Pericles' family background and rise to prominence: HSC Ancient History

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“Pericles' family background and rise to prominence, including his birth c. 495 BC into the Alcmaeonid family through his mother Agariste, niece of the reformer Cleisthenes, and his father Xanthippus, victor of Mycale; the inherited curse of the Alcmaeonids; his early career as choregos for Aeschylus' Persae in 472 BC; his alliance with Ephialtes and the attack on the Areopagus in 462/1 BC; the ostracism of Cimon in 461 BC; the assassination of Ephialtes; and his emergence as leader”

13 min readUpdated 1 Jul 2026

Quick answer

Pericles was born c. 495 BC into the aristocratic Alcmaeonid family through his mother Agariste, niece of the reformer Cleisthenes (democracy 508/7 BC), and to Xanthippus, victor of Mycale in 479 BC, giving him a double inheritance of democratic and Persian-War prestige, together with the hereditary "curse of the Alcmaeonids" from the Cylonian affair that Sparta later invoked against him in 432/1 BC. His first public act was the choregia for Aeschylus' Persae in 472 BC. His breakthrough came in 462 to 461 BC: allied with Ephialtes he helped strip the Areopagus of power (Aristotle, Ath.Pol. 25), Cimon was ostracised, and Ephialtes was assassinated, leaving Pericles to emerge as leader. Historians divide over how far this rise reflects his Alcmaeonid pedigree and character (Kagan) and how far it turned on the contingencies of 461 BC (Podlecki, Samons).

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What this dot point is asking

NESA's "Background and rise to prominence" strand for Pericles wants you to explain who he was before he dominated Athens: his birth c. 495 BC into the powerful Alcmaeonid family through his mother Agariste; his father Xanthippus, victor of Mycale; the hereditary "curse" that came with the Alcmaeonid name; his first public steps, above all the choregia for Aeschylus' Persae in 472 BC; and the political breakthrough of 462 to 461 BC, when his alliance with Ephialtes stripped the Areopagus of power, Cimon was ostracised, Ephialtes was assassinated, and Pericles emerged as leader.

In plain English

Think of Pericles as born into a famous political dynasty, the way someone today might be born into a family that already produced a prime minister. On his mother's side he was related to Cleisthenes, the man who basically invented Athenian democracy, so the "brand" was democratic reform. On his father's side he had a war hero. That is a huge head start.

But the same famous surname came with an old scandal attached, a "family curse" from a killing generations earlier, which rivals could drag up whenever it suited them, a bit like an inherited reputation problem that never quite goes away.

Having a good name is not the same as having power, though. Pericles only reached the top after a run of lucky breaks in 462 to 461 BC: his senior partner Ephialtes pushed through the big reform and was then murdered, and the main rival, Cimon, was voted into exile. Suddenly the top job in the democratic movement was empty, and Pericles, already on the inside, stepped up.

Must-know dates and names

Pericles was born c. 495 BC to Agariste, an Alcmaeonid and niece of the reformer Cleisthenes (democracy 508/7 BC), and to Xanthippus, victor of Mycale in 479 BC. Through his mother he inherited the "curse of the Alcmaeonids" (the agos) from the Cylonian affair (c. 632 BC), later invoked by Sparta against him in 432/1 BC (Thucydides 1.126 to 127). His first attested public act was as choregos for Aeschylus' Persae in 472 BC. Allied with Ephialtes, he helped strip the Areopagus of power in 462/1 BC (Aristotle, Ath.Pol. 25); Cimon was ostracised in 461 BC and Ephialtes assassinated the same year, leaving Pericles to emerge as leader.

The answer

Agariste and the Alcmaeonids: Pericles' mother

Pericles was born around 495 BC into one of the most influential families in Athens. His mother, Agariste, belonged to the Alcmaeonids, an aristocratic clan (genos) that had shaped Athenian politics for over a century. Crucially, Agariste was the niece of Cleisthenes, the statesman who in 508/7 BC had broken the power of the tyranny and reorganised Athens into the ten tribes and the Council of 500, the reforms conventionally regarded as the foundation of the democracy.

This maternal descent mattered enormously. It gave Pericles a hereditary link to the democratic cause: he could present himself, with justification, as an heir to the family that had built the democratic system. Herodotus (6.131) preserves a famous anecdote that Agariste, a few days before giving birth, dreamed she had borne a lion, a story later read as an omen of her son's greatness.

