Originally published on September 9, 2027 (Episode 474)
Introduction
Pericles of Athens was a complicated man, a man of twists and turns. Born into a lineage of Athenian aristocrats, he became a champion of democracy and indeed a masterful demagogue. A teenager by the end of the Persian Wars, he was one of the architects of an Athenian empire designed to ensure that Persia never again advanced westward. Possibly his earliest public act as an Athenian citizen was to sponsor four plays by Aeschylus, beginning a lifelong association with the artistic life of the city. And while he married as an Athenian aristocrat was expected to marry, his later domestic life proved, by Athenian standards, strikingly unconventional.
These are only some of the many facets of Pericles that Paul Cartledge examines in his new book Pericles: Statesman, Demagogue, Eccentric. Along the way he also traces the afterlife of Pericles himself—from the hostile portrayals of his contemporaries to Victorian admiration and even the appropriations of twentieth-century dictators.
About the Guest
Paul Cartledge is A. G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge, and Emeritus A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge. One of the world’s leading historians of ancient Greece, he has written extensively on Sparta, Athens, Alexander the Great, and Greek political thought. His many books include Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece, discussed on Historically Thinking in Episode 177, and his newest work, Pericles: Statesman, Demagogue, Eccentric.
For Further Investigation
Paul Cartledge, Pericles: Statesman, Demagogue, Eccentric (Reaktion, 2026)
—, Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Jennifer T. Roberts, The Plague of War: Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for Ancient Greece (OUP, 2019)
—, Herodotus: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2011)
Herodotus, Histories, translated by Walter Blanco, edited by Walter Blanco and Jennifer T. Roberts (W.W. Norton, 2013)
The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, translated by Robert Crawley, edited by Robert B. Strassler (Simon and Schuster, 1998)
Donald Kagan, The Peloponnesian War (Penguin, 2004)
Josiah Ober, The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece (Princeton University Press, 2016)
Brook Manville and Josiah Ober, The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives (Princeton, 2023)
Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk, “The Democratic Disconnect,” Journal of Democracy (July 2016)
Related Episodes
The Forgotten City: Paul Cartledge on the city of Thebes, its myths, wars, and place in the “fateful triangle” of ancient Greece
Forever War: Jennifer T. Roberts on the war between the Greeks, and its long shadow
Athens and Sparta: Adrian Goldsworthy on how the two rival Greek city-states shaped the world around them
Civic Bargain: Brook Manville and Josiah Ober on democracy, self-rule, and civic renewal
Tags
Ancient Greece • Athens • Pericles • Democracy • Peloponnesian War • Persian Wars • Classical Greece • Political History • Paul Cartledge
