invasion. His ghost appeared and told her that Xerxes had brought this calamity upon himself by building an enormous pontoon bridge across the Hellespont, thus uniting Europe and Asia.⁷⁷ At some 1,350 yards wide, the bridge allowed Xerxes to move his immense army quickly from Persia into Greece; but it was an affront to the gods, who punished him for it.

Herodotus, The Histories 7.34–36.

Xerxes himself then appeared and walked to the center of the stage, with members of the chorus standing around him. He wore a rich, exotic robe, but it was dirty and torn, revealing wounds painted on in bright red, and his mask depicted an agonized scowl. He still could not comprehend the reason for his own suffering. The audience sat spellbound as the Persian king bemoaned his lot:

Ah me, how sudden have the storms of Fate,

Beyond all thought, all apprehension, burst

On my devoted head! O Fortune, Fortune!

With what relentless fury hath thy hand

Hurl’d desolation on the Persian race!

Wo unsupportable! The torturing thought

Of our lost youth comes rushing on my mind,

And sinks me to the ground. O Jove, that I

Had died with those brave men that died in fight!

The chorus asked the king over and over about the fate of the Persian heroes, with their flaming crowns and purple spears. They were all, Xerxes reported, “in the earth entomb’d.” The chorus then lamented how the god of war had beaten down the Persian force:

Again the voice of wild despair

With thrilling shrieks shall pierce the air;

For high the god of war his flaming crest

Raised, with the fleet of Greece surrounded,

The haughty arms of Greece with conquest bless’d,

And Persia’s wither’d force confounded,

Dash’d on the dreary beach her heroes slain,

Or whelm’d them in the darken’d main.⁸⁸

Aeschylus, The Persians, trans. Robert Potter, available at http://classics.mit.edu/Aeschylus/persians.html.

After the play concluded with Xerxes and the chorus expressing their grief, the audience was silent for a while and then broke into thunderous applause. The decisive Battle of Salamis was only eight years in the past, and many of the audience members were veterans of the Persian Wars, including Aeschylus himself.

What Aeschylus left out of his drama is that the Persians might never have bothered to invade in the first place if the Greeks had not provoked them. Some Greek colonies in Ionia, on the Aegean coast of modern Turkey, had rebelled against the empire around 500 BC. Greeks from Athens and Eretria went to assist them, eventually sacking the city of Sardis.⁹⁹ In response, the emperor Darius I organized a force of twenty thousand men, which advanced all the way to Marathon, just a little north of Athens. It was so close that an Athenian courier sent back to announce the Greek victory was able to run the 26.1 miles to Athens without stopping.¹⁰¹⁰

Herodotus, The Histories 5.97–105.

In his account of the Battle of Marathon, Herodotus mentions a courier going to Sparta and Athens, but not this fabled run, which first appears in Plutarch. Herodotus, The Histories 6.105; and Plutarch, De gloria Atheniensium 3 (available at the Perseus Digital Library).

The pioneering Greek historian Herodotus reports that the Persians lost 6,400 men at Marathon – more than a quarter of the force – while the Greeks lost only 192.¹¹¹¹ The defeat was so lopsided that Darius’s son Xerxes vowed to return and destroy the Greeks as a sacred duty:

Herodotus, The Histories 6.102–18.

I intend to bridge the Hellespont and lead an army through Europe to Greece, so that we can punish the Athenians for all that they did to the Persians and to my father. Now you saw how even Darius had his mind set on marching against these men, but that he died and did not have the opportunity to exact vengeance upon them. I, however, on his behalf and that of the rest of the Persians, shall not give up until I conquer Athens and set it on fire . . . .¹²¹²

Herodotus, The Histories 7.8.

Things did not turn out as Xerxes planned. While the bridging of the Hellespont was a great achievement and the Persians did finally annihilate the Greeks at Thermopylæ in 480 BC, this was only after three hundred Spartans kept Xerxes’ tens of thousands of “Immortals” at bay for seven humiliating days. The delay allowed the rest of Greece valuable time to prepare. The Athenians, in particular, were able to effect an orderly evacuation of their city, so when Xerxes arrived to put it to the sword he found only a small rearguard on the Acropolis. Meanwhile, the Athenian fleet had gone to the island of Salamis armed with a plan. The Greeks lured the Persian navy into a constricted strait near the island where their large, elaborate ships were unable to maneuver, and the swifter, more agile Greek vessels crushed them. Xerxes returned to Persia, and the war concluded the following year as an unqualified triumph for Athens and her allies.

Pericles was only a boy when these events took place, but he had witnessed enough of them to understand how remarkable the Greek victory had been – and by extension, how remarkable the Greeks must be. The Persians commemorated this proud achievement, and Aeschylus won first prize for tragedy at the Festival of Dionysus in 472 BC.

