pyrokid000 asked:
i need to determine the contributions and signifigance of Pericles to world history.
Joyce
i need to determine the contributions and signifigance of Pericles to world history.
Joyce
Tags: Pericles, Signifigance, World History
Vanessa
that’s a deep one! why don’t you try
hope it will help!
Ann
Pericles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of Athens in the city’s Golden Age (specifically, between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars). He was descended, through his mother, from the Alcmaeonid family.
Pericles had such a profound influence on Athenian society that Thucydides, his contemporary historian, acclaimed him as “the first citizen of Athens”. Pericles turned the Delian League into an Athenian empire and led his countrymen during the first two years of the Peloponnesian War. The period during which he led Athens, roughly from 461 to 429 BC, is sometimes known as the “Age of Pericles,” though the period thus denoted can include times as early as the Persian Wars, or as late as the next century.
Pericles promoted the arts and literature; this was a chief reason Athens holds the reputation of being the educational and cultural centre of the ancient Greek world. He started an ambitious project that built most of the surviving structures on the Acropolis (including the Parthenon). This project beautified the city, exhibited its glory, and gave work to the people. Furthermore, Pericles fostered Athenian democracy to such an extent that critics call him a populist.
Pericles’ most visible legacy can be found in the literary and artistic works of his Golden Age, most of which survive to this day. The Acropolis, though in ruins, still stands and is a symbol of modern Athens. Paparrigopoulos wrote that these masterpieces are “sufficient to render the name of Greece immortal in our world”.
In politics, Victor L. Ehrenberg argues that a basic element of Pericles’ legacy is Athenian imperialism, which denies true democracy and freedom to the people of all but the ruling state.The promotion of such an arrogant imperialism is said to have ruined Athens. Nonetheless, other analysts maintain an Athenian humanism illustrated in the Golden Age. The freedom of expression is regarded as the lasting legacy deriving from this period. Pericles is lauded as “the ideal type of the perfect statesman in ancient Greece” and his Funeral Oration is nowadays synonymous with the struggle for participatory democracy and civic pride.
Scott
PERICLES was the leading statesman of Athens for some forty years, during which period she reached her highest point of power and splendour. He finally swept away the last traces of aristocratic institutions which had been disappearing one by one since the reforms of Solon. It was Pericles who raised Athens to be an Empire-state.
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