Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

28 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
state, however small, backward, and insignificant, to remain unaffected
by this central polarity. In fact, the Greek world was destined
to become as divided as Europe had become on the eve of the outbreak
of World War I.
It is against this background of growing tension that the so-called
Age of Perikles must be set. It began in 447 b.c.e., when work commenced
on the Parthenon, a temple erected in honor of Athens’s
patron deity Athene. The Parthenon is the symbol par excellence of
the Periklean Age. Other important building projects on the Acropolis
included an ornamental gateway known as the Propylaia, which
provides the only access to the hilltop. Perikles held no executive
position other than that of general, to which he was re-elected on
an annual basis. The immense authority that he wielded over the
assembly was mainly a result of his charismatic personality. The
Periklean Age was one in which man’s reliance upon his unaided
intellectual capacity has rarely, if ever, been so paramount. “Man
is the measure of all things. Of the being of things that are, of the
non-being of things that are not,” wrote Perikles’ contemporary,
Protagoras of Abdera (a town on the coast of Thrace).
Not all Athenians were prepared to tolerate this attack on conventional
morality, however. Many, moreover, were deeply offended
when Anaxagoras, a friend of Perikles, pronounced that the moon
was not a god, as was popularly believed, but merely a lump of
earth. Many who were not genuinely offended found it convenient
to capitalize on the popular sense of outrage to make a veiled political
attack on Perikles. Although the politician survived the attack,
several of his closest friends were prosecuted. The Age of Periklean
rationalism did not win universal approval.
Even so, the Age of Perikles was one of the most brilliant in
human history. Any Athenian citizen could have been forgiven for
believing that he was living in the foremost city in the world at the
greatest moment in its history. If he was a sober-minded realist, he
would also have understood it was too good to last. It was doubtful,
however, whether even the most pessimistic could have imagined
the horrors that lay ahead.
The Peloponnesian War
The Thirty Years’ Peace with Sparta lasted no more than fifteen
years. Hostilities broke out in 431 b.c.e. , before work on the Propylaia
had been completed. The reasons for the outbreak of the
Peloponnesian War, described by its chronicler Thukydides as “the