Episode 11: The Life of Pericles – Part 1

At the end of the last episode about the Life of Cimon we mentioned how after the Spartan’s
snubbed Athens’s help in dealing with their Helot slave rebellion, that Cimon lost popularity in Athens, due to to his well-known and long-standing pro-Spartan views and Cimon came out on the losing end of an ostracism vote in 461 BC, sending him into exile for 10 years.

With Cimon out of the picture for a while, more democratic figures would step up to fill the
leadership vacuum, and Pericles would end up becoming the most prominent of them, eventually establishing a legacy as arguably the greatest statesman in the history of Athens.

With Pericles as the lead voice in the Ecclesia, Athens would experience a Golden Age which
continues to impress us a full two and a half millennia later.