Plutarch (Pericles 31) reports that Phidias, as overseer and Pericles's friend, was first accused of embezzling some of the gold of the Athena Parthenos; because the gold had been made removable and could be weighed, that charge failed. He was then charged with impiety for carving portraits of himself, as a bald old man lifting a stone, and of Pericles, fighting an Amazon, into the Amazonomachy on Athena's shield. Plutarch says Phidias was imprisoned and died there; the fourth-century Atthidographer Philochorus instead records that he went to Olympia (where he made the great statue of Zeus).

Pericles's teacher, the natural philosopher Anaxagoras, was exposed to prosecution under the decree of Diopeithes, which allowed impeachment of those who did not believe in the gods or who taught doctrines about "the things on high". Anaxagoras had taught that the sun was a fiery stone or mass of metal, not a god. Plutarch (Pericles 32) says Pericles, fearing for him, helped him leave Athens.

Pericles's Milesian companion Aspasia was prosecuted for impiety and for procuring free women, the charge brought by the comic poet Hermippus (Plutarch, Pericles 32). Pericles reportedly secured her acquittal only by pleading for her in tears, an unusual public display for so controlled a statesman.

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How did Pericles use the Acropolis building program as an instrument of employment, imperial propaganda and personal political power, and how did his enemies use it and his associates against him?

Pericles and the Acropolis building program from 447 BC: the Parthenon (447-432 BC; Ictinus and Callicrates; Phidias and the chryselephantine Athena Parthenos), the Propylaea (437-432 BC; Mnesicles), the Erechtheion and the Temple of Athena Nike; Phidias as general overseer; the controversy over funding the program from imperial tribute (Plutarch, Pericles 12-14) and the political attack led by Thucydides, son of Melesias; the program as employment, imperial propaganda and the visual expression of Athenian imperial democracy; and the trials of Phidias, Anaxagoras and Aspasia as attacks on Pericles

Pericles and the Acropolis building program from 447 BC - the Parthenon, Propylaea, Erechtheion and Temple of Athena Nike, Phidias as overseer, the tribute-funding controversy (Plutarch, Pericles 12-14), the program as employment and imperial propaganda, and the trials of Phidias, Anaxagoras and Aspasia as attacks on Pericles.

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From 447 BC Pericles drove the Acropolis building program, delegating artistic direction to Phidias (overseer, Plutarch 13.4) and using it as an instrument of political power. The Parthenon (447-432 BC, Ictinus and Callicrates, with Phidias's Athena Parthenos dedicated 438 BC) and the Propylaea (437-432 BC, Mnesicles) were built in his lifetime; the Erechtheion (c. 421-406 BC) and the Temple of Athena Nike (Callicrates, c. 427-424 BC) were completed after his death in 429 BC. The funding of the program from allied tribute provoked the attack of Thucydides, son of Melesias (Plutarch, Pericles 12-14), which Pericles defeated by offering to pay personally, winning the vote and ostracising his rival (c. 443 BC). Plutarch presents the program as employment for citizens of every trade and as imperial propaganda, the visible expression of Athenian imperial democracy. Later, his enemies attacked him through his circle - Phidias, Anaxagoras and Aspasia (Plutarch, Pericles 31-32) - though historians such as Stadter and Dover question how much of that tradition is historical.

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Historians on Pericles and the building program

What this dot point is asking

This Personalities dot point is not primarily about the architecture of the Acropolis (that is the Athens society study); it is about PERICLES and what the building program reveals about his political power, methods and image. NESA wants you to explain how, from 447 BC, Pericles drove a vast program on the Acropolis (the Parthenon, the Propylaea, and later the Erechtheion and the Temple of Athena Nike), why the funding of that program from imperial tribute became a political battle he had to win (Plutarch, Pericles 12-14), how the program worked as employment, imperial propaganda and the visible expression of Athenian imperial democracy, and how his enemies, unable to bring him down directly, attacked the people around him: Phidias, Anaxagoras and Aspasia. Keep the buildings as evidence for the man.

In plain English

Think of a powerful, long-serving mayor who pushes through the most spectacular set of public monuments the city has ever built, paid for out of a fund that a group of allied towns pay into for shared defence. He is not just decorating the city; he is running a political machine. The project puts thousands of ordinary residents on the payroll, so they all owe their wages to him. It advertises the city's power and glory to every visitor, which makes voters proud of the empire he leads. And when a rival stands up and says "that money was for defence, not statues", the mayor turns it into a loyalty test: "fine, I'll pay for it myself and carve my own name on it" - and the crowd, not wanting to lose the glory, backs him and boots the rival out of politics.

