Name: NanaAma Andoh

ID: 10828858

Campus: City

Question: Critically examine Pericles achievement and state if in your opinion his relationship with
Aspasia had any impact on his decision making.
In this essay my scheme is to critically examine Pericles’ achievement and establish whether his
relationship with Aspasia had any impact on his decision making. Pericles was born to politician
Xanthippus in 495 BCE, in Athens Greece. Pericles was a Greek statesman and ruled Greece for over
thirty years in the 5th century B.C. Pericles has been credited with many accomplishments, including,
making Athens a more democratic city state, affording equal justice to all in their private difference,
championing freedom of speech, political opinion and action, expanding the empire by building a
naval fleet, supporting arts and architecture, making Athens the centre of learning and art and also
the defeat of the forces of Samos led by Pericles.

Athens was initially made more democratic under Pericles. He made decisions for the growth and
stabilization of all democratic institutions. Athens already had a version of democracy; the city-state
had a peoples tribunal and was run by a council of residents. Political action was taken by everyone
besides the wealthy because it was unpaid. There were two distinct parts of the city. The
Conservatives wanted to preserve the aristocracy in positions of authority. On the other hand, the
Democrats promoted citizen input in municipal decisions. Pericles became the leader of the
Democrats and the city-state's overall leader in 461 after the conservatives lost power and Ephialtes
was assassinated. A number of reforms enacted by Pericles affected Athenians' daily lives. Pericles
proposed to replace the Athens leadership council's aristocrats with a majority vote assembly that,
in his view, favoured the public over the few. He made his selections with the growth and stability of
democratic institutions in mind. He passed laws allowing members of the lower classes to participate
in the political process and hold public office, which they had previously been denied. Positions were
attained based on merits instead of social class.

Pericles commissioned Aeschylus to write his Persian trilogy around 472 B.C. Pericles defeated
Achaea in 454 B.C. by commanding a naval army to the Corinthian Gulf. Around that time, after
Cimon's banishment, Pericles declared it necessary for a citizen to be born in Athens and of Athenian
ancestry in order to continue to be regarded as a citizen of democratic Greece. Despite such a
legislation, Pericles let foreigners who served in the Greek army and navy, built public infrastructure,
or provided other services throughout the provinces under Athens' jurisdiction to share in the
economic gains. The Acropolis and the Parthenon were built under Pericles' direction. He led the
armed forces to take Delphi back from the Spartans and the navy to lay siege to the city.

Persia began his attempt to attack Greece when Pericles was still an infant. Persia made multiple
attempts, and while many of them were unsuccessful, some of them did result in significant damage.
In 480 B.C., Persia was able to capture Greek cities. Persia was still a serious danger when Pericles
assumed control of Athens and instituted democracy. He did succeed in stopping them, and he
eventually worked for peace. Multiple Greek states were at war with one another and in instability
during the time. Through the Five Years' Truce of 451, Pericles was able to end warfare and internal
strife and bring about peace.

According to Pericles, the greatest triumphs are preceded by the greatest perils. Over the years, he
shown that he was an expert crisis manager. He put down a lot of uprisings throughout the Greek
empire. He made sure that there was enough approved land available to support the expanding
population in Athens and neighboring regions. He was able to contain the Boeotian and Euboean
crisis, which endangered important supply routes to Athens and made it easier for the Athenian
navy to govern the sea.

Pericles worked to revive Greece's culture and social cohesion during the years of calm. Most states
and legions, with the exception of Sparta, agreed to play a supporting role. Many of the landmarks
and temples that Persia had destroyed were now being built or rebuilt by Pericles. Because there
was significant opposition at the time from some places, the revival of Athens is truly something that
may be deduced in retrospect. Pericles used funds from the league's treasury to support a number
of significant cultural initiatives in Athens throughout the 440s and 430s, most notably the
construction of the Parthenon, the Erechtheum, and the Athena Nike temple on the city's summit
Acropolis. These white marble constructions were ornamented with exquisite statues and friezes
carved by the greatest sculptors of the day and were constructed to the highest standards of
aesthetics, engineering, and mathematics.

The social reforms made by Pericles were equally significant at the time. By subsidising poorer
people's theater admission and encouraging civic engagement by paying for jury duty and other civil
service, he attempted to democratize the fine arts. The most brilliant minds of his time were close
friends with Pericles. Among his companions were the dramatist Sophocles and the artist Phidias.
The most well-known woman of ancient Greece and Aspasia, Pericles' consort, instructed the young
philosopher Socrates in eloquence.