Xanthippus: Pericles' father and the Persian Wars

Pericles' father, Xanthippus, was a leading Athenian of the early fifth century. He had prosecuted Miltiades after the failed Paros expedition (489 BC) and was himself ostracised around 484 BC, only to be recalled under the general amnesty of 480 BC as Xerxes invaded. In 479 BC Xanthippus commanded the Athenian contingent at the battle of Mycale, the victory on the Ionian coast that, with Plataea, ended the Persian invasion, and he went on to besiege and take Sestos.

Through his father, then, Pericles inherited a name associated with the Persian Wars and with naval command, the very sphere in which Athens' democratic, fleet-based power was growing. His background thus combined two prestigious strands: democratic reform (mother) and Persian-War glory (father).

The curse of the Alcmaeonids

The Alcmaeonid inheritance was not all advantage. The family carried a hereditary religious pollution known as the agos, or "curse of the Alcmaeonids." Its origin lay in the Cylonian affair (traditionally c. 632 BC), when Cylon, a nobleman and Olympic victor, attempted to seize the Acropolis and make himself tyrant. His supporters took sanctuary at the altar of Athena, but the Alcmaeonid archon Megacles had them killed anyway, an act of sacrilege that polluted the whole family in perpetuity.

Because pollution passed down the bloodline, Pericles inherited the curse through Agariste. It was a standing political weapon. Cleomenes I of Sparta had earlier invoked it to try to expel Cleisthenes in 508 BC; and, most tellingly for Pericles, Thucydides (1.126 to 127) records that in 432/1 BC, on the brink of the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans demanded that the Athenians "drive out the curse," a demand Thucydides says was aimed directly at Pericles in the hope of discrediting him. The curse illustrates a central feature of his background: the Alcmaeonid name was simultaneously a source of prestige and a permanent liability.

Early career: choregos for Aeschylus' Persae, 472 BC

Pericles' first recorded appearance in public life was not a political office but a liturgy. In 472 BC he served as choregos, the wealthy citizen who paid to recruit, train and costume the chorus, for the tragedian Aeschylus, whose production, conventionally identified as the Persae (The Persians), won first prize at the City Dionysia.

The choice is suggestive. The Persae dramatised the Greek naval victory at Salamis from the Persian side, celebrating the democratic, sea-power triumph in which Athens had led the Greek world. For a young Alcmaeonid whose father had commanded at Mycale, sponsoring this play associated Pericles publicly with the democratic and anti-Persian tradition. Whether he intended a precise political statement or simply discharged a liturgy owed by the rich, the choregia shows him using family wealth to build public visibility and goodwill, the pattern Plutarch (Pericles 9) sees running through his early career.

The breakthrough of 462 to 461 BC

Pericles' emergence as a leader came in a rapid sequence of events between 462 and 461 BC.

The attack on the Areopagus (462/1 BC): The ancient council of the Areopagus, made up of former archons and long a bastion of aristocratic influence, had accumulated a supervisory or "guardian" role over the constitution. The radical democrat Ephialtes led a movement to strip it of these "acquired" political powers, transferring them to the democratic organs: the Council of 500, the Assembly (ekklesia) and the popular courts (the Heliaia). The reform was carried while the conservative leader Cimon was absent in Messenia, where he had taken an Athenian hoplite force to help Sparta suppress the helot revolt at Ithome. Aristotle (Ath.Pol. 25) presents this as the decisive step toward radical democracy, and names Pericles as Ephialtes' associate in it.
The ostracism of Cimon (461 BC): Cimon's pro-Spartan policy was humiliated when the suspicious Spartans dismissed his relief force. His opponents, Pericles among them, exploited the debacle, and Cimon was ostracised in 461 BC, removing the leading conservative from Athens for ten years.
The assassination of Ephialtes (461 BC): Soon after his reforms, Ephialtes was murdered. Aristotle (Ath.Pol. 25) reports the culprit as Aristodicus of Tanagra. The killing removed the senior figure of the democratic movement almost at the moment of its triumph.
Pericles emerges: With Cimon exiled and Ephialtes dead, the democratic movement needed a new head. Pericles, already Ephialtes' partner and armed with an impeccable democratic pedigree, stepped into the vacancy. His later introduction of pay for jurors (Aristotle, Ath.Pol. 27) extended the democratic programme and cemented his popular base, but the leadership itself was won in this narrow window of 461 BC.