But there is a catch. The mayor is too popular to attack head-on, so his enemies go after his inner circle instead: his star sculptor, his old teacher, and his partner all get dragged into court on charges of corruption or disrespecting the gods, hoping some of the mud sticks to him. That is exactly the shape of the story ancient sources tell about Pericles and the Acropolis.

The answer

The program from 447 BC and Pericles's role

After the Persian sack of the Acropolis in 480 BC, its temples lay in ruins. From around 447 BC Pericles persuaded the Assembly to spend surplus funds, drawn chiefly from the tribute of the Delian League allies, on rebuilding the sacred rock on a scale never seen before. Pericles was the program's political sponsor and driving force, but he delegated its artistic direction to his close friend Phidias, whom Plutarch (Pericles 13.4) names as general overseer of the whole undertaking, coordinating architects, sculptors and craftsmen. Concentrating the most prestigious public works in Athens under a trusted associate was itself a political act: it tied the glory of the program to Pericles personally.

The principal structures, treated in detail in the Athens society study, are the reference points you need here:

The Parthenon (447-432 BC), the Doric temple of Athena Parthenos, designed by Ictinus and Callicrates, housing Phidias's chryselephantine (gold-and-ivory) Athena Parthenos, around 11 to 12 metres tall, dedicated in 438 BC.
The Propylaea (437-432 BC), the monumental marble gateway designed by Mnesicles, left unfinished when the Peloponnesian War began in 431 BC.
The Erechtheion (mostly c. 421-406 BC) and the small Temple of Athena Nike (Callicrates, c. 427-424 BC), both planned as part of the program but completed after Pericles's death in 429 BC, so that the finished Acropolis was, in part, his posthumous monument.

Alongside the temples stood Phidias's colossal bronze Athena Promachos, whose scale advertised Athenian military power in the open air between the Propylaea and the Parthenon.

The funding controversy: Plutarch, Pericles 12-14

The single most important political episode of the program is the fight over paying for it. Because the money came largely from the allies' tribute, held at Athens after the League treasury was moved there from Delos, opponents could charge that Pericles was spending common defence funds on Athenian vanity. Plutarch (Pericles 12) has Pericles's rival Thucydides, son of Melesias (leader of the conservatives, not the historian), tell the Assembly that Pericles had disgraced Athens, dressing the city "like a vain woman decking herself with precious stones and costly statues and temples worth a thousand talents".

Pericles's reply was twofold. First, an argument of principle: so long as Athens defended the allies as promised, they had no claim on how any surplus was spent, so the money was Athens's own. Second, and more revealingly, a political manoeuvre: Plutarch (Pericles 14) has him offer to pay for the whole program himself and inscribe his own name, not the People's, on the dedications, if the citizens still objected. Faced with losing the glory of the buildings to Pericles alone, the Assembly reportedly shouted that he should spend without limit from the public treasury. Pericles had turned a financial complaint into a test of loyalty and won it. Thucydides, son of Melesias, was ostracised (traditionally dated c. 443 BC), and Pericles was left without serious political rivalry for roughly the next fifteen years. The buildings were now not only temples but proof of his dominance.

Employment, propaganda and imperial democracy

Plutarch (Pericles 12) gives Pericles a second justification that goes beyond legal principle: the program was a form of public employment. He lists the materials, stone, bronze, ivory, gold, ebony and cypress, and the trades needed to work and move them: masons, bronze-workers, goldsmiths, ivory-carvers and painters on the Acropolis, and beyond them merchants, sailors, wagon-makers, rope-makers, miners and labourers. The effect, in Plutarch's account, was that "the whole city was in wages": public money reached citizens of every trade and age, so the ordinary demos who stayed at home shared in imperial revenue no less than the sailors and soldiers on campaign. Whether or not Pericles argued in exactly these terms, the program plainly bound the economic interests of the citizen body to his leadership and to the empire that paid for it.

The buildings were also propaganda. Rebuilding the Acropolis on a colossal scale advertised Athenian power, wealth and cultural supremacy to every visitor, including the allied representatives who came to Athens for the great festivals. The gold-and-ivory Athena Parthenos and the bronze Athena Promachos presented Athena as the armed guardian of an imperial city, and the program as a whole gave physical form to what Pericles's Funeral Oration in Thucydides (2.34-46) expresses in words: Athens as "the school of Hellas", a democracy worthy of its power. In this sense the Acropolis was the visible expression of Athenian imperial democracy: paid for by empire, built by citizen labour, and dedicated to the city's collective glory under Pericles's direction.

