Pericles

Son of Xanthippus the victor of Mycale 479 and Agariste of the Alcmaeonid house — and so Cleisthenes's great-nephew, a child of the two highest fifth-century Athenian families on either side. Dominant figure in Athenian politics from c. 461 (the ostracism of Cimon, in which Pericles is the prosecuting voice) until his death in autumn 429. Architect of the Periclean building programme on the Acropolis (Parthenon 447–432, Propylaea 437–432, the Erechtheion still under construction at his death), financed from the Delian League treasury after its 454 transfer from Delos to Athens. The strategic doctrine he imposed at the war's outset — keep the citizen body inside the Long Walls, refuse the open battle Sparta wanted, send the fleet to harass the Peloponnesian coast, attrition rather than engagement — is the policy whose discipline died with him. Delivered the *epitaphios logos* of winter 431/430, the canonical statement of Athenian self-presentation that calls the city the school of Hellas. Contracted the plague in summer 429 and is given by Plutarch a deathbed boast that he never gave any fellow Athenian cause to put on mourning. Father of Pericles the Younger by Aspasia of Miletus — the bastard son made citizen by special decree after the plague killed his legitimate sons, executed at Athens after Arginusae 406.

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