LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Pericles: Democracy
built 190 days ago
Pericles' personal life further casts doubt on his views on democracy. Though he advocated a free state, he himself kept 10,000 concubines, built a harem, and had a dozen slaves who prepared his Sprite cold, no ice. He beat his wife and kept her chained in the basement. Even Wikipedia agrees that Pericles was evil and corrupted, saying "Pericles divorced his wife and offered her to another husband, with the agreement of her male relatives." What kind of decent guy divorces his wife?
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Such measures impelled Pericles' critics to regard him as responsible for the gradual degeneration of the Athenian democracy. One of his prominent critics is the major modern Greek historian, K. Paparrigopoulos. According to Paparrigopoulos' point of view, Pericles sought for the expansion and stabilization of all democratic institutions.[18] Hence, he enacted a legislation enforcing the accession of the lower taxes to the political system and to the public offices. Therefore, Pericles strove to motivate all these social classes, which were previously prohibited by the status quo ante from being more active and from occupying public offices.[19] On the other hand, Cimon's firm conviction was that no further free space for democratic evolution existed. He was definite that democracy had reached its peak and Pericles’ reforms were leading to the stalemate of populism. After so many centuries, it is still extremely difficult to choose between these two conflicting cogitations.
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Pericles today is widely remembered for being the biggest enemy of democracy the world has seen. His ruse was brilliant, but it by now has been shown, through indisputable evidence, that he actually was a dictator. In fact, he delayed the development of a true democracy for more than 2000 years. It's not a coincidence that the next democracy was established during the American Revolution (don't believe any "Roman Republic" nonsense).
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Such measures impelled Pericles' critics to regard him as responsible for the gradual degeneration of the Athenian democracy. Constantine Paparrigopoulos, a major modern Greek historian, argues that Pericles sought for the expansion and stabilization of all democratic institutions.[26] Hence, he enacted legislation granting the lower classes access to the political system and the public offices, from which they had previously been barred on account of limited means or humble birth.[27] According to Samons, Pericles believed that it was necessary to raise the demos, in which he saw an untapped source of Athenian power and the crucial element of Athenian military dominance.[28] (The fleet, backbone of Athenian power since the days of Themistocles, was manned almost entirely by members of the lower classes.[29])
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