Perĭcles, an Athenian of a noble family, son of Xanthippus and Agariste. He was naturally endowed with great powers, which he improved by attending the lectures of Damon, of Zeno, and of Anaxagoras. Under these celebrated masters, he became a commander, a statesman, and an orator, and gained the affections of the people by his uncommon address and well-directed liberality. When he took a share in the administration of public affairs, he rendered himself popular by opposing Cimon, who was the favourite of the nobility; and to remove every obstacle which stood in the way of his ambition, he lessened the dignity and the power of the court of the Areopagus, which the people had been taught for ages to respect and to venerate. He also attacked Cimon, and caused him to be banished by the ostracism. Thucydides also, who had succeeded Cimon on his banishment, shared the same fate, and Pericles remained for 15 years the sole minister, and, as it may be said, the absolute sovereign of a republic which always showed itself so jealous of her liberties, and which distrusted so much the honesty of her magistrates. In his ministerial capacity Pericles did not enrich himself, but the prosperity of Athens was the object of his administration. He made war against the Lacedæmonians, and restored the temple of Delphi to the care of the Phocians, who had been illegally deprived of that honourable trust. He obtained a victory over the Sicyonians near Nemæa, and waged a successful war against the inhabitants of Samos, at the request of his favourite mistress, Aspasia. The Peloponnesian war was fomented by his ambitious views [See: [Peloponnesiacum bellum]], and when he had warmly represented the flourishing state, the opulence, and actual power of his country, the Athenians did not hesitate a moment to undertake a war against the most powerful republics of Greece, a war which continued for 27 years, and which was concluded by the destruction of their empire, and the demolition of their walls. The arms of the Athenians were for some time crowned with success; but an unfortunate expedition raised clamours against Pericles, and the enraged populace attributed all their losses to him, and to make atonement for their ill success, they condemned him to pay 50 talents. This loss of popular favour by republican caprice, did not so much affect Pericles as the recent death of all his children; and when the tide of unpopularity was passed by, he condescended to come into the public assembly, and to view with secret pride the contrition of his fellow-citizens, who universally begged his forgiveness for the violence which they had offered to his ministerial character. He was again restored to all his honours, and if possible invested with more power and more authority than before; but the dreadful pestilence which had diminished the number of his family proved fatal to him, and about 429 years before Christ in his 70th year, he fell a sacrifice to that terrible malady which robbed Athens of so many of her citizens. Pericles was for 40 years at the head of the administration, 25 with others, and 15 alone; and the flourishing state of the empire during his government gave occasion to the Athenians publicly to lament his loss, and venerate his memory. As he was expiring, and seemingly senseless, his friends that stood around his bed expatiated with warmth on the most glorious actions of his life, and the victories which he had won, when he suddenly interrupted their tears and conversation, by saying that, in mentioning the exploits that he had achieved, and which were common to him with all generals, they had forgotten to mention a circumstance which reflected far greater glory upon him as a minister, a general, and above all, as a man. “It is,” says he, “that not a citizen in Athens has been obliged to put on mourning on my account.” The Athenians were so pleased with his eloquence that they compared it to thunder and lightning, and, as to another father of the gods, they gave him the surname of Olympian. The poets, his flatterers, said that the goddess of persuasion, with all her charms and attractions, dwelt upon his tongue. When he marched at the head of the Athenian armies, Pericles observed that he had the command of a free nation that were Greeks, and citizens of Athens. He also declared, that not only the hand of a magistrate, but also his eyes and his tongue, should be pure and undefiled. Yet great and venerable as his character may appear, we must not forget the follies of Pericles. His vicious partiality for the celebrated courtesan Aspasia subjected him to the ridicule and the censure of his fellow-citizens; but if he triumphed over satire and malevolent remarks, the Athenians had occasion to execrate the memory of a man who by his example corrupted the purity and innocence of their morals, and who made licentiousness respectable, and the indulgence of every impure desire the qualification of the soldier as well as of the senator. Pericles lost all his legitimate children by the pestilence, and to call a natural son by his own name he was obliged to repeal a law which he had made against spurious children, and which he had enforced with great severity. This son, called Pericles, became one [♦]of the 10 generals who succeeded Alcibiades in the administration of affairs, and, like his colleagues, he was condemned to death by the Athenians, after the unfortunate battle of Arginusæ. Pausanias, bk. 1, ch. 25.—Plutarch, Lives.—Quintilian, bk. 12, ch. 9.—Cicero, On Oratory, bk. 3.—Ælian, Varia Historia, bk. 4, ch. 10.—Xenophon, Hellenica.—Thucydides.
[♦] duplicate ‘of’ removed
Periclymĕnus, one of the 12 sons of Neleus, brother to Nestor, killed by Hercules. He was one of the Argonauts, and had received from Neptune his grandfather the power of changing himself into whatever shape he pleased. Apollodorus.—Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 12, li. 556.
Peridia, a Theban woman, whose son was killed by Turnus in the Rutulian war. Virgil, Æneid, bk. 12, li. 515.
Periegētes Dionysius, a poet. See: [Dionysius].
Periēres, a son of Æolus, or, according to others, of Cynortas. Apollodorus.——The charioteer of Menœceus. Apollodorus.
Perigĕnes, an officer of Ptolemy, &c.
Perigŏne, a woman who had a son called Melanippus by Theseus. She was daughter of Synnis the famous robber, whom Theseus killed. She married Deioneus the son of Eurytus, by consent of Theseus. Plutarch, Theseus.—Pausanias, bk. 10, ch. 25.
Perilāus, an officer in the army of Alexander the Great. Curtius, bk. 10.——A tyrant of Argos.
Perilēus, a son of Icarius and Peribœa.