Some stuff I found on Pericles for ya'll

"Golden Age of Pericles"

- Lasted from around 470 to 300 BCE.

 “Not membership of a particular class, but the ability which the man processes.” Pericles says that in society, your class does not matter, what matters is how you contribute to democracy. 

Sentiment reflected in “everyone is equal before the law" and “power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole of the people.” 

Brought in basic principles of democracy, citizenship, and brought the arts and architecture into new heights. Pericles reestablished literature, philosophy, and religion by seeing to the reconstruction of the Parthenon and the Acropolis it sits on.

Through his support of the Arts, tragic dramas would reach the culmination of popularity and appeal to mass audiences, also maintained the tradition in which theatre served as moral and intellectual education for the people, depicting legends, wars and real-life events.

Bias of Ancient Sources:

During the rule of Perikles, Athens offered patronage to the playwright Herodotus, who had previously been rejected by Corinth and Thebes. When he read his Histories aloud, Athens paid him 10 talents – a small fortune – from the public purse. Might there have been a pro-Athenian bias in his work?

"Agariste dreamt during her pregnancy that she gave birth to a lion, and a few days later become the mother of Pericles."

"The reason for his success was not his power as a speaker merely, but, as Thucydides says, the reputation of his life and the confidence reposed in him as one who was manifestly proven to be utterly disinterested and superior to bribes. He made the city, great as it was when he took it, the greatest and richest of all cities, and grew to be superior in power to kings and tyrants." - Plutarch, Life of Pericles

Last Monday's task comparing the two terms:

Pericles and demagogue - bad faith politician, looking at short term people pleasing tactics.

A demagogue is a popular politician or rabble-rouser that gains a following through turning the common folk against the elite, especially through oratory means that stirs up a passion in their listeners. Demagogues overturn established norms of political conduct, or promise or threaten to do so. They exploit a fundamental weakness in democracy: because ultimate power is held by the people, it is possible for the people to give that power to someone who appeals to the lowest common denominator of a large segment of the population. Pericles could use these demagogy techniques to shape the system to save his own skin, using scapegoats in order to offset the heat of being in charge.

Democracy - long term general public pleasing.

Democracy is a form of government in which the people have the authority to choose their governing officials or to deliberate and decide legislation via direct democracy. This system was comprised of three separate institutions: the ekklesia, a sovereign governing body that wrote laws and dictated foreign policy; the boule, a council of representatives from the ten Athenian tribes and the dikasteria, the popular courts in which citizens argued cases before a group of lottery-selected jurors. Democracy nowadays is generally considered as a pretty fair and just system.


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