Athens: 461 BC*

There were a number of suspects in the murder of Ephialtes, the leading politician of Athens. One of them was Pericles, who as his deputy was likely to succeed him. But the more likely culprits were members of the traditionally conservative Areopagus, the council of aristocrats. Many of them believed that Cleisthenes’ democratic reforms had resulted in mob rule, but Ephialtes thought the reforms had not gone far enough. In close consultation with Pericles, he stripped away most of the council’s jurisdiction, a radical act that finally broke the power of the aristocracy and launched the most expansive phase of Athenian democracy.

If members of the Areopagus had indeed plotted to assassinate Ephialtes on the assumption that the reform movement would founder in his absence, they were quickly disappointed. Pericles became, in effect, the “first citizen of Athens” in 461 BC and aggressively continued the effort to transfer political power to the Ecclesia as he consolidated his own position. His main rival was ostracized, or banished, on the grounds that he was a Spartan sympathizer. Over the next decade, Pericles led Athens in an almost endless series of military adventures against the Spartans, against the Persians in Egypt, and even against the sacred city of Delphi. These expeditions had mixed results, but they nevertheless enhanced Pericles’ power and burnished his prestige. For the moment, Athens was the acknowledged leader of Greece as head of the Delian League.

When a formal peace was finally settled with the Persians in 449 BC that permanently excluded them from Greece, Pericles declared it was high time for Athens to emerge from the long, self-imposed state of mourning that followed the sack of the city. A tiny olive seedling had appeared amidst the rubble left by the Persians on the Acropolis, and the citizens decided it must have sprung from Athena’s legendary tree. Pericles interpreted the seedling as a sign that the sanctuary should be rebuilt (though he may well have planted it himself).

The first challenge for Pericles was financial. He was not an elected official with executive authority to dispense funds at will, but merely the most influential member of the Ecclesia. He could wield power only by calling on the support of allies and persuading his fellow citizens that his ambitious building plans were a worthy expenditure of the city’s limited financial resources. But Pericles was nothing if not persuasive. When the various projects around the city were running low on funds, he convinced the Ecclesia to dip into the treasury of the Delian League – the money set aside by Athens and her allies for their common defense. The first stone for Athena’s new temple was laid in 447 BC.

* * *

The Acropolis: c. 445 BC

When Pericles walked into the workshop, a scantily clad girl raced for a curtained enclosure at the back of the room. Phidias turned around with a scowl. “Impeccable timing as always,” he snapped. “You’ve frightened my model.”

“And whore?”

“Of course.”

Pericles grinned. “Don’t let her distract you too much – I need you to keep working.”

“What else have I done these many years?” the sculptor sighed dramatically.

“Tell me about it! I’ve been to a banquet only once since Ephialtes died,” Pericles responded.¹³¹³ “You’ve been well paid. Some say too well paid. And there are obvious benefits.” He nodded toward the curtain. “Besides, aren’t you now the most famous artist in Greece?”

Plutarch, Pericles 7.

The scope of Pericles’ building projects, combined with his firm faith in the genius of Phidias, had given the sculptor a singular opportunity to remake the city center in his own style. Pericles had decided that the Acropolis would be completely razed, and what little the Persians left would be removed or embedded in the new foundations. Thousands of workmen, from day laborers to the most sophisticated engineers and craftsmen, were required to complete the task on the ambitious timeline Pericles had set, and only Phidias had the ability to coordinate this army so that their collective product was coherent.

Statuette of Athena Promachos, 50 BC–25 AD.

His workshop was half stonemason’s yard and half laboratory, with various tools for carving marble and chasing metal. The furnaces to cast bronze were nearby, on the south slope of the Acropolis. When Pericles dropped in, Phidias was working on a large clay figure of Athena holding a spear in one hand.

“I don’t see why you need a nude model for this, Phidias. I’ve never seen a woman so covered up in all my life.” Pericles gestured to the heavy, embroidered peplos that was pinned at the figure’s shoulders and belted at her waist, draping all the way to the floor.

“The virgin Athena is always chaste, more’s the pity,” Phidias agreed. “But the important thing is to get the anatomy right beneath the drapery. Our old sculptors didn’t care about such things and the bodies they carved were just blocks. But even under that shroud you can see that my Athena has the figure of a goddess. Look how gracefully she strides forward.”

“Her head is exquisite, but she is certainly fierce,” Pericles observed.

“The goddess at war!” said Phidias, with visible satisfaction. “She is ready to lead Athenians into battle – truly promachos (first in war.)”

“How big will she be?” asked Pericles. He hated anything small.

