Pericles

Pericles (495? BC -429? BC), Athenian statesman, so influential in Athenian history that the period of his power is called the Age of Pericles.

His father was the army commander Xanthippus, victor over the Persians at Mycale in 479 BC. Pericles was especially influenced by two teachers, the Athenian Sophist and master of music Damon (flourished 5th century BC) and the Ionian philosopher Anaxagoras. Throughout his life he was conspicuous for his dignity and aloofness, but his eloquence, sagacity, uprightness, and patriotism won recognition from the majority of citizens. Among his friends were the dramatist Sophocles, the historian Herodotus, the sculptor Phidias, and the Sophist Protagoras; his mistress was the former courtesan Aspasia, a highly cultivated woman.

In Athenian politics Pericles sought to enable all citizens to take an active part in the government. Payment of citizens for their services to the state was introduced, and members of the council were chosen by lot from the entire body of Athenians. His foreign policy was expansionist. Under the Delian League, established in defense against the Persians, the Athenians created a great naval empire and embraced, as equal or subject allies, nearly all the larger islands of the Aegean Sea and many cities to the north. When the aristocratic leader Cimon, who favored friendship with Sparta, was ostracized (banished) in 461 BC, Pericles became the undisputed leader of Athens, serving for the following 15 years. He made Athens supreme at the expense of the subject city-states. With the great wealth that came into the treasury, Pericles restored the temples destroyed by the Persians and built many new structures, the most splendid of which was the Parthenon on the Acropolis. This program provided employment for the poorer citizens and made Athens the most magnificent city of the ancient world.

Under Pericles' leadership Athens became a great center of literature and art. The supremacy of Athens aroused the jealousy of the other Greek city-states, especially of Sparta, long the bitter rival of Athens. The cities feared the imperialistic schemes of Pericles and sought to overthrow Athenian domination. In 431 BC the Peloponnesian War began. Pericles summoned the country residents of Attica within the walls of Athens and allowed the Peloponnesian army to ravage the country districts. The following year a plague broke out in the overcrowded city. The people, exposed to suffering and death, resented Pericles. He was deposed from office, tried, and fined for misuse of public funds, but he was soon reinstated. He died of the plague shortly thereafter.
 

Cicero (Marcus Tullius) (106-43 BC), Roman writer, statesman, and orator. Although he had a distinguished political career, he is best known as Rome's greatest orator and as a man of letters. Born in Arpinum (now Arpino, Italy), he is also known in English as Tully. As a youth he studied law, oratory, literature, and philosophy in Rome. After brief military service and three years' experience as a lawyer defending private citizens, he traveled to Greece and Asia, where he continued his studies. He returned to Rome in 77 BC and began his political career, aligning himself with statesman and general Pompey the Great. In 74 BC he entered the Senate.

Although Cicero's family did not belong to the Roman aristocracy, he was supported in the competition for the consulship in 64 BC by most rich and powerful Romans because of their distrust of his aristocratic but less respectable rival, Lucius Sergius Catilina, known as Catiline. Cicero was elected, but during his administration Catiline organized a plot to overthrow the government. Cicero suppressed the conspiracy and had several members of Catiline's group executed. Julius Caesar and other Roman senators argued that Cicero had acted too hastily, without giving the conspirators due process of law. Because Cicero refused to make peace with Caesar, Pompey's archrival, in 58 BC he was forced into exile. After a year in Macedonia he was recalled at the instigation of Pompey.

Cicero occupied himself with reading and writing philosophy until 51 BC, when he accepted an assignment to govern the Roman province of Cilicia as proconsul. He returned to Rome in 50 BC and joined Pompey, who had by now become Caesar's bitter enemy. After Pompey was defeated by Caesar in 48 BC, Cicero, realizing that further resistance was hopeless, accepted Caesar's overtures of political friendship. While Caesar was virtual dictator of Rome, Cicero lived as a private citizen and wrote extensively. After Caesar's assassination in 44 BC, Cicero returned to politics. Hoping to see a restoration of the Republic, he supported Caesar's adopted son, Octavian, later the emperor Augustus, in a power struggle with the Roman consul Mark Antony. Octavian and Antony were reconciled, however, and Cicero was proscribed and murdered on December 7, 43 BC.

In his writings Cicero created a rich prose style that has exercised a pervasive influence on all the literary languages of Europe. His writing covers numerous subjects of intellectual interest, and he greatly enriched the vocabulary of his own language as well as those of the modern European tongues. Nearly all of his philosophical works were borrowed from Greek sources and, apart from their intrinsic merit, are of great value in preserving much of Greek philosophy that might otherwise have remained unknown. Outstanding are the treatises On the Republic, On the Laws, On Duty, and On the Nature of the Gods. His rhetorical works, written in dialogue form—particularly On the Orator—are of value as the products of an accomplished rhetorician and as a rich source of historical material. The most famous of his orations are the 4 speeches against Catiline and the 14 so-called Philippics against Antony.

Among the minor works of Cicero, the treatises On Old Age and On Friendship have always been admired for their tone of cultivated geniality. Highly important for historians are four collections of letters written by Cicero to acquaintances and friends. These letters are a spontaneous self-revelation of their author and an excellent source of information on the politics of the final years of the Roman Republic. See also Thematic Essay: Roman Political and Social Thought.