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
FIVE - A Greek Empire (ca. 460–445)
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 450s saw the Athenians vote to pay themselves (on a motion of Pericles) and also elect to begin a war with Sparta and its allies. At about the same time as this war began, the Athenians (ca. 460/59) dispatched a large invasion force to Egypt, ostensibly to assist in a revolt from Persia but almost certainly also in an effort to exploit the power vacuum that would result from the Persians’ departure. Pericles’ political career thus developed in an environment of Athenian aggressiveness that would not be equaled until Athens’ invasion of Sicily in 415. The disaster suffered by the fleet in Egypt in 454 and eventual problems with Athens’ subject states ultimately provoked a period of retrenchment. About the year 449 the Athenians, almost certainly with Pericles’ encouragement, negotiated an agreement of an informal type with the Persian Great King. With Persia's threat nullified, in immediately subsequent years Athens and Pericles would turn their attention to consolidating the Athenians’ Greek empire. Pericles’ ability to convince the Athenians to expand and exploit their Greek empire while agreeing to end hostilities with the hated Persians stands as a remarkable testimony to his own rhetorical powers and his vision of Athenian dominance in Hellas.
Pericles and his political opponents apparently shared the belief that Athens deserved to rule other Greeks, although they seem to have differed on attitudes toward Persia and Sparta. During the years from about 461 to 446/5, the Athenians would reverse their foreign policy toward the Spartans, engaging in a long, desultory conflict that historians call the First Peloponnesian War (to differentiate it from the great Peloponnesian War beginning in 431). During the same period, the Athenians launched a major offensive into Persian-controlled Egypt, only to retrench after a disaster there. A few years later (and after another anti-Persian expedition), the Athenians sought some kind of accommodation or treaty with their former Persian enemies. In the early 440s, other Greeks thus witnessed or suspected the anomaly of an Athens making war on the allies who had helped the Greeks fight Persia while negotiating for peace with the Persians themselves. This situation provoked a crisis in the Athenian empire and led to even harsher measures of reprisal and control by the Athenians.
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- Pericles and the Conquest of HistoryA Political Biography, pp. 103 - 125Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016