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The Athenians formed the world's first democratic constitution a decade before 500B.C. Pericles' reforms a half-century later brought this modern system of
government to its classical form, and it was in Pericles' Athens that the Greeks
achieved their greatest accomplishments. Although the rest of the nation tended to
be characterized by monarchical, rigidly bureaucratic, command structures,
democracy was taken as far as it would go until modern times in Athens, perhaps
farther than everywhere else and at any time (Kagan, 2019).
Pericles was a famous Greek statesman, public speaker, and general who lived
throughout Athens' golden age, which occurred between the Persian and
Peloponnesian Wars. Pericles ruled Athens from 461 B.C. to 429 B.C., which is
recognized as the Pericles period.
During Pericles' political ascendancy, the last period of Athens' political growth and
democracy prevailed. Pericles was remembered as "strategos autokrator," or
commander-in-chief of the armed forces, after holding the office of strategos
(general) for 17 years. Pericles oversaw Athens' foreign policy, which included the
establishment of empires, as well as its domestic policy, which included the advent
of "extreme democracy."
Thousands of landless, poor Athenian males, known as thetes, were able to engage
in democracy, especially in the Ekklesia and the Common Courts, thanks to various
aspects of this policy. This was a significant departure from the Cleisthenic
democracy that had accompanied it.
Only those who could afford to partake in civil affairs, including the nobility and the
hoplites, did so under Cleisthenic democracy.
In reality, liberal democracy was the natural result of Athenian democratic theory.
As a result, Pericles created an urban electoral machine in which poorer people
supported his political agendas in large numbers as they stood to significantly
benefit from the outcomes.
Pericles envisioned Athens as a light for all of Greece, a symbol of what Greek
society could do when all of its energies were completely harnessed and effectively
driven. His interactions with Anaxagoras, Herodotus, Lysias' Syracusan aunt, and
Aspasia show his cosmopolitan preferences and ability to accept outsiders. The
emergence of Piraeus as the Mediterranean's most cosmopolitan society, a polyglot
city of foreign traders, artisans, and cults, was perhaps an unavoidable consequence
of Athens' imperial growth. Despite their animosity toward non-citizens, the
Athenian assembly and people appeared open and welcoming.
Pericles' abrupt demise by epidemic at the start of the Peloponnesian War (429 BC)
revealed a flaw in his diplomatic strategy: he had neglected to properly prepare
other leaders to take over the helm in his absence. After more than 17 years of being
led by a single individual, the Athenian democracy was at a loss as to how to
continue the war or retain Pericles' empire. For a decade, under the leadership of
smaller, smaller citizens, society will lurch from one crisis to the next. Athens'
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