“Thirty feet. Athena Promachos will tower over all the buildings. Her body will be bronze but her helmet and spear will be gold, so when they flash in the sunlight you will be able to see her all the way from the port at Pireaus.”¹⁴¹⁴

Pausanius, Description of Greece 1.28.2 (available at the Perseus Digital Library).

“Perfect. Then you can concentrate on finishing the temple – and the Athena Parthenos to go inside it.”

The Acropolis: 432 BC

Pericles had to admit that even by his exacting standards, what Phidias and his team had accomplished was staggering. From the charred rubble there emerged a gleaming new complex that would stand as a testament to Athenian achievements in the decades since the Persians had been repelled. The ancient sacred way had zigzagged up the rock, but now visitors ascended a grand central ramp and were greeted by the Propylæa, or gatehouse, a massive structure of limestone and white marble with both Doric and Ionic columns. Inside the main space was a wall with five gates into the temple complex. On the western, outward-facing side, two wings flanked the building. Corresponding wings planned for the eastern side would never be built; reality caught up with ambition as tensions grew between Athens and Sparta, breaking into full-scale war in 431 and putting an end to the building projects.

Fortunately, the crown jewel in Pericles’ complex had already been completed by this time. The space atop the Acropolis was dominated by a new temple to Athena, which came to be known as the Parthenon, taking its name from her title Athena Parthenos (virgin). Rectangular stone temples surrounded by columns standing on a platform of steps had a long tradition in the Greek world, and had been constructed as far afield as Sicily. The Parthenon had all the customary elements of this temple type, but on a larger scale and with an unprecedented quantity and quality of decoration.

Phidias had employed two engineer-architects, Ictinus and Callicrates, to oversee the building process. He planned to put a second statue of Athena even taller than the bronze Athena Promachos inside the temple, which was also to house whatever was left of the Delian treasury, so its proportions threatened to become bulky. Ictinus and Callicrates approached the project with surgical precision, adjusting their measurements by the millimeter to trick the eye into believing this huge masonry structure was light and elegant.¹⁵¹⁵

The design of the Parthenon was so complex that Ictinus wrote a mathematical treatise on its intricacies, which is now lost.

Reconstruction of the Acropolis with the Propylaea, Athena Promachos, and Parthenon.

Greek temples traditionally had peaked roofs, creating a triangular space known as a pediment above the horizontal shelf on top of the columns. Pediments were logical places for sculptural decoration, being highly visible. They were also awkward spaces; fitting a composition into a triangle was always a challenge. Earlier artists had simply made figures on a smaller scale in the sharp angles, but Phidias wanted to craft a design that would appear more natural, with all figures on the same scale.

The east pediment of the Parthenon, facing out toward the city, showed Athena’s miraculous birth. Her mother, Metis, the primordial goddess of wisdom, had been one of Zeus’s many paramours. When she became pregnant there was a dire prophecy that if the baby was a girl, she would be a goddess and a close ally of Zeus, but if a boy, he might one day dethrone his father. Zeus attempted to solve the problem by swallowing Metis whole. Nine months later, he suffered a headache so severe that he called for Hephæstus, the god of fire and the forge, and demanded that he cut open his head with an axe. Hephæstus obliged. To the amazement of all, Athena emerged full-grown and armed to the hilt. Metis was not heard from again.

Plan of the Parthenon.

This blessed event, according to legend, had occurred at dawn. Phidias envisioned it taking place in a sort of communal bedroom as the Olympian gods and goddesses were just starting up from their couches. The chariot of the sun was peeping out of the left-hand corner, while the tired horses of the moon goddess, Selene, descended into the right. The rest of the pediment was crowded with figures of the Olympians reclining in various states of undress. Dionysus, for example, was naked. For the goddesses like Hera and Aphrodite, less prudish than Athena, Phidias had been able to indulge his taste for clinging, diaphanous drapery. While they were still clothed, their voluptuous forms were so clearly revealed that everyone assumed he had used models covered in wet linen.

On the west pediment, Phidias had carved the foundation myth of Athens, the scene of the contest between Athena and Poseidon for control of the city. All Athenians coming up through the Propylæa toward the Parthenon would be reminded both of their special relationship with their protectress, and of how their ancestors had participated in deciding their city’s future.¹⁶¹⁶

This pediment was severely damaged in the seventeenth century and is almost impossible to reconstruct.

