| Perikles | Erected
on Athenian Acropolis in 430s or 420s B.C. Pliny the Elder, Natural History 34.74: Kresilas [made] a wounded man at the point of death, whose face betrays how fast his life is ebbing, and also an Olympian Perikles, worthy of the epithet. The marvel of his art is that it made famous men yet more famous. Pausanias 1.25.1: On the Athenian Acropolis is a statue of Pericles, the son of Xanthippus, and one of Xanthippus him self, who fought against the Persians at the naval battle of Mycale. (Mycale is a mountain in western Turkey opposite island of Samos; battle occurred in 479 B.C.) Pausanias 1.28: There are two other offerings, a statue of Pericles, the son of Xanthippus, and the best worth seeing of the works of Pheidias, the statue of Athena called Lemnian after those who dedicated it. Plutarch, Life of Perikles 3.1 ff. and 7.1 ff.: III. Pericles was of the tribe Acamantis, of the deme Cholargus, and of the foremost family and lineage on both sides. His father, Xanthippus, who conquered the generals of the King at Mycale, 1 married Agariste, granddaughter, 2 of that Cleisthenes who, in such noble fashion, expelled the Peisistratidae and destroyed their tyranny, instituted laws, and established a constitution best tempered for the promotion of harmony and safety. [2] She, in her dreams, once fancied that she had given birth to a lion, and a few days thereafter bore Pericles. His personal appearance was unimpeachable, except that his head was rather long and out of due proportion. For this reason the images of him, almost all of them, wear helmets, because the artists, as it would seem, were not willing to reproach him with deformity. The comic poets of Attica used to call him "Schinocephalus," or Squill-head (the squill is sometimes called "schinus"). VII. As a young man, Pericles was exceedingly reluctant to face the people, since it was thought that in feature he was like the tyrant Peisistratus; and when men well on in years remarked also that his voice was sweet, and his tongue glib and speedy in discourse, they were struck with amazement at the resemblance. Besides, since he was rich, of brilliant lineage, and had friends of the greatest influence, he feared that he might be ostracized, and so at first had naught to do with politics, but devoted himself rather to a military career, where he was brave and enterprising. |