Pericles reasoned that if Sparta saw no prospect of a quick victory, it might be deterred from beginning a war with Athens. If war did occur, the denial of a quick victory would turn the war into a battle of attrition, which Athens could win. This strategy underpinned Pericles's speech favoring war and is also echoed in his famous Funeral Oration, given after the war began Thucydides, I.
New York: Penguin Classics, , pp. Pericles understood that it would be very difficult to implement this strategy in actual war, when an increasingly heady Athenian Assembly would likely want to take the battle directly to the enemy. If the initial phase of the conflict favored Athens, the Assembly might be tempted into adventures to increase the size of the empire like it did when it invaded Egypt after earlier defeating Persia.
Alternatively, if a siege of Athens began to wear on the people, Athenians might lose patience and go over the walls to break the Spartan's encirclement.
Both reactions would have undermined Pericles's basic strategy and proven disastrous from his standpoint.
The deeper, and humbler, sources of the ethos dated back even further, to a time of anomie and illiteracy—the Greek Dark Ages, scholars used to call the period that followed the mysterious destruction of the great palace kingdoms of the Bronze Age around b. The wondrous ruins left behind—the massive bridges and beehive tombs, the towering edifices inscribed with indecipherable lettering—spoke of daunting feats of engineering.
Clearly there had been a previous age when mortals had realized possibilities all but unthinkable to lesser specimens. Those people had mingled so closely with immortals as to assume an altogether new, heroic category of being, celebrated in tales sung by ordinary Greeks. The reverence is embedded in The Iliad , which extols Achilles as the greatest of all the legendary Greek heroes—the man who, given the choice, opted for a brief but exceptional life over a long and undistinguished one.
If I voyage back to the fatherland I love, my pride, my glory dies. Living so that others will remember you is your solace in the face of the erasure you know awaits. What is most startling about their existential response is its clear-eyed rejection of transcendence. The cosmos is indifferent, and only human terms apply: Perform exceptional deeds so as to earn the praise of others whose existence is as brief as your own.
But an ethos of the extraordinary poses a practical problem. Most people are, by definition, perfectly ordinary, the ancient Greeks included. Ultimately, they found a solution to this problem in propounding a kind of participatory exceptionalism, encouraging a shared sense of identity that also made them highly competitive.
Merely to be Greek was to be extraordinary. In vanquishing the vastly superior forces of this world empire, the Greeks had given their poets a contemporary feat to sing about. Herodotus initiated his Histories —which is to say, initiated the practice of history itself—with these words:. The Greco-Persian Wars helped convert the ethos of the extraordinary from ancestor reverence into a motivational agenda.
And nowhere were this pride and this pushing more assertively on display than in fifth-century Athens, where business was conducted within sight of the Acropolis.
The architectural splendors, proof of undaunted genius and vitality, had arisen out of the ruins to which the older shrines of the Acropolis had been reduced in b. The democracy that had gradually developed in Athens added considerably to the ethos of supreme distinction. Elevation in the minds of others, now and in the future, went hand and hand with demonstrations of power:. If that meant stoking political hubris, Pericles was more than ready. Quite the contrary, he celebrated the real-life deeds of imperial Athens as indelible proof of superiority:.
Even, or especially, a democratic society with an exceptionalist heritage—as Plato and his fellow Athenians were hardly the last to discover—may prove unprepared to respond wisely when arrogance takes over and expectations go awry. Neither Socrates nor Plato ever challenged the Greek conviction that achieving a life that matters requires extraordinary effort and results in an extraordinary state.
But Socrates was determined to interrogate what being exceptional means. Only that kind of extraordinary accomplishment matters—and the same could be said for city-states. Power and the glory it brings are no measure of their stature. The virtuous citizen, indeed, is inseparable from the virtuous polis, his claim to significance rooted in his commitment to the common good. Pericles himself oversaw the building of the Parthenon , at the Acropolis in Athens, which took 15 years to complete.
In B. The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit.
The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited. Tyson Brown, National Geographic Society. National Geographic Society. For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher.
They will best know the preferred format. When you reach out to them, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer.
If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media. Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service. Culture Reference. Who was Pericles? Pericles left and Pheidias consult about creation of statue of Athena in this painting.
Athens: power and glory. Herodotus, the historian. Share Tweet Email. Read This Next Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London. Animals Wild Cities Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London Love them or hate them, there's no denying their growing numbers have added an explosion of color to the city's streets. India bets its energy future on solar—in ways both small and big. Environment Planet Possible India bets its energy future on solar—in ways both small and big Grassroots efforts are bringing solar panels to rural villages without electricity, while massive solar arrays are being built across the country.
Epic floods leave South Sudanese to face disease and starvation. Travel 5 pandemic tech innovations that will change travel forever These digital innovations will make your next trip safer and more efficient. But will they invade your privacy? Go Further. Animals Wild Cities This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city. Animals This frog mysteriously re-evolved a full set of teeth.
0コメント