Moving around the temple, visitors would have found seventy-eight rectangular stone reliefs known as metopes above the exterior colonnade. Rather like a comic strip, the metopes were individual scenes framed by decorative moldings called triglyphs. The metopes told the story, over and over, of how very superior the Greeks were to all other peoples. Fourteen metopes under the east pediment showed the triumph of the Olympians over the giants, the original victory of reason over brute force. On the long south side of the temple, thirty-two metopes were devoted to the most ancient Greeks, known as Lapiths, beating back the half-man, half-horse centaurs. Under the west pediment, the Greeks defeated the Amazons, the race of ferocious female warriors whose queen, Antiope, married the Athenian hero Theseus – but who had also, like the Persians, attacked the Acropolis and been repulsed. On the north side, the final thirty-two metopes showed the destruction of Troy at the hands of the Greeks, the subject of the ancient poem Iliupersis, which picked up where Homer’s Iliad left off. In all four of these cycles, the Greeks battled intently but impassively to dispatch the fierce and monstrous foes that threatened their civilization.

Reconstruction of the west pediment, Parthenon.

Phidias, detail of goddesses, east pediment, Parthenon.

The Parthenon was surrounded by a full ring of columns, and visitors who mounted the steps of the platform could have circumnavigated the temple again in the shade and enjoyed yet more relief sculpture above the interior columns. Here there was a continuous frieze running 524 feet around the entire building. Instead of mythological scenes, like those ornamenting the exterior of the Parthenon, this frieze depicted the defining civic ritual of Athens.

Phidias, metope with Lapith battling a centaur, Parthenon.

The Olympic Games, founded in 776 BC and continued until 394 AD, were the most famous and long-running of the ancient Greek athletic festivals, but most cities had a local version of their own. A festival at Athens was first recorded in 566 BC (although the Athenians claimed it originated seven centuries before the Olympics). It was celebrated every year, and every four years there was a larger event, known as the Great Panathenaic Festival. This production included athletic contests, notably the mile-long dash from the port of Piraeus to the city of Athens by torchlight, as well as other traditional sports at the Panathenaic Stadium.¹⁷¹⁷ There were also music and poetry competitions. Capping off eight days of activities was the delivery of a new peplos to robe the ancient olivewood statue of Athena that was housed on the Acropolis.¹⁸¹⁸

The Panathenaic Stadium still exists; it hosted the 2004 Olympiad.

According to legend, this rather homely but extremely venerable statue had fallen out of the sky shortly after the foundation of Athens. It was evacuated from Athens during the Persian invasion, and thus survived the sack of the city.

This procession was an exuberant affair that ran through the city and ascended the Acropolis to the sacred space outside the Parthenon. Participants included maidens carrying the peplos, a hundred oxen destined to be sacrificed to Athena, the triumphant athletes and the cream of Athenian youth on horseback. Once the crowd arrived on the Acropolis there was a massive feast that went on all night.

Phidias, detail of north frieze with riders preparing to form a procession, Parthenon.

The inner frieze of the Parthenon showed an idealized image of this procession, the bulk of which was devoted to the Athenian youths. All handsome, chiseled, and dressed only in cloaks, they handled their steeds with the same preternatural calm that characterized the heroes on the metopes. The frieze culminated on the east side of the temple with the preparation of the new peplos. Phidias’s depiction of the Panathenaic procession was a timeless pæan to Athens’s unique character, commemorating the city’s past and affirming its future.

The line between Athenian mortal and Olympian god is blurred throughout the decoration of the Parthenon, with the humans becoming more perfect and the gods becoming more natural than they had been in any previous art. The elevation of the mortal and the humanization of the divine were achieved through careful attention to anatomy and a rigorous application of mathematical proportion to the figures. There is compelling evidence that what later came to be called “divine proportion” or the “Golden Ratio” was used throughout the Parthenon. The principle, which Euclid would describe in his Elements, around 300 BC involves dividing a line so that the ratio of the larger segment to the smaller equals the ratio of the whole line to the larger segment. This ratio was considered especially pleasing to the eye, whether in the dimensions of a rectangle or the proportions of a human body. In the work that Phidias oversaw, all the figures, regardless of size, showed relative proportions consistent with the Golden Ratio, in everything from the size and shape of the head to the distance between the elbow and the tip of the middle finger. The same ratio governed the Parthenon’s architecture as well, from the overall dimensions to the proportions of columns and capitals. While the effect might be subtle in the individual elements, the use of consistent mathematical proportion in both figures and architecture produced an overwhelming impression of supernatural harmony.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Phidias Showing the Parthenon Frieze to His Friends, 1868.

Hector Leroux, Pericles and Aspasia Visiting Phidias’ Studio, c. 1870.

There are works predating the Persian sack of Athens that show attempts to create figures that seem to respond to the same external forces that affect humans, such as gravity, but are flawlessly beautiful at the same time. This trend was still tentative when the Persians arrived, and the first victory monuments generally reflect the more traditional manner known as the archaic style.

