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Perhaps the most startling aspect of Pericles is the theme of incest, which motivates much of the play's action. Mowat suggests that Shakespeare utilized this theme not for its shock value, but to provide a structural balance between the beginning and the end of the play. The critic asserts that while the earlier versions of the Pericles tale describe a father who violently rapes his daughter, Shakespeare opted for a mutual seduction, with Antiochus and his daughter acting as willing partners. Mowat speculates that such a change allowed Shakespeare to create an indelible thematic link that unifies the play: the incestuous union of Antiochus and his daughter at the beginning contrasted with the glorious father-daughter reunion of Pericles and Marina at the conclusion. John Freeh (see Further Reading) provides a close analysis of the purity embodied in Marina, comparing Shakespeare's character to the heroine of T. S. Eliot's poem, “Marina” (1930). Within each of these works, Freeh maintains, Marina represents a kind of spiritual transcendence that transforms darkness into light.
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The first known public event in Pericles' life was the position of "choregos" for Aeschylus' Persians in 472. This means that Pericles funded and produced Aeschylus' entry into the year's dramatic competition.
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Pericles had such a profound influence on Athenian society that Thucydides, his contemporary historian, acclaimed him as "the first citizen of Athens." Pericles turned the Delian League into an Athenian empire and led his countrymen during the first two years of the Peloponnesian War. The period during which he led Athens, roughly from 461 to 429 BC, is sometimes known as the "Age of Pericles," though the period ... denoted can include times as early as the Persian Wars, or as late as the next century.
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Pericles had such a profound influence on Athenian society that Thucydides acclaimed him as "the first citizen of Athens". As a result of his efficient governance of Athens, the period from 461 BC to 429 BC is sometimes known as "The Age of Pericles" (Though this terminology can extend to as late as 379 BC).
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Early in his career Pericles procured a decree inviting all the States of Greece to hold a congress for the purpose of establishing a federate union. He was the first Greek who cherished this aspiration. It met with no encouragement; but Pericles, no doubt, hoped that an extension of the Athenian Empire would realize the same end in a different way. He entered on the Peloponnesian war, which was to end twenty-five years after his death in the ruin of Athens, with cheerful confidence. The funeral oration over those who fell in the first combats, attributed to him by Thucydides, gives a striking and noble picture of Athenian civilization at its best. His death in the third year of the war was an irreparable loss to Athens and to Greece.
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Pericles , c.495-429 BC, Athenian statesman. He was a member of the Alcmaeonidae family through his mother, a niece of Cleisthenes. He first came to prominence as an opponent of the Areopagus (462) and as one of the prosecutors of Cimon , whom he replaced in influence. From then on he was the popular leader in Athens. As strategos, or military commander, c.454 he campaigned unsuccessfully against Sicyon and Oeniadae, and his plans to bring these Peloponnesian regions under Athenian control failed. While in Athens between campaigns, Pericles carried through a number of reforms that advanced democracy.
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