the greatest of Athenian statesmen, was born about the beginning of the fifth century B.C. The family influences amid which he was brought up were well calculated to foster political ambition. His extraction was noble; his patrimony was splendid; his relations held some of the high offices in the state; his maternal grandfather Cleisthenes was one of the expellers of the Pisistratidæ; and his father Xanippus was the conqueror of the Persians at the battle of Mycale. Yet these advantages of birth did not induce the youthful Pericles to enter prematurely into the arena of politics. Like an ancient athlete who subjected himself to a careful process of training before entering the lists at Olympia, he patiently prepared himself by the most thorough education. From Damon, a professed teacher of music, but in reality an inveterate politician, he learned the history and principles of the Athenian constitution. In the school of Zeno the Eleatic, he acquired the art of carrying an argument into the most intricate subtleties and sophistries, and of "making the worse appear the better reason." But it was especially under Anaxagoras, "the Intelligence," as he was called, that his mind attained its fullest development. In the genial atmosphere of that great man's philosophy his intellect expanded to receive the rays of truth, his heart warmed Pericles, with the largest sympathies, and his spirit stood forth clear, serene, and calm. The refining influence even passed into his outward frame. His features assumed a settled repose, and his bearing became instinct with an easy dignity.

Thoroughly prepared by this complete process of training, Pericles began his political career about 469 B.C. In no long time he was the recognised leader of the democratic party against the warlike Cimon, the chief of the aristocracy. His conduct in this position was very unlike that of other demagogues. Dwelling apart in self-satisfied seclusion like a king, and wrapped up in his own thoughts like a philosopher, he showed himself to be the master and not the slave of the mob. He would not injure his self-respect by making his power subservient to his avarice, and wringing from the horny grasp of labour its hard-earned gains. He would not demean his talents by studying the vicious tastes of the populace, and by haranguing them on every paltry occasion. To parade himself often in public, and to mingle in the society of his friends, was, he thought, to impair his magisterial dignity. Even to wince under popular abuse, or to return the enmity of political adversaries, was, according to him, to act unworthy of a man of superior capacity. He pursued a far different line of policy. The art of raising Athens to the height of prosperity was the only subject worthy of his study. The quiet of his own chamber was his only proper sphere. When he condescended to punish any public insolence, he waited silently until the reviler had exhausted himself, and then ordered his servant to light the rascal home, or to do him some other act of kindness. When it pleased him to court the favour of the people, he did it like a prince, giving them money out of the treasury to frequent the theatres, and paying them for their military service and for their attendance at the courts of justice. When he deigned to appear as a public orator, it was for some great cause worthy of his transcendent genius. Then his usual cloak of calm reserve was thrown aside, and he stood forth in all the native earnestness of his character. He mounted the bema with his oration thoroughly premeditated, and began to speak with a prayer to the gods that no inappropriate word might fall from his lips. All the resources of his highly-gifted nature were immediately brought into play. He wielded the powers of his majestic intelligence and the stores of his spacious imagination with consummate ease and mastery. His gestures rose into commanding dignity, his words flowed fast and free, and nothing could resist the winning sweetness of his tone. The people swayed hither and thither before the breath of his mouth. "When I throw him," said his political antagonist Thucydides, "he swears he has never been down, and even persuades the populace to believe it." In fact, he was, as his contemporaries called him, a real Olympian. He thundered and he lightened, and darted from his tongue the bolts of almighty Jove. Nor was the foreign policy of Pericles, though less imposing, at all less far-sighted and less successful than his internal policy. He managed to take no active part in the expedition which resulted in the defeat of the Athenians at Tanagra in 457 B.C. The disastrous inroad of Tolmides into Boeotia in 447 B.C. was stigmatized with his disapproval at its very outset; and his remark on that occasion, that Time, the best of all counsellors, would corroborate his advice, became ever memorable. His measures were also successful in saving the city in 445 B.C. from a threatened revolt of her tributaries, and a simultaneous invasion of the Lacedemonians. Bribing the Spartans to return in peace to their own country, he concentrated all the strength of the state against the factious Euboeans, brought them to terms of submission, and thus crushed a dangerous insurrection in the bud.