The so-called “Kritios Boy,” c. 480 BC. This figure was smashed by the Persians in the sack of the Acropolis in 479 bc. It is an early example of what came to be known as the classical style.

By comparison, when Pericles launched his building program for the Acropolis, the new style of Phidias must have seemed nothing short of revolutionary. Phidias crafted an image of man not as he was, but as he could aspire to be. This style of sculpture had its critics; Aeschylus, for example, regarded the old style as closer to the gods: “Those ancient statues, though simply made, are to be considered divine, while the new kind, though elaborately worked and inducing wonder, have a less divine aspect to them.”¹⁹¹⁹ But the idealized naturalism of Phidias was also widely admired. It has since become known as the classical style – the touchstone for excellence in Western art.

As quoted in Richard Neer, The Emergence of the Classical Style in Greek Sculpture (University of Chicago, 2010), 103.

The pediments, metopes and frieze were all more than forty feet above visitors’ heads, and were made more legible by bright paint and gilding that contrasted with the white marble – a contrast that continued into the interior of the temple. Here was Phidias’s masterpiece, the colossal Athena Parthenos, towering more than forty feet. Like the bronze Athena Promachos outside, she wore a peplos and carried a shield and a spear, but she was made of materials far more precious than bronze: her skin was fashioned from thin sheets of luminescent ivory molded over wood, while her helmet, peplos and shield were gold.²⁰²⁰

Pausanius, Description of Greece 1.24.5–7.

This technique of combining ivory with gold, known as chryselephantine, was a specialty of Phidias. Not only was it hugely expensive, it was also a technological marvel, as the ivory had to be imported and then carefully soaked to make it flexible. So much gold was required for this statue that it caused a scandal of its own. Pericles tamped down the criticism by pointing out that the gold elements were detachable and could be melted down to pay for the defense of Athens and the Delian League in future times of need, then recast from the original molds when the danger had passed.²¹²¹

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.13.5. According to some sources, this ingenious plan was put into action in 300 BC when the tyrant Lachares melted down the detachable gold plates to pay his mercenary army. They were replaced with bronze replicas, rather than with the gold as Pericles specified. Pausanius, Description of Greece 1.25.7. The Athena Parthenos disappeared without a trace in late antiquity.

Like the Parthenon, the chryselephantine figure of Athena was covered with symbolic sculptural ornament. The griffins on her helmet were the mythological guardians of gold. The head of Medusa on her breast warded off evil. The figure of Nike in her right hand represented victory. On the outside of her shield, the Greeks battled the invading Amazons. On the inside, the Olympians defeated the giants. On her sandals, the Lapiths fought the centaurs. On the base of the statue, the gods witnessed the birth of Pandora, the first woman.²²²² From her head to her toes, the Athena Parthenos reprised the larger message of the temple, visibly conveying the wealth, power, ingenuity – in a word, the superiority – of the Athenians, from the ancient days of gods and heroes to the age of Pericles.

Pliny the Elder, Natural History 36.4.5 (available at the Perseus Digital Library).

The Sacred Way: November 431 BC

The Athena Parthenos was dedicated during the Great Panathenaic Festival of 438 BC, although work on the temple’s exterior went on until 432 BC. Toward the end of the following year, the complex on the Acropolis formed the backdrop for Pericles as he climbed up on a specially constructed platform, artfully placed so his audience down on the ground would see him framed by the Parthenon and the Athena Promachos. Now in his sixties and completing his third decade as the leader of Athens, Pericles was in his thirteenth year as an elected general. He had been personally managing the conflict with Sparta, known as the Peloponnesian War, which had started in earnest that year. The early battles were going well for Athens.

Pericles remained undeniably the first citizen of Athens, but in a democracy that did not mean he was unopposed. His policies of broadening and strengthening the city’s democratic system ensured that he had enemies, who were perpetually on the watch for weakness. In recent years they had been attacking him through some of his unorthodox relationships, particularly those with Phidias and Aspasia. Accusations of immorality and graft had, perhaps with some basis, dogged the sculptor throughout the Acropolis building projects. He was also accused of including portraits of himself and Pericles among the mythological Greeks fighting the Amazons on the shield of the Athena Parthenos, and was imprisoned on a charge of impiety.²³²³ Phidias ended up leaving Athens for Olympia, where he created a huge chryselephantine sculpture of Zeus that would be accounted one of the wonders of the ancient world.

Plutarch, Pericles 31.