Pericles' character

Ancient writers stress a distinctive personal style that helped him hold leadership once he had it. Plutarch (Pericles 5, 7) describes a man of deliberate reserve: he withdrew from the dinner-party and social circuit, appeared in public only for essential business, kept a calm and dignified bearing, and was never seen to laugh in public. This aloofness earned him the nickname "the Olympian" from the comic poets; Aristophanes (Acharnians) joked that he "thundered and lightened" Greece with his oratory. Thucydides (2.65) later delivered the most famous verdict, judging Pericles uniquely incorruptible and able to lead the people rather than be led by them, so that Athens was "in name a democracy but in fact the rule of the first citizen."

How to read a source on this topic

Section III sources on Pericles' background come mainly from three ancient authors, plus documentary evidence such as festival records. Handle each by its genre.

First, distinguish the biographer from the historian. Plutarch (writing around AD 100, some 500 years after the events) is a rich source for character and anecdote, but he wrote moral biography, not analytical history, and drew on lost earlier writers of varying reliability. Use him for the tradition about Pericles' character and early career, but treat colourful details cautiously.

Second, weigh Thucydides and Aristotle carefully. Thucydides (later fifth century) is close in time and analytical, but his famous judgement at 2.65 is a retrospective, admiring assessment written after Pericles' death, so it carries an interpretation, not just facts. Aristotle's Athenaion Politeia (later fourth century) is invaluable for the constitutional detail of Ephialtes' reforms, but it too reconstructs events a century old.

Third, separate documentary evidence from literary narrative. A festival production record (like the notice of the 472 BC choregia) is administrative and factual for dates and roles, but silent on motive. Do not read a young man's liturgy as proof of a fixed political programme; the record fixes the act, not the intention.

Command words and using this evidence

"Outline" and "identify" want correctly sequenced facts with brief development, one mark per point; they do not require you to resolve a debate. "Explain" wants a causal chain, why Thutmose-style contingencies (here Ephialtes' death, Cimon's fall) changed Pericles' prospects, not just what happened. "Assess," "evaluate" and "to what extent" require a sustained judgement: weigh background against contingency, and Pericles' own agency against the actions of others.

When a source appears, work through content, then reliability (who produced it, in what genre, for what purpose, how close in time), then usefulness (what it does and does not let a historian conclude), then perspective. Weave historians in as argument, for example "Kagan reads the Alcmaeonid pedigree as the root of Pericles' democratic credibility, but Podlecki warns against reading his later dominance back into his origins," rather than listing names at the end.

The second figure sets out the sequence of Pericles' rise, from his birth into the Alcmaeonid family to his emergence as leader after the events of 461 BC.

Modern scholarship on Pericles' rise

Donald Kagan (Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy, 1991) reads Pericles as a principled democratic statesman whose Alcmaeonid pedigree and genuine conviction underpinned his rise and long ascendancy. Anthony J. Podlecki (Perikles and his Circle, 1998) is more source-critical, warning against reading Pericles' later supremacy back into his obscure early years and stressing how much the ancient tradition is shaped by Plutarch. Loren J. Samons II (Pericles and the Conquest of History, 2016) offers a sceptical, revisionist assessment, presenting Pericles as an ambitious aristocrat who exploited circumstance rather than a selfless democrat. P. J. Rhodes, the leading modern commentator on Aristotle's Athenaion Politeia, is the standard authority on the constitutional detail of Ephialtes' reforms. Used together, these historians frame the central interpretive question: how far Pericles' rise reflects character and conviction, and how far it reflects the contingencies of 461 BC.

Model responses

Model 1 (source-analysis, extract). The reconstructed production notice is useful precisely because of what kind of document it is: an administrative festival record, not a narrative, so it fixes with confidence that Pericles funded the chorus for Aeschylus in 472 BC. That dates his first public act and shows him deploying family wealth in a popular, patriotic setting. Its limitation is equally a function of its genre: a results notice records the fact of the choregia but is silent on motive, so it cannot prove that Pericles chose the Persae to signal a democratic, anti-Persian alignment rather than simply discharging a liturgy owed by the rich. Marker's note: the response ties usefulness and limitation to the source's genre (a documentary record), and refuses to read intention into a document that only records an act.