The attacks on Pericles through his circle

By the late 430s BC Pericles was too dominant to attack directly, so, in the tradition preserved chiefly by Plutarch (Pericles 31-32), his enemies struck at the people closest to him.

Phidias: Plutarch (Pericles 31) reports that Phidias, as overseer and Pericles's friend, was first accused of embezzling some of the gold of the Athena Parthenos; because the gold had been made removable and could be weighed, that charge failed. He was then charged with impiety for carving portraits of himself, as a bald old man lifting a stone, and of Pericles, fighting an Amazon, into the Amazonomachy on Athena's shield. Plutarch says Phidias was imprisoned and died there; the fourth-century Atthidographer Philochorus instead records that he went to Olympia (where he made the great statue of Zeus). The two versions cannot easily be reconciled, and the chronology is disputed.
Anaxagoras: Pericles's teacher, the natural philosopher Anaxagoras, was exposed to prosecution under the decree of Diopeithes, which allowed impeachment of those who did not believe in the gods or who taught doctrines about "the things on high". Anaxagoras had taught that the sun was a fiery stone or mass of metal, not a god. Plutarch (Pericles 32) says Pericles, fearing for him, helped him leave Athens.
Aspasia: Pericles's Milesian companion Aspasia was prosecuted for impiety and for procuring free women, the charge brought by the comic poet Hermippus (Plutarch, Pericles 32). Pericles reportedly secured her acquittal only by pleading for her in tears, an unusual public display for so controlled a statesman.

The common thread is a strategy of attack by association: damage Pericles's reputation for piety and integrity by convicting the artist, the philosopher and the partner linked to him. Modern historians treat this tradition with care. Philip Stadter, in his commentary on Plutarch's Pericles, and K. J. Dover both note that the dating is uncertain and that some of these "trials", especially the impiety cases, may be compressed, exaggerated or partly generated by hostile comic poetry rather than securely historical events. The safe position is to present them as a reported pattern of indirect attack whose exact historicity is debated.

How to read a source on this topic

Section III sources for Pericles often describe (never reproduce verbatim) a passage of Plutarch, a building-accounts inscription, or an image of the sculpture. Three habits keep your analysis sharp.

First, separate the ARCHAEOLOGICAL evidence (the surviving buildings, sculpture and the annual building-accounts inscriptions cut on stone) from the LATER LITERARY evidence (Plutarch, writing over 500 years afterwards; Pausanias, later still). The buildings and accounts are contemporary and primary; the biographies are not.

Second, fix genre and distance. Plutarch wrote moralising biography, not contemporary history, and openly used earlier, sometimes hostile or comic, sources. His set-pieces, the funding debate, the trials of Pericles's circle, should be read for their substance (real controversies over tribute and real attacks on Pericles) rather than trusted word for word.

Third, always move from content to reliability to usefulness to perspective, and reach a judgement. For this dot point, ask specifically whose power a source serves: a passage praising the buildings' beauty is also, usually without saying so, evidence of the empire and the political calculation that paid for them.

Historians on Pericles and the building program

Plutarch (Life of Pericles, late first or early second century AD) is the fullest narrative source for the funding controversy and the attacks on Pericles's circle, but he wrote biography for moral instruction, over 500 years after the events, drawing on now-lost earlier sources.

Donald Kagan (Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy, 1991) reads the building program as inseparable from the transformation of the Delian League into an Athenian empire and as central to Pericles's political dominance: empire made visible in marble.

Russell Meiggs (The Athenian Empire, 1972) uses the tribute lists to show how allied payments underwrote the program and argues this funding was a genuine source of allied resentment.

Jeffrey M. Hurwit (The Athenian Acropolis, 1999) stresses that the ground had always been sacred, so Pericles's program magnified and redirected existing religious meaning rather than manufacturing it.

Anthony J. Podlecki (Perikles and His Circle, 1998) and Philip A. Stadter (A Commentary on Plutarch's Pericles, 1989) examine the attacks on Phidias, Anaxagoras and Aspasia source-critically, cautioning that their dating and even historicity are uncertain, a scepticism shared by K. J. Dover on the impiety-trial tradition.