Aspasia turned out to be a greater vulnerability for Pericles. She was his most powerful confidante and was famous for her intellect as well as her beauty. He freely acknowledged her, making no effort to mask their relationship. Her house became a regular stop on his daily walk through the city, and he would kiss his hand to her when she appeared in her window at the appointed time.²⁴²⁴ Besides being a mistress and so essentially an independent woman, Aspasia was also, even more dangerously, a foreigner. She hailed from Miletus, one of the Ionian colonies that had been involved in the revolt against the Persians.

Plutarch, Pericles 24.

Athenians nursed a deep distrust of foreigners and tried to keep them at arm’s length. They had to compete in separate games during the Panathenaic Festival and had few political rights. Rumor had it that even the most quintessential of Athenians, Pericles, might be subject to their pernicious influence through Aspasia. Female, foreign and not his wife, she was an easy target and was publicly tried for lewd behavior. Pericles sprang to her defense; according to Plutarch, he made a most uncharacteristic outburst on her behalf, weeping with such emotion that the shocked jurors, accustomed to his famous poise, acquitted her on the spot.²⁵²⁵

Plutarch, Pericles 32.

The comic playwright Aristophanes would later claim that Pericles started the Peloponnesian War either to distract from the scandals of Phidias or to avenge the abduction of two prostitutes working for Aspasia, but neither theory has been substantiated.²⁶²⁶ Relations between the Greek city-states were increasingly contentious as the unifying Persian threat receded into the past, though Pericles’ specific rationale for leading Athens into war with Sparta remains obscure. After his long tenure as a general he had to be aware that Sparta, with its tradition of military excellence and large network of wealthy client states, would be a formidable foe. Pericles may have believed that their conflicting interests made war inevitable, and that the best chance of victory for Athens would be in a quick campaign of his own initiation.

Aristophanes, Peace 605–11; and Acharnians 515ff; see also Anthony J. Podlecki, Perikles and His Circle (Routledge, 1998), 104–5, 112–13.

At first, the plan went well. Pericles’ strategy was to protect the city of Athens and depend heavily on the navy to harass the enemy while avoiding major engagements on land. The Athenian navy defeated Sparta’s ally Corinth in an early engagement at Corfu with remarkably few Athenian casualties.

By tradition, those cut down in battle were cremated on the spot and their bones brought back to Athens for burial in a common grave just outside the city in an annual ceremony. Marathon was the only exception, the soldiers who died there being considered so heroic that they got a special monument on the field of battle.²⁷²⁷ The war with Sparta was not (yet) seen as unusual, so the normal protocols were followed. As the winter of 431/430 approached and the campaign season ended, Athenians prepared for a state funeral and selected Pericles to give a speech in praise of the fallen.

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.34.5.

Since there were not (yet) many to mourn, he did not spend much time on consolation after he had climbed onto the platform in front of the new Acropolis temple complex. His theme was, rather, the glory of Athens and why it was in the best interest of all that Athens rather than Sparta prevail in this conflict. Sparta was a monarchy with a tightly regimented society that gave little value to the rights of individuals. According to Pericles, what made Athens exceptional was the city’s experiment in democracy, through which free citizens could rise on their merits under the rule of law:

Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbor for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.

Pericles then praised Athenian democracy for nurturing cultural excellence and personal responsibility, and for celebrating open public debate where each man could have his say:

We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and, instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all.

Athens presented a “singular spectacle of daring and deliberation” in which courageous men “are never tempted to shrink from danger.” Moreover, said Pericles, “In generosity we are equally singular, acquiring our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favors. . . . And it is only the Athenians, who, fearless of consequences, confer their benefits not from calculations of expediency, but in the confidence of liberality.”

Pericles declared Athens to be “the school of Greece,” for no other people were “equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility, as the Athenian.” Indeed, the greatness of democratic Athens needed no poet like Homer to glorify it for future generations, as it was proved in deeds – and it justified the Athenians in extending their influence widely:

For Athens alone of her contemporaries is found when tested to be greater than her reputation, and alone gives no occasion to her assailants to blush at the antagonist by whom they have been worsted, or to her subjects to question her title by merit to rule. Rather, the admiration of the present and succeeding ages will be ours, since we have not left our power without witness, but have shown it by mighty proofs; and far from needing a Homer for our panegyrist, or other of his craft whose verses might charm for the moment only for the impression which they gave to melt at the touch of fact, we have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring, and everywhere, whether for evil or for good, have left imperishable monuments behind us.

Having extolled the unique character of Athens in detail, Pericles concluded that the Athenian “stake in the struggle is not the same as theirs who have no such blessings to lose,” and that the fallen heroes he was honoring were “men whose fame, unlike that of most Greeks, will be found to be only commensurate with their deserts.”²⁸²⁸

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.35–46.