Model 2 (essay paragraph on the role of others). Pericles' rise in 461 BC was, uncomfortably, built on the removal of the men who had made it possible. Ephialtes was the architect of the 462/1 BC attack on the Areopagus, and Aristotle (Ath.Pol. 25) casts Pericles as his junior partner; it was only when Ephialtes was assassinated later that year that the leadership of the democratic movement fell vacant. In the same window Cimon, discredited by Sparta's rebuff at Ithome, was ostracised, clearing away the chief conservative. Pericles did not seize leadership by a single decisive stroke but inherited it as the surviving associate of a murdered reformer, which is why Podlecki cautions against treating his later dominance as the inevitable unfolding of a plan. Marker's note: the paragraph weighs the agency of others (Ephialtes, Cimon) against Pericles' own, anchors each claim in a date, and reaches a qualified judgement rather than narrating.

Common exam traps

Confusing the two sides of the family: The democratic pedigree (Cleisthenes) comes through his mother Agariste and the Alcmaeonids; the Persian-War prestige (Mycale) comes through his father Xanthippus. Keep them straight.
Treating the "curse" as mere colour: The agos was a live political weapon, invoked by Sparta against Pericles in 432/1 BC (Thucydides 1.126 to 127); use it to show ancestry cut both ways.
Making Pericles the author of the 462/1 BC reforms: Ephialtes led the attack on the Areopagus; Pericles was the associate. Aristotle (Ath.Pol. 25) is explicit. Overstating Pericles' early role misreads the evidence.
Narrating instead of arguing: For "assess" or "to what extent," weigh background against the contingencies of 461 BC (Cimon ostracised, Ephialtes killed) and reach a verdict, rather than retelling the sequence.
Reading later dominance back into the early years: Plutarch and Thucydides write with hindsight; his youth was genuinely obscure, and his rise was contingent, not preordained.

Practice questions

Original practice questions graded from foundation to exam level, each with a full worked solution. Try them before revealing the solution.

foundation3 marks

Outline Pericles' family background before he entered political life.

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A 3-mark "outline" wants three correct, clearly stated points.

His mother and the Alcmaeonids: Pericles was born c. 495 BC to Agariste, a member of the powerful Alcmaeonid family and the niece of the reformer Cleisthenes, who had established Athenian democracy in 508/7 BC (1 mark).
His father: His father was Xanthippus, a prominent Athenian who commanded the Athenian forces at the victory of Mycale in 479 BC (1 mark).
The inherited curse: Through his mother he inherited the "curse of the Alcmaeonids" (the agos), a hereditary religious pollution dating from the Cylonian affair, which political enemies could invoke against him (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward the double inheritance, democratic prestige on his mother's side and military prestige on his father's, plus the curse; not just the family name.

foundation4 marks

Identify four individuals connected to Pericles' background and early career, and state each relationship.

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A 4-mark "identify" needs four distinct, correctly stated relationships.

Agariste: Pericles' mother, a member of the Alcmaeonid family and niece of Cleisthenes.
Xanthippus: Pericles' father, the Athenian commander at the battle of Mycale in 479 BC.
Cleisthenes: The reformer who founded the democracy in 508/7 BC; Pericles' great-uncle through his mother Agariste.
Ephialtes: The radical democratic leader with whom Pericles allied to strip the Areopagus of its powers in 462/1 BC, and whose assassination cleared Pericles' path to leadership.

Marker's note: markers reward four distinct, correctly labelled relationships (two by descent, one reformer ancestor, one political ally), not a general family narrative.

core5 marks

Explain the significance of the 'curse of the Alcmaeonids' for Pericles' background and career.

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A 5-mark "explain" needs the curse defined, its origin stated, and its significance argued.

What the curse was: The Alcmaeonids carried a hereditary religious pollution (the agos), incurred when the Alcmaeonid archon Megacles had the supporters of the would-be tyrant Cylon killed after they had taken sanctuary at the altar of Athena, traditionally dated c. 632 BC.
How Pericles inherited it: Pericles was an Alcmaeonid through his mother Agariste, so the curse attached to him by descent, even though the original act was generations old.
Why it mattered politically: A hereditary curse could be weaponised. Cleomenes I of Sparta had earlier used it to try to drive out Cleisthenes in 508 BC; and in 432/1 BC, on the eve of the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans demanded that Athens "drive out the curse," a demand Thucydides (1.126 to 127) says was aimed squarely at Pericles.
Significance: The curse shows that in Athenian politics ancestry cut both ways: the Alcmaeonid name gave Pericles democratic prestige but also a permanent vulnerability his enemies could exploit.

