Pericles in Disgrace: A Long Spell in Purgatory (15th to 18th Centuries)

This chapter examines the idea of a disgraced, even forgotten Pericles. In the accounts of Athens from Antiquity right down to the eighteenth century, Pericles, ignored and sometimes discredited, was reduced to a marginal figure. The stratēgos was for the most part judged with disdain, if not arrogantly ignored. The chapter first considers a number of structural factors that explain why the memory of Pericles remained in limbo in the Western imagination, including the remarkable success of Plutarch. It then discusses various writings offering a range of views on Pericles, such as those by Jean Bodin and Michel de Montaigne. It also analyzes Pericles' marginal role in the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns, Thomas Hobbes's admiration for Pericles, and how Pericles was regarded by the men of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the revolutionary era.