Pericles’ portrait of Athens was obviously idealized, like the beautiful figures on the Parthenon. The citizens of Athens could not all have been either so free of jealousy and anger or so law-abiding; and like other societies of the time, they accepted slavery and the disenfranchisement of women as proper and just. But the idealization was founded on a truth: the political liberty born under Cleisthenes and nurtured under Ephialtes – and Pericles himself – had created unprecedented opportunities for achievement, including the artistic excellence so clearly displayed in the gorgeous monuments behind Pericles as he spoke. Surely, the old statesman and general might be forgiven for assuming that even greater feats lay ahead for Athens as he prepared for the next year’s military campaign.

Athens: 429 BC

A plague had arrived in Athens along with the warm spring weather of 430 BC. Generally accompanied by a violent cough, skin blisters and raging fever, it brought death in about a week. It was wildly infectious, cutting down entire families who were crowded into the city while the Spartans controlled growing portions of the countryside. The death toll was in the thousands; there were so many victims that when a pyre was lit to cremate one individual, people would creep out of the shadows with more bodies, throw them on the fire and run away.

Weakened by the disease, Athens was less successful in the second year of its war. Sparta had invaded Attica again. Pericles continued emphasizing the navy and pointed to the great strengths that Athens still possessed, but the people were demoralized. Pericles lost his generalship and was fined for fraud.

He regained his position the following year, but was now suffering from a slower but still deadly strain of the plague himself. Two of his sons had already died. When the end was near, in the autumn of 429 BC, Aspasia put a protective charm around his neck, and he observed with amusement that he must be very sick indeed to put up with such a superstition. His chamber was crowded with government officials, generals and friends, who reminisced about his great accomplishments and military victories. Pericles hushed them, saying that those things were not true victory. His life’s work had been to govern by persuasion rather than force, and to honor what Athens had achieved as a democracy rather than a dictatorship. “My real triumph,” he said, “was that no Athenian wore mourning because of me.”²⁹²⁹ They were reported to be his final words.

Plutarch, Pericles 38.

After Pericles

The successors of Pericles, less skillful and less dedicated to democratic principles, exploited the democratic process to enhance their own power. The Peloponnesian War dragged on for many more years, punctuated by an uneasy truce, but the tide was turning against the Athenians – especially after a calamitous attempt to conquer Sicily in 415 BC severely debilitated the city’s capacity to fight. Many allies revolted after a disastrous naval battle at Aegospotami. The Spartans besieged Athens, finally breaching the city walls in 404 BC.

Sparta imposed a new governing authority of thirty conservative aristocrats, the sort of men who had been so resistant to the democratic reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles in the 460s. The Athenians called this group “tyrants,” and eventually a popular uprising restored the democratic system, but it was not long-lived. As the fourth century unfolded, new powers emerged to challenge the Greeks – first Philip of Macedon and then his son Alexander the Great, who dominated the Greek world and beyond during his brief life (356–323 BC). Farther afield, a city on the Italian peninsula was consolidating power and extending its sway. Rome would conquer Greece in 146 BC, and Athens would begin its long history of being a noted cultural center but not a political power.

There is no evidence that Pericles ever met the outstandingly curious – and ugly – young man who was born in Athens right around the time that Aeschylus introduced The Persians, but there are strong indications that Aspasia may have. Socrates was not a quiet, reflective sort of philosopher but rather a self-described “gadfly” who constantly asked impertinent and inconvenient questions in his pursuit of the truth.³⁰³⁰ Many people undoubtedly found him irritating, but Aspasia enjoyed the companionship of free spirits. Socrates was rumored to be a visitor to her house, some said for conversation, others said for different reasons.

Plato, Apology.

Shortly after the Spartan-imposed tyrants had been expelled from Athens, the city’s democratic government sentenced Socrates to death on charges of having corrupted the youth of Athens – those pure and perfect creatures immortalized on the Parthenon frieze. As Athens found itself in a precarious state economically and politically, the sort of questions that would previously have been tolerated were now considered seditious. Socrates accepted the death sentence on the grounds that he loved Athens and believed its government to be just, and he calmly drank the poison hemlock when it was brought to him.

His followers were less accepting. Plato, most notably, developed a skepticism of democracy after his teacher’s execution. In The Republic, Plato ranks democracy near the bottom of his list of government types. He argues that the blind pursuit of freedom can become a kind of slavery when the city is governed by those who know how to win elections, not those with the people’s best interests at heart.³¹³¹ In Plato’s ideal system, government would be guided by a constitution that guarantees justice for all citizens, but power would be wielded by a benign monarch with a vested interest in the long-term success and stability of the state.

Plato, The Republic VIII.555b–IX.580b.