Marker's note: markers reward the causal link from the Cylonian affair to the 432/1 BC Spartan demand, showing the curse as a live political weapon rather than a dead piece of family history.

core6 marks

SOURCE ANALYSIS. Source A (reconstruction, ExamExplained): a reconstructed dramatic-festival production notice of the kind inscribed to record victories at the City Dionysia. It reads that in the archonship associated with 472 BC the tragedian Aeschylus won first prize, and that the chorus was financed by the choregos 'Pericles son of Xanthippus, of the deme Cholargos.' Assess the usefulness and reliability of Source A for a historian investigating Pericles' early career.

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A 6-mark source task needs balanced usefulness AND reliability, anchored in origin and purpose, plus own knowledge.

Origin and purpose: A production notice of this type exists to record festival results and the citizens who paid for them, not to narrate a career. Its content is administrative and factual by design, which makes it a strong kind of evidence for who did what and when.
Usefulness: The source is useful because it dates Pericles' first attested public act precisely: as a young man (aged around 23) he served as choregos, funding the chorus for Aeschylus' tragedy, conventionally the Persae, in 472 BC. This shows him spending his own wealth on a patriotic, popular production celebrating the Greek victory over Persia, an early sign of the public generosity that built political support.
Reliability and limitation: As a formal, publicly displayed record the notice is reliable for the bare facts of festival and financing. Its limitation is that it tells us nothing of motive: it cannot show whether the young Pericles chose the Persae deliberately to align himself with the democratic, anti-Persian tradition of his father Xanthippus, or simply drew the assignment as a liturgy owed by the wealthy.
Own knowledge and corroboration: The choregia was a liturgy, a public duty imposed on rich citizens, so the notice confirms Pericles' family was wealthy and that he began his public life through festival sponsorship rather than office. Plutarch (Pericles 9) also links Pericles' early career to cultivating popular favour.

Markers reward candidates who separate what the record proves (date, role, play) from what it cannot settle (Pericles' political intentions), and who identify the choregia as a liturgy.

core6 marks

Explain how the events of 462 to 461 BC allowed Pericles to emerge as a leader at Athens.

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A 6-mark "explain" needs the sequence of events and a clear causal chain to Pericles' emergence.

The attack on the Areopagus (462/1 BC): While the conservative leader Cimon was absent in Messenia with a hoplite force sent to help Sparta suppress a helot revolt, Ephialtes, allied with Pericles, carried reforms stripping the ancient council of the Areopagus of its "acquired" political powers, transferring them to the Council of 500, the Assembly and the popular courts. Aristotle (Ath.Pol. 25) makes this the decisive step toward radical democracy.
The ostracism of Cimon (461 BC): When the Spartans dismissed Cimon's force in insulting fashion, his pro-Spartan policy was discredited. His opponents, including Pericles, secured his ostracism in 461 BC, removing the leading conservative for ten years.
The assassination of Ephialtes (461 BC): Soon after his reforms, Ephialtes was murdered (Aristotle names Aristodicus of Tanagra). This removed the senior democratic leader.
Pericles' emergence: With Cimon ostracised and Ephialtes dead, the democratic movement needed a new figurehead, and Pericles, already Ephialtes' associate, stepped into that space.

Markers reward the chain (Cimon absent to reforms to Cimon ostracised to Ephialtes dead to Pericles emerges), not a list of events.

exam20 marks

ESSAY. To what extent does Pericles' family background explain his rise to prominence?

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A Band-6 essay sustains a judgement on "to what extent," uses specific dated evidence, and weaves historiography. Plan plus model paragraph.

