IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-3-030-26090-3_14.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Pericles of Athens: Democracy and Empire

In: Historians on Leadership and Strategy

Author

Listed:
  • Anthony Smart

    (York St John University)

Abstract

For three decades at the end of the fifth century BC, Greece was plunged into war. Athens and its growing empire found itself facing the full might of Sparta. The challenge facing Pericles and the Athenian democrats around him was unique. They found themselves in a new position, not now the defenders of Greek liberty against Persian imperial oppression, but the masters of their own economic empire. The Delian league was theirs, and their political and military system relied now upon it, with no chance of mercy or forgiveness to those unwilling to pay or to provide. The choices they faced were stark, either to ignore and allow challenges to their rule or react with military force and turn Sparta and her allies against them. The way in which Pericles pursues his defensive policy ultimately undermined Athenian hegemony, but in reality it is difficult to see how else he could have reacted. His response to Sparta’s militaristic threat and how he guided (and controlled) the Athenian people are instructive in how ancient leadership worked and how similar problems still face the leaders of today.

Suggested Citation

  • Anthony Smart, 2020. "Pericles of Athens: Democracy and Empire," Springer Books, in: Martin Gutmann (ed.), Historians on Leadership and Strategy, pages 255-267, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-26090-3_14
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-26090-3_14
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-26090-3_14. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.