It was about 444 B.C., when Pericles had become absolute master of the Athenian destinies, that the most comprehensive and most magnificent schemes of policy that were ever entertained by any heathen statesman began to pass before his mind. The greatness of Athens, he thought, must be made to depend upon the concentrated influence of every excellence. She must be at once a fortress of strength, a city of palaces, an abode of refinement, and a temple of the gods. Her friends must be fascinated by her beauty and attractions; and her enemies must be overawed by her splendour and majesty. Her citizens and dependents must love and admire her as a cherishing and peerless mother; and all Greece must reverence and obey her as a stately mistress and an accomplished teacher. The first measure of Pericles for the execution of this great plan was to establish the political superiority of the city. Continuing the Athenian policy of exacting tribute in lieu of military service from the rest of the Hellenic confederacy, he drained the resources of the other Greek cities, and amassed the money within his own. Urging as a plea that Athens, if she protected the independence of Greece, might use this money for any purpose whatever, he employed it in rearing up the fabric of the national strength. A third long wall was built to the Piraeus, in order that the communication between the city and its port might be rendered more secure. A fleet of sixty galleys was sent out to sea for eight months annually, in order that the sailors might be insured to service, and the ships be kept ever ready for action. Several colonies were planted to draw away the surplus population from the city, and to extend the commerce and influence of the state. At the same time, the right of Athens to arbitrate in all important disputes between her subject allies was permissively claimed; so that in 440 B.C. the island of Samos, after a blockade of nine months, was reduced and punished for setting at nought this asserted supremacy. Nor, while Pericles was thus strengthening the outward fortifications, did he neglect to attend to the interior arrangements of the city. He set all the arts into their fullest activity to make it a theatre of beauty, pleasure, and refinement. Solemn festivals and religious pageants were prepared to relieve the attention and fascinate the eye. The great dramas of Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were employed to stir the imagination and elevate the soul. But it was the illustrious Phidias and his able coadjutors that were specially honoured to complete the beautiful and sublime spectacle. At their command, the genii of painting, and sculpture, and architecture were summoned to fabricate a gorgeous crown for this queen of cities. Accordingly, up on the brow of the Acropolis, with wonderful rapidity, were reared two grand and elegant structures of white marble—the Propylea, with its lofty porticoes, and the Parthenon, the most exquisite fabric that Grecian genius ever designed. The inner walls of these edifices were crowded all over with painted and sculptured figures; the intermediate ground was studded with statues; and towering over all, and visible to the mariner as he doubled the distant Cape of Sunium, rose the colossal image of Athene Promachos, with shield upraised and javelin balanced, as if in the act of protecting her favourite city, the seat of her worship and her name.

While these great works and enterprises raised Athens to a transcendent height of power and glory, they were only the occasion of involving the latter years of their great author in trial and difficulty. The Spartans, jealous of the supremacy which the Athenians were establishing under his administration, began to organize a conspiracy, and to meditate the Peloponnesian war. His political adversaries, taking advantage of the excitement produced by coming hostilities, commenced to assail him. They vented severe criticisms upon his government, charged him with the design of assuming the tyranny, and condemned his defensive attitude towards the hostile Lacedemonians. The comic poets threw every available scandal at his head, and made him the butt of every species of ridicule. There were some who, not content with attacking him directly, aimed at him indirectly by assailing his connections and acquaintances. His friend Phidias was arraigned for introducing his portrait on the shield of one of the statues of Minerva, and was thrown into prison, and left there to die. His paramour, the notorious Aspasia, was accused of pandering to his licentiousness, and was only acquitted after he had descended to plead for her life with tears and entreaties. His aged teacher also, Anaxagoras, was charged with overturning the national religion, and was sentenced to pay a fine, and to go into banishment. Yet the great statesman, completely mailed in his own probity, withstood these darts of calumny, and addressed himself to meet the attack of the Peloponnesians, who had now declared war. His tactics were directed by a policy as thorough-going and effective as it was cautious. Knowing that the enemy was superior in land forces, he collected all the moveable property of the Athenians within the walls of the city, and contented himself with assuming a defensive attitude towards the advancing invaders. Knowing also that Athens was the undisputed mistress of the seas, he sent out a fleet to make descents and reprisals upon the coasts of the Peloponnese.

This system of strategy was carried on efficiently during the first two years of the war. It might have been continued with the same result, and might have brought hostilities to a successful issue, had not an unforeseen disaster occurred to remove the able general and administrator. A plague broke out in Athens, raged with dreadful malignity, and threw the citizens into a ferment of irritable discontent. Pericles was made the scape-goat of all the national calamities, and was condemned to suffer the unreasonable ill-humour of the ungrateful populace, and the indignity of being fined. A series of private afflictions at the same time fell fast and fearfully upon him. Many of his relations and political friends died of the epidemic. His family also gradually wasted away. At length his only surviving legitimate son was carried forth lifeless. The stoical fortitude of the solitary old man now broke down. As he placed the funeral garland upon the head of the ill-starred youth, he burst into a flood of tears, and sobbed aloud. He resumed his public duties; but it soon became evident that public ingratitude and domestic misfortunes had prostrated his strength and spirit. About the middle of the year 429 B.C., a slow fever seized him, and he lay down upon his death-bed. As the closing hour drew near, his attendants, thinking him in a stupor, stood round the couch recounting the deeds of the great soul that was preparing to depart. "You have forgotten," muttered he, "my greatest praise: you have not noticed that no fellow-citizen has ever put on mourning on my account." These were the last words of this great Athenian.

The authorities for the biography of Pericles are Plutarch and Thucydides. (See also the Grecian Histories of Grote and Thirlwall.)