Pericles was a master orator in his own right. He was an honourable and an excellent orator. He was
a cunning politician who was able to change people's minds. His elegies and speeches (as preserved
and presumably interpreted by Thucydides) extol the virtues of an Athens that was democratic at its
height. The most well-known of these is his "Funeral Oration," a speech he delivered to honour the
combat dead following the first year of the Peloponnesian War. "Make up your minds that happiness
depends on being free,  and freedom depends on courage" as he is quoted as saying by Thucydides.

Sparta felt increasingly frightened as Athens rose to power under Pericles and started to press for
concessions from the Athenians. Due to dispute between Athens and Sparta's ally Corinth in 431
B.C., Archidamus II, the Spartan king, was forced to invade Attica near Athens when Pericles refused.
By evacuating the Attic countryside to deprive the superior Spartan armies anyone to fight, Pericles
selected a strategy that benefited the Athenians as a maritime power. When the Spartans got to
Attica, they discovered it to be deserted. Pericles was free to launch opportunistic seaborne assaults
on Sparta's allies since all of his people were gathered inside the walls of Athens. This expensive
tactic succeeded in the early stages of the war, but a plague struck the concentrated Athenian
population, killing many people and igniting unrest. Pericles' two legitimate sons perished from the
plague in 429. Few months later, Pericles passed away. Thucydides claimed that his passing was
disastrous for Athens.

In the fifth century B.C.E., Aspasia of Miletus was a scholar and philosopher whose intellectual
influence set her apart in Attic society, which saw women as second-class citizens. She founded a
school of philosophy and rhetoric using her position, and it is well known that she had a significant
impact on well-known politicians and thinkers including Pericles, Plato and Socrates. Despite the fact
that there were other strategoi in charge of the affairs, he mostly held the reins of domestic and
international policy. His developing relationship with Milesian courtesan Aspasia, though, also
happened to coincide with this concentration of power. There are instances where Aspasia was
thought to have influenced Pericles decision making.

Samos, a city-state, and Miletus engaged in combat in 440 B.C. over control of the city of Pryor. The
Milesians sought assistance as their situation deteriorated and made a pact with Samos. When
Samos refused to stop fighting after Athens commanded them to, Pericles was forced to send an
expedition into the city. In a naval battle, the Athenians routed the Samos soldiers and took control
of the city. Unsurprisingly, the Samoan populace was not happy with the new government and
protested throughout the eight-month long struggle, which caused unrest not just in Samos but also
among Pericles' own force. Some people questioned why the Samian War occurred. The reason
Pericles decided to strike. Who in his circle could have given him the push? All evidence led to
Aspasia, a Miletean whom Pericles would stop at nothing to please. She was a seductress who led a
great man to all of his mistakes, as evidenced by the Samian War and the mistrust that followed. She
was a strong woman who was intelligent and eloquent, according to others, who would also
corroborate that assertion. Aristophanes and Doris, two historians, went so far as to accuse Aspasia
of manipulating Pericles to exclude the city-state of Megara from trade as retaliation for Megarian
attacks against her, which they claimed were the cause of the second Peloponnesian War between
Sparta and Athens, which began in 401 B.C. Pericles would later be blamed by historians for starting
the conflict. Thousands of people died in a conflict that lasted 27 years and was started by whoever
it was that started it. In contrast to his earlier cautious, pro-Athens approach, Pericles started
adopting certain policies and making certain decisions. While some of Pericles' detractors and foes
accused Aspasia of introducing ideas into their leader's mind, others thought her shrewdness made
her a cunning partner for his schemes, while yet others rejected any such ideas of control. When the
evidence is considered, the two extreme viewpoints on either end of the spectrum are found
wanting. In my opinion, Aspasia has a more appropriate function in the middle ground, where she
had an impact on Pericles directly on some matters, like as his foreign policy, but typically gave him
opportunities to grow the Athenian empire.

Athens' status as Greece's cultural, ecclesiastical, political, and economic hub is attributed to
Pericles. His theories regarding the majority elected form of government are among the earliest
seeds of democracy as we know today. He prepared the path for the greater Greek empire. The
main reason Athens came to be known as the educational and cultural hub of the ancient Greek
world is because Pericles supported the arts and literature. He began an ambitious project that
resulted in the majority of the Acropolis's still-standing monuments, notably the Parthenon.
References

Aiden Nel (August 24,2022), Who was Pericles?

David Malcom Lewis (February 10,2023), Pericles the Athenian statesman

Derrick Trail(2000),Aspasia: How one woman affected politics and society.

Major accomplishments of Pericles, https://healthresearchfunding.org/5-major-accomplishments-of-

Zime (2005)Pericles https://www.thecollector.com/who-was-pericles/