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Peloponnesian War: Athenian Empire
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Before the onset of the Peloponnesian War, ancient Greece was an epicenter of great military, intellectual, cultural and political development; it was ... a time of questioning and reexamination of religious and traditional beliefs. The 440s B.C. and the 430s B.C. are known as the height of the Athenian Empire. It is the war that Thucydides describes that brings the empire to an end.
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The Peloponnesian War was the end of the Athenian Golden Age, a period which began with the Greco-Persian wars. Pericles himself did not survive the war yet played an integral part in its beginnings.
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Ironically, the Peloponnesian War was fought against the backdrop of Greece's Golden Age, epitomized by Athens and its astonishing innovations in government, architecture, oratory, philosophy, and the dramatic arts. One of the most remarkable aspects of this era is that culture flourished side-by-side with the politics of war—that even as Athenian citizens were honoring Aristophanes's mocking antiwar play The Acharnians by giving it first prize in a drama competition, they were debating with equal ardor whether to continue the war, and deciding overwhelmingly to do so.
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Almost immediately after this, fresh differences arose between the Athenians and Peloponnesians, and contributed their share to the war. Corinth was forming schemes for retaliation, and Athens suspected her hostility. The Potidaeans, who inhabit the isthmus of Pallene, being a Corinthian colony, but tributary allies of Athens, were ordered to raze the wall looking towards Pallene, to give hostages, to dismiss the Corinthian magistrates, and in future not to receive the persons sent from Corinth annually to succeed them. It was feared that they might be persuaded by Perdiccas and the Corinthians to revolt, and might draw the rest of the allies in the direction of Thrace to revolt with them. These precautions against the Potidaeans were taken by the Athenians immediately after the battle at Corcyra. Not only was Corinth at length openly hostile, but Perdiccas, son of Alexander, king of the Macedonians, had from an old friend and ally been made an enemy.
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This famous speech was given by the Athenian leader Pericles after the first battles of the Peloponnesian war. Funerals after such battles were public rituals and Pericles used the occasion to make a classic statement of the value of democracy. It is probably not an exact quote, but a composition by Thucydides representing the recollections of witnesses.
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