, orator, and general of Athens
during the city's Golden Age
—specifically, the time between the Persian
wars. He was descended, through his mother, from the powerful and historically influential Alcmaeonid
Pericles had such a profound influence on Athenian society that Thucydides
, his contemporary historian, acclaimed him as "the first citizen of Athens".
Nor is it any longer possible for you to give up this empire ... Your empire is now like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go.
But the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it.
The whole Earth is the Sepulchre of famous men; and their story is not graven only on Stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives.
Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it.
What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.