The Age of Pericles and the Parthenon
Pericles was elected general almost every year for thirty years and Athens rebuilt the Acropolis with other people's money. He was not a ruler in any formal sense. Athens had no head of state, all officials were chosen by lot except the generals, and every decision was taken by an assembly of any citizen who chose to attend — so his position rested entirely on persuading it, year after year, and Thucydides' remark is that it was in name a democracy and in fact rule by the first citizen. The domestic programme was the payment of citizens for public service, which made office possible for men who worked, and the building programme. The Parthenon was begun in 447 BC and finished in fifteen years, and the money came from the tribute of the allies — which was attacked at the time as dressing the city up like a vain woman with the funds of the league. He also passed a citizenship law in 451 BC restricting the status to those with two Athenian parents, which he later had to have suspended for his own son. His foreign policy was the refusal to concede anything to Sparta, and the funeral oration Thucydides gives him at the end of the first year of the war is the fullest statement anyone made of what a democracy thought it was for. The plague arrived in 430 BC and killed him the following year. The buildings are also why the argument matters less than it should. The Parthenon was paid for out of an empire's tribute by a democracy that voted for it, and it is the object the whole of western architecture has been referring to ever since.
- Year: 447 BCE
- Category: Cultural
