End of The Age of Pericles
Pericles governed Athens throughout the 5th century BC bringing to the city a splendour and a standard of living never previously experienced. All was well within the internal regiment of government, however discontent within the Delian League was ever increasing. The foreign affairs policies adopted by Athens did not reap the best results; members of the Delian League were increasingly dissatisfied. Athens was the city-state that dominated and subjugated the rest of Greece and these oppressed citizens wanted their independence.
Previously, in 550 BC, a similar league between the cities of the Peloponnessus—directed and dominated by Sparta—had been founded. Taking advantage of the general dissent of the Greek city-states, this Peloponnesian League began to confront Athens. The events of year 431 BC led to such irreparable damage that the city of Athens finally lost its independence in 338 BC, when Philip II of Macedonia conquered the rest of Greece.
Read more about this topic: Fifth-century Athens
Famous quotes containing the words age and/or pericles:
“Provence,
The Renascence, the age of Pericles, each
A broad, rich-carpeted stair to pride
With manhood now the cost they’re easy to follow
For the ways taken are all notorious,
Lettered, sculptured, and rhymed....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)