Plato took up Pericles’ posthumous reputation directly in his less well-known dialogue Menexenus. The piece is a conversation between Socrates and Menexenus, a young Athenian, about the now-annual oration for the war dead. In a none-too-gentle mockery of Pericles, Socrates delivers a speech he claims was composed by Aspasia, and even suggests that Pericles’ famous funeral oration was also written by his mistress. Whereas Pericles made a bold assertion of Athenian exceptionalism in his speech, Socrates focuses on praising the deceased and suggests that Athenians, instead of trying to reshape the world, need to accept their place in it, for “[a] mortal man cannot expect to have everything in his own life turning out according to his will . . . .”³²³²

Plato, Menexenus.

Athens’s greatest philosopher thus reflected on the legacy of its greatest statesman with more irony than reverence. But while Plato may well have been right in noting the flaws of Athenian democracy, fortunately for Western civilization he had a pupil of his own named Aristotle who would leave a far more favorable record of it.³³³³ The city’s political and cultural achievements in the Periclean age remain no less impressive for having been fleeting. Indeed, what was created there during those brief decades inspired each of the following chapters of this book, and it remains a powerful – if controversial – legacy to this day.

For the tension between the Platonic and Aristotelian schools of thought, see Arthur Herman, The Cave and the Light: Plato vs. Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization (Random House, 2014).

1 Plutarch, Pericles 12.

2 Plutarch, Pericles 12.

3 Plutarch, Pericles 8. Pericles’ chief political opponent was named Thucydides (possibly related to the historian of the same name).

4 Stephen V. Tracy, Pericles: A Sourcebook and Reader (University of California, 2009), 15, 22. Of the three tragedies that Aeschylus presented at this festival, only The Persians survives. The first play, Phineas, and the third, Glaucus, apparently both dealt with more traditional, mythological subjects.

5 Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution 3.17; see also Peter J. Brand, “Athens and Sparta: Democracy vs. Dictatorship,” Ancient World Online, available via https://umdrive.memphis.edu/pbrand/public/.

6 This sentiment is expressed by the goddess herself when she appears in the final act of Aeschylus’s Eumenides, the third in his trio of plays about the curse on the house of Agamemnon.

7 Herodotus, The Histories 7.34–36.

8 Aeschylus, The Persians, trans. Robert Potter, available at http://classics.mit.edu/Aeschylus/persians.html.

9 Herodotus, The Histories 5.97–105.

10 In his account of the Battle of Marathon, Herodotus mentions a courier going to Sparta and Athens, but not this fabled run, which first appears in Plutarch. Herodotus, The Histories 6.105; and Plutarch, De gloria Atheniensium 3 (available at the Perseus Digital Library).

11 Herodotus, The Histories 6.102–18.

12 Herodotus, The Histories 7.8.

13 Plutarch, Pericles 7.

14 Pausanius, Description of Greece 1.28.2 (available at the Perseus Digital Library).

15 The design of the Parthenon was so complex that Ictinus wrote a mathematical treatise on its intricacies, which is now lost.

16 This pediment was severely damaged in the seventeenth century and is almost impossible to reconstruct.

17 The Panathenaic Stadium still exists; it hosted the 2004 Olympiad.

18 According to legend, this rather homely but extremely venerable statue had fallen out of the sky shortly after the foundation of Athens. It was evacuated from Athens during the Persian invasion, and thus survived the sack of the city.

19 As quoted in Richard Neer, The Emergence of the Classical Style in Greek Sculpture (University of Chicago, 2010), 103.

20 Pausanius, Description of Greece 1.24.5–7.

21 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.13.5. According to some sources, this ingenious plan was put into action in 300 BC when the tyrant Lachares melted down the detachable gold plates to pay his mercenary army. They were replaced with bronze replicas, rather than with the gold as Pericles specified. Pausanius, Description of Greece 1.25.7. The Athena Parthenos disappeared without a trace in late antiquity.

22 Pliny the Elder, Natural History 36.4.5 (available at the Perseus Digital Library).

23 Plutarch, Pericles 31.

24 Plutarch, Pericles 24.

25 Plutarch, Pericles 32.

26 Aristophanes, Peace 605–11; and Acharnians 515ff; see also Anthony J. Podlecki, Perikles and His Circle (Routledge, 1998), 104–5, 112–13.

27 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.34.5.

28 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.35–46.

29 Plutarch, Pericles 38.

30 Plato, Apology.

31 Plato, The Republic VIII.555b–IX.580b.

32 Plato, Menexenus.

33 For the tension between the Platonic and Aristotelian schools of thought, see Arthur Herman, The Cave and the Light: Plato vs. Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization (Random House, 2014).

Brutus (so-called), c. 300 BC.