Model exam responses

1. Source-analysis response (Plutarch on the funding debate). "Plutarch's account of the funding controversy (Life of Pericles 12-14) is useful evidence that the building program was politically contested, because it records a specific accusation (misuse of allied tribute), a named rival (Thucydides, son of Melesias), and an independently plausible outcome (his ostracism, traditionally c. 443 BC). Its reliability is limited by genre and distance: Plutarch composed the Life over 500 years later as moralising biography, and the neat exchange he stages, Pericles's offer to pay personally, the crowd's shout to spend public funds, reads as a dramatized set-piece whose exact words may be his own. Corroborated against surviving building-accounts inscriptions, which independently confirm large, publicly recorded expenditure, Plutarch is best treated as reliable on the substance of the dispute but not on its precise staging."

Marker's note: this response earns marks for naming the exact source, weighing usefulness against a genuine limitation of date and genre, and corroborating with independent archaeological evidence rather than retelling the anecdote.

2. Essay paragraph (the program as an instrument of Pericles's power). "The building program mattered to Pericles's power above all because it could be fought over. When Thucydides, son of Melesias, charged him with squandering the allies' war-money to bedeck Athens like a vain woman, Pericles answered not with piety but with a political gambit, offering to fund the buildings himself and inscribe his own name, daring the Assembly to surrender its glory. The citizens roared that he should spend from the treasury, and within the year his rival was ostracised. A program that could be turned so precisely into a loyalty test, and that broke the last serious challenge to his leadership, was plainly an instrument of Periclean power and not merely an act of devotion to Athena."

Marker's note: this paragraph scores because it sustains a specific argument (power expressed through funding politics), deploys precise sourced detail, and does not merely describe the buildings.

Command words and technique

Watch the command word. "Outline"/"identify" want correctly named, briefly developed points. "Explain" wants a causal or evidential LINK. "Assess"/"evaluate"/"to what extent" demand a sustained JUDGEMENT stated early and defended in every paragraph.

Using a source properly means four moves every time: content (what it shows), reliability (who made it, when, why), usefulness (what question it answers, and how far), and perspective (whose interests it serves). For Pericles, always state whether a source is contemporary and archaeological (the buildings, the accounts inscriptions) or later and literary (Plutarch, Pausanias), because that single fact usually decides its reliability.

Weaving historiography means using a named position as argument, for example "Kagan reads the buildings as empire made visible, but Stadter warns the trials of Pericles's circle may be a later construction", not dropping a name for decoration. For a 20-25 mark essay, plan a one-line thesis plus three or four argument lines before writing.

Common exam traps

Describing the buildings instead of analysing Pericles: This is a Personalities dot point: connect every building, cost and trial back to Pericles's power, methods and image, not to architecture for its own sake.
Confusing the two Thucydides: Thucydides, son of Melesias, Pericles's ostracised rival in the funding debate, is a different man from Thucydides the historian.
Treating the trials of Phidias, Anaxagoras and Aspasia as certain fact: Plutarch groups them, but their dating and historicity are debated (Stadter, Dover); present them as a reported pattern of indirect attack, not settled events.
Forgetting the two roles of Phidias: He was both general overseer of the whole program (Plutarch 13.4) and the individual sculptor of the Athena Parthenos and Athena Promachos; markers expect both.
Missing dates: Give 447 BC (program begins), 438 BC (Athena Parthenos dedicated), 437-432 BC (Propylaea), c. 443 BC (Thucydides ostracised), 429 BC (Pericles dies).

Practice questions

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

foundation4 marksOutline the main structures of the Acropolis building program initiated under Pericles from 447 BC.

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A 4-mark "outline" wants correctly named and dated structures, roughly one mark each plus a mark for range.

The Parthenon: The great Doric temple of Athena Parthenos, built 447-432 BC by the architects Ictinus and Callicrates, with Phidias as overseer and sculptor of the cult statue (1 mark).
The Propylaea: The monumental marble gateway to the Acropolis, designed by Mnesicles and built 437-432 BC, left unfinished when the Peloponnesian War broke out in 431 BC (1 mark).
The Erechtheion and the Temple of Athena Nike: The Ionic Erechtheion (mostly c. 421-406 BC) and the small Ionic Temple of Athena Nike (Callicrates, c. 427-424 BC) were planned as part of the program but completed after Pericles's death in 429 BC (1 mark).
Range and dating: Awarding the final mark for correctly distinguishing structures built in Pericles's lifetime (Parthenon, Propylaea, Athena Promachos) from those finished after it (Erechtheion, Athena Nike) (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward correctly named architects and dates and the lifetime-versus-posthumous distinction, not a vague list of "temples".

foundation3 marksWhy did Pericles appoint Phidias to oversee the building program, and what did Phidias contribute?

