Pericles is the representative figure in the golden age of Athenian
greatness, the most perfect example of that equable and harmonious
development in every faculty of body and mind which was the aim of
Greek civic life at its best. As an orator, he was probably never
equalled, and the effect of his eloquence has found immortal
expression in the lines of his contemporary Eupolis. Persuasion, we
are told, sat enthroned on his lips; like a strong athlete, he
overtook and outran all other orators; his words struck home like the
lightning, while he held his audience enchained, as by a powerful
spell; and among all the masters of eloquence, he was the only one who
left his sting behind him. As a statesman, it was his object to admit
every freeborn Athenian to a share of public duties and privileges;
and for this purpose he introduced the system of payment, which
enabled the poorer citizens to perform their part in the service of
the state. His military talents, though never employed for conquest or
aggression, were of no mean order; and on two occasions of supreme
peril to Athens, the revolt of Euboea, and the revolt of Samos, it was
his energy and promptitude which saved his city from ruin.

But it is as the head of the great intellectual movement which
culminated in this epoch, as the friend of poets, philosophers, and
artists, that Pericles has won his most enduring fame. By his liberal
and enlightened policy the surplus of the Athenian revenues was
devoted to the creation of those wonders of architecture and
sculpture, whose fragments still serve as unapproachable models to the
mind of modern Europe. And under his rule Athens became the school of
Greece, the great centre for every form of intellectual activity, a
position which she maintained until the later period of the Roman
Empire.