Pericles Accomplishments

When one thinks of Ancient Greece many individuals come to mind and one such person was Pericles of Athens. He was a peerless statesman that guided Athens during a Golden Age of Democracy, transformed the Delian League into an Athenian Hegemony, patron of the theatrical arts, and renovator of the Acropolis. None this facets of Pericles are the subject of this paper. The aspect that will be the topic of discussion is the only office Pericles ever officially held, general or strategos. While his political and cultural accomplishments endlessly researched and discussed his military exploits and how they affected his other accomplishments have not received the same amount of attention. However, before Pericles’s military career can be delved into

These campaigns are poorly documented with few details beside location, year, and commander and even then some of lack even that. There are some things that are known or at least very likely. One is a cause of this First Peloponnesian War was Athens' martial alliance with the city-States of Megara and Argos and Sparta’s successive response. Given the location of Argos and Megara between Athens and Sparta, and their pervious political allegiance, neutral and Sparta respectfully, Sparta felt threatened by Athens. In 454 BCE Pericles was elected to the position of strategos of the Acamantis Tribe. His first campaign was to subdue the City-States of Sicyon and Acarnania, which he preceded to do. His next operation was the unsuccessfully conquest of the Corinthian gulf City-State of Oeniadea, before returning to Athens. Then in the late 450s BCE and early 440s BCE Pericles supposedly convinced Athens to launch attempts to wrestle Egypt and Cyprus to reduce Persian control of the sea and gain access to the stores of grain in Egypt. Both ended disastrously. One example is while the Persians were defeated in the Battle of Salamis-in-Cyprus the strategos of the expedition, a man named Cimon, died of disease in 449 BCE destabilizing the campaign and allowed the Greeks to be pushed off the island. To stabilize and secure Athens’s Greek and Aegean dominance a peace accord between Athens and

Pericles was convinced that the war against Sparta was inevitable if unfortunate. In his eyes Sparta was envious of Athens' preeminence. Another reason for Sparta to wage war was Sparta's fear of Athenian power and growth. Therefore, he did not hesitate to send troops to Corcyra to reinforce the Corcyraean fleet, which was fighting against Corinth an ally of Sparta. In 433 BCE the enemy fleets confronted each other at the Battle of Sybota and a year later the Athenians fought Corinthian colonists at the Battle of Potidaea; these two events contributed greatly to the growing tensions between the Peloponnesian Leagues and the League of Delos. During the same period, Pericles proposed the Megarian Decree, which worked like a modern trade embargo. According to the provisions of the decree, merchants from the City-State of Megara were excluded from the markets and ports of Athens and all other Delian League members. This ban strangled the Megarian economy and strained the fragile peace between Athens and Sparta, which was allied with Megara. According to George Cawkwell, a praelector in ancient history, with this decree Pericles breached the Thirty Years' Armistice "but, perhaps, not without the semblance of an excuse". The Athenians' justification