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A 3-mark "why" needs Pericles's political use of a trusted associate plus specific evidence.

A trusted associate given central control: Plutarch (Pericles 13.4) records that Pericles made his close friend Phidias general overseer (episkopos) of the entire program, coordinating architects and craftsmen; this concentrated the most prestigious public project in Athens in the hands of a man loyal to Pericles (1 mark).
Sculptor of the Athena Parthenos: Phidias personally created the chryselephantine (gold-and-ivory) cult statue of Athena, around 11 to 12 metres tall, dedicated in 438 BC (1 mark).
A political liability as well as an asset: Because Phidias was so closely identified with Pericles, the later attack on him (Plutarch, Pericles 31) was aimed as much at Pericles as at the sculptor (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward the link between the appointment and Pericles's political interests, not just Phidias's artistic role.

foundation4 marksSource A: an ExamExplained paraphrase, in the manner of Plutarch's Life of Pericles 12, describes how the building program set the whole city to work - stone-masons, bronze-workers, goldsmiths, ivory-carvers and painters on the Acropolis itself, and beyond them the merchants, sailors, wagon-makers, rope-makers and labourers who supplied and moved the materials, so that public money reached citizens of every trade and age. Using Source A, outline how Pericles is said to have justified the program as a benefit to ordinary Athenians.

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A 4-mark "outline" using a source needs points drawn directly from Source A plus the underlying argument.

Point 1: employment on the Acropolis: Source A shows the program directly employing skilled craftsmen - stone-masons, bronze-workers, goldsmiths, ivory-carvers and painters - on the buildings themselves (1 mark).
Point 2: employment beyond the site: It also shows a wider chain of merchants, sailors, wagon-makers, rope-makers and labourers who supplied and transported materials, spreading the work well beyond the Acropolis (1 mark).
Point 3: money reaching all classes: The point of the argument is that public funds reached citizens of "every trade and age", so the ordinary people who stayed at home shared in imperial revenue, not only sailors and soldiers on campaign (1 mark).
Point 4: the political justification: This is Pericles's answer to the charge of extravagance - the spending was framed as a public wage that bound the demos to him and to the empire (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward direct use of Source A's two tiers of employment and the "public wage for all classes" argument, not a description of the buildings.

core6 marksExplain how Pericles defended the funding of the building program from allied tribute against the attack of Thucydides, son of Melesias (Plutarch, Pericles 12-14).

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A 6-mark "explain" needs the accusation, Pericles's argument, his political manoeuvre and the outcome, all correctly sourced.

The accusation: Plutarch (Pericles 12) records that Thucydides, son of Melesias, leader of the conservative faction (not the historian), told the Assembly that Pericles had disgraced Athens by spending the allies' common defence fund to "gild and bedeck" the city like a vain woman decking herself in costly stones (2 marks).
Pericles's argument: Pericles replied that, so long as Athens defended the allies against Persia as promised, the allies had no say in how any surplus tribute was spent; the money was legitimately Athens's own (1 mark).
The political manoeuvre: When the debate stayed hot, Pericles offered to pay for the buildings himself and inscribe his own name, not the People's, on the dedications - forcing the Assembly to choose between his glory and theirs (Plutarch, Pericles 14). The citizens shouted that he should spend freely from the public treasury (1 mark).
The outcome: Pericles won decisively; Thucydides, son of Melesias, was ostracised (traditionally c. 443 BC), leaving Pericles without serious rivalry for roughly fifteen years (1 mark). The buildings had become a test of political dominance (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward the correctly attributed source, the specific personal-payment manoeuvre, and the link between the funding fight and Pericles's political supremacy.

core6 marksExplain how the prosecutions of Phidias, Anaxagoras and Aspasia can be understood as attacks on Pericles himself.

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A 6-mark "explain" needs each case, the shared strategy, and the interpretive caution.

