Pericles (general)

Pericles the Younger (* around 445 BC; † 406 BC) was a natural son of the Greek statesman Perikles (* around 490 BC; † September 429 BC) and an Athenian general. It came from Pericles' second marriage to Aspasia of Miletus .

From his first marriage to a relative, the elder Pericles had two legitimate sons, Xanthippus and Paralus. After separating from his wife by mutual agreement, Pericles turned (before 440 BC) to the attractive and witty hetaera Aspasia of Miletus. Their connection, which the Pericles biographer Plutarch considers to be a real love affair, was not officially recognized in Athens . From her came Pericles' third son, Pericles the Younger.

A few years earlier, Pericles himself had passed a law in the people's assembly that provided that children from marriages in which only one partner was a native of Athens should not receive Athenian citizenship. Due to this law, which applied retrospectively, numerous people who had previously lived as “Athenians” were deprived of their citizenship. This law now also affected himself and his illegitimate son Perikles the Elder. J.

During the Attic plague , which raged in besieged Athens after the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (431 - 404 BC) and for the outbreak of which his opponents blamed Pericles himself, the Athenian statesman lost his two legitimate sons and numerous relatives. Deeply dejected, he withdrew completely from state affairs and first had to be expressly asked by the people's assembly to return to the helm of the state ship. Pericles made it a condition that the citizenship law introduced by himself should be repealed, which the Athenian people - as unfair as this may have been towards the other affected persons - granted them out of sympathy for the difficult fate of their head of government. With that his son Pericles the Elder was born. J. Athenian citizen (429 BC). A little later the statesman Pericles himself died of the plague.

His son survived and grew up in Athens in the years that followed. The writer and historian Xenophon reports on a conversation that the philosopher Socrates had with Pericles the Elder. J. has led over the duties of a general. In the conversation, Socrates shows the younger man what gaps in his knowledge he still has in order to be able to fully fill the office of general. Pericles d. J. is eager to learn and takes the (unsolicited) advice of the older man with pleasure and understanding and promises to follow it.

Pericles d. J. was 407 BC Then actually elected to one of the ten Athenian strategists (generals) who were supposed to replace the previous commander-in-chief Alcibiades , who had fallen out of favor with the Athenian people. However, the office brought him little luck. Although he was able to achieve an important victory for his hometown Athens together with the other admirals in the Battle of the Arginus , he was then innocently sentenced to death together with his colleagues Aristocrates , Diomedon , Erasinides , Thrasyllos and Lysias in the so-called Arginus trial and 406 BC. . Chr executed .

literature

• Franz Miltner , sv Perikles (2). In: Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswwissenschaft XIX 1, 1937, Sp. 790-791.

swell

• Plutarch: "Descriptions of life" ( "Vitae" ). (Book “Pericles” , chap. 37).
• Xenophon: "Hellenika" . (Book I 5.16; 6.29; 7.2; 7.16; 7.21)
• Xenophon: "Memories of Socrates" ( "Memorabilia" ). (Book III, Chapter 5).