Thesis: Family background gave Pericles the resources, name and political tradition that made a rise possible, but it does not by itself explain his emergence as leader; that owed at least as much to the removal of rivals (Cimon, Ephialtes) between 462 and 461 BC and to his own conduct.
Argument line 1: the Alcmaeonid inheritance: Through his mother Agariste, Pericles was linked to Cleisthenes, founder of the democracy in 508/7 BC. This gave him a hereditary association with the democratic cause that he could draw on. Donald Kagan stresses this democratic pedigree as central to Pericles' credibility with the demos.
Argument line 2: wealth and paternal prestige: His father Xanthippus, victor at Mycale in 479 BC, gave him a name tied to the Persian Wars, and the family's wealth funded his choregia for Aeschylus' Persae in 472 BC, his first attested public act. Background thus supplied the platform of money and reputation from which he could seek favour.
Argument line 3: the limits of background (the counter-weight): Yet the same Alcmaeonid descent carried the inherited curse, a liability the Spartans later exploited in 432/1 BC (Thucydides 1.126 to 127). More importantly, Pericles rose only once Cimon was ostracised (461 BC) and Ephialtes assassinated (461 BC) had cleared the field. Anthony Podlecki cautions against reading Pericles' later dominance back into his origins. His rise was contingent on events, not guaranteed by birth.
Model paragraph (line 1): The clearest gift of Pericles' background was a ready-made political identity. As a great-nephew of Cleisthenes on his mother's side, he could present himself as heir to the man who had built the democracy, an inheritance no self-made politician could manufacture. When he allied with Ephialtes to curb the aristocratic Areopagus in 462/1 BC, he was acting in a recognisably Alcmaeonid, reformist tradition, and Kagan sees this continuity as a real source of his authority. But identity is not the same as power: the tradition told Athenians what Pericles stood for, while it was the sudden vacancy at the head of the democratic movement in 461 BC that let him lead it.
Conclusion: Background explains the opportunity and the political identity; it does not explain the timing or the leadership, which turned on the removal of Cimon and Ephialtes and on Pericles' own actions. Judgement: significant but partial.

Marker's note: Band 6 answers reach a clear verdict on "to what extent," use precise dated evidence (508/7, 479, 472, 462/1, 461 BC), and integrate named historians as argument rather than decoration.

exam25 marks

ESSAY. Evaluate the significance of others, and of his own actions, in Pericles' rise to leadership by 461 BC.

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A Band-6 essay sustains a weighted judgement, balancing the contribution of others against Pericles' own agency, with named evidence throughout. Plan plus model paragraph.

Thesis: Pericles' rise to leadership by 461 BC was significantly enabled by others, above all Ephialtes, whose reforms and death opened the way, and Cimon, whose fall removed the chief obstacle, but Pericles' own descent, wealth and calculated public conduct made him the figure ready to fill the space.
Line 1: Ephialtes as the enabler: Ephialtes led the attack on the Areopagus in 462/1 BC; Pericles was the junior partner. Aristotle (Ath.Pol. 25) treats Ephialtes as the prime mover of radical democracy. His assassination in 461 BC then removed the senior leader, leaving Pericles as heir to his following. The paradox is that Pericles rose partly because his ally was killed.
Line 2: Cimon as the obstacle removed: Cimon's pro-Spartan policy collapsed when Sparta dismissed his relief force at Ithome; his ostracism in 461 BC removed the dominant conservative for a decade. Pericles' opponents, not Pericles alone, achieved this, but it cleared his path.
Line 3: Pericles' own agency: Background gave him an Alcmaeonid democratic pedigree (through Cleisthenes) and the wealth to fund the Persae in 472 BC. Plutarch (Pericles 7) stresses the deliberate self-fashioning: Pericles withdrew from society, appeared only for public business, and cultivated a dignified reserve that earned him the nickname "the Olympian." Thucydides (2.65) later judged him uniquely incorruptible. This self-discipline, though most visible later, was already shaping his public image.
Line 4: historiography: Kagan reads Pericles as a principled statesman whose rise reflected genuine democratic conviction; Loren Samons is more sceptical, seeing an ambitious aristocrat exploiting circumstance. The evidence supports a middle position: real conviction, but a rise made possible by others' misfortunes.
Model paragraph (line 1): The uncomfortable truth of Pericles' rise is that it was built on the removal of the very men who made it possible. Ephialtes was the architect of the 462/1 BC assault on the Areopagus, and Pericles, on Aristotle's account, played the supporting role; it was only when Ephialtes was murdered in 461 BC that the leadership of the democratic movement fell vacant. Pericles did not seize it by force of a single decisive act but inherited it, as the surviving associate of a dead reformer. This is why historians such as Podlecki warn against treating his later supremacy as the inevitable unfolding of a plan: in 461 BC he was the beneficiary of an assassination as much as the author of his own ascent.
Conclusion: Others were decisive in creating the opportunity, Ephialtes by leading and then dying, Cimon by falling, but Pericles' inherited standing and his cultivated character explain why he, rather than another, filled the gap. Judgement: a rise jointly made by circumstance and by the man.

Marker's note: Band 6 answers weigh others against Pericles' own agency rather than narrating events, anchor each claim in dated evidence, and engage the Kagan/Samons historiographical divide to reach a qualified verdict.

Practise this

Sources & how we know this

Ancient History Stage 6 Syllabus (2017) — NESA
Ancient History HSC exam papers — NESA