Pericles and the Conquest of History by Samons Loren J. II

Author:Samons, Loren J. II
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2015-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

Eight

Athenian Culture and the Intellectual Revolution: Pericles and the People

Wealth, democracy, empire, Athens’ national character, and the intellectual heat of fifth-century Greece combined to make Pericles’ environment unique. Both an exponent of and a catalyst for this fervor, Pericles’ relations with other thinkers and artists of the fifth century demand our attention even as they frustrate our comprehension. Often portrayed as a friend of intellectuals like Anaxagoras, poets like Sophocles, or scholars like Herodotus, Pericles in fact represents a very different strain of thought from all three, one which renders the state or collective itself and the future opinions of men the most important factors in determining policy and making moral valuations. Pericles’ precise philosophical and religious views cannot be recovered, but analysis of his career, his ideas in Thucydides, and the details Plutarch provides suggest that he combined orthodox religious practice with a certain skepticism about divine causation. Both a radical and a conservative, Pericles emphasized the need to respect society’s norms even as he asked his fellow citizens to reshape those norms in the service of Athens’ place in history. Pericles’ most important intellectual, political, and perhaps even personal relationship proved to be that with the Athenian people.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.