Phidias: Plutarch (Pericles 31) reports that Phidias, Pericles's overseer and friend, was accused of embezzling gold from the Athena Parthenos and then of impiety for carving portraits of himself and Pericles onto Athena's shield; he was imprisoned and died there (Philochorus instead has him leave for Olympia). Striking at Pericles's chief artist implicated Pericles in both theft and sacrilege (2 marks).
Anaxagoras: Pericles's teacher, the philosopher Anaxagoras, was threatened under the decree of Diopeithes with a charge of impiety for teaching that the sun was a fiery stone rather than a god; Pericles helped him leave Athens (Plutarch, Pericles 32) (1 mark).
Aspasia: Pericles's Milesian companion Aspasia was prosecuted for impiety and procuring by the comic poet Hermippus; Pericles reportedly secured her acquittal only by pleading in tears (Plutarch, Pericles 32) (1 mark).
The shared strategy: Unable to convict the dominant Pericles directly, his enemies attacked the vulnerable people around him, hoping to damage his reputation for piety and integrity by association (1 mark).
Caution: Historians such as Stadter and Dover doubt the historicity or dating of some of these trials, which may be compressed or shaped by hostile comic tradition; a strong answer flags this rather than treating Plutarch's grouping as fact (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward the common "attack by association" logic and explicit source-critical caution about the trials.

exam8 marksSource B: an ExamExplained reconstruction of a fragmentary Acropolis building-accounts inscription of the kind published annually on stone, recording a year's payments in silver talents to masons, gilders and haulers working on 'the temple of Athena', with several figures lost where the stone is broken. Using Source B and your own knowledge, assess the usefulness and reliability of building-accounts inscriptions as evidence for Pericles's management of the building program.

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An 8-mark "assess usefulness and reliability" needs the nature of the source, balanced usefulness and limitation, own knowledge and a judgement.

Nature of the source: Source B represents an archaeological, epigraphic source: an official, public, year-by-year account inscribed on stone on the Acropolis, contemporary with the work, not a later literary narrative. Real accounts of this type survive (for example the Parthenon accounts, IG I3 436-451) (2 marks).
Usefulness: Such inscriptions are highly useful for the mechanics of the program: they record actual payments to named categories of worker, corroborate the traditional dating (447-432 BC), and provide the contemporary financial check on Plutarch's much later claims about cost and public employment (2 marks).
Reliability and limitation: They are reliable as administrative records but limited: a single fragment shows one year's spending, not the whole cost; broken stone means figures must be epigraphically reconstructed; and accounts record money spent, not motive, so they cannot by themselves prove Pericles's political intentions or answer the impiety charges (2 marks).
Judgement and own knowledge: They are therefore most reliable for what the state actually paid and least useful for why. Set against Plutarch (Pericles 12-14), the accounts confirm genuine, itemised public expenditure, supporting the view that the funding controversy was real while leaving the question of Pericles's motives to be argued from other evidence (2 marks).

Marker's note: markers reward the epigraphic nature of the source, a balanced usefulness-versus-limitation split, and using the inscription to test, not just repeat, Plutarch.

exam25 marksESSAY. To what extent was the Acropolis building program the central instrument of Pericles's political power? In your response, refer to relevant sources and historians' interpretations.

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A Band-6 response sustains a judgement on "to what extent", ties dated evidence to Pericles's power, and uses named historians as argument. This is a plan plus a model paragraph.

Thesis: The building program was a major instrument of Pericles's power - through employment, funding politics and imperial propaganda - but it was one instrument among several (his generalships, the empire, his oratory), and it was double-edged, giving his enemies the opening they used against his circle.
Argument line 1: the program bound the demos to Pericles through employment: Plutarch (Pericles 12) presents the program as a public wage reaching citizens of "every trade and age", from Acropolis craftsmen to the merchants and labourers who supplied them; this distributed imperial revenue at home and tied ordinary Athenians' prosperity to Pericles's leadership.
Argument line 2: the funding controversy became a test of dominance: When Thucydides, son of Melesias, attacked the use of allied tribute (Plutarch, Pericles 12-14), Pericles's offer to pay personally forced the Assembly to back him; his rival's ostracism (c. 443 BC) left Pericles pre-eminent for roughly fifteen years. Kagan reads the buildings as inseparable from the empire that Pericles led.
Argument line 3: the buildings were imperial and democratic propaganda: The Parthenon (447-432 BC), the Athena Parthenos (438 BC) and the colossal Athena Promachos advertised Athenian power in marble and bronze; Thucydides's Funeral Oration (2.34-46) supplies the ideological complement, Athens as "the school of Hellas". Hurwit stresses the ground was already sacred, so Pericles magnified, rather than invented, its meaning.
Argument line 4: the program was also a vulnerability: The prosecutions of Phidias, Anaxagoras and Aspasia (Plutarch, Pericles 31-32) show enemies using the program's chief artist and Pericles's circle to strike at him indirectly; Stadter and Dover caution that the tradition is partly shaped by hostile comedy, but its existence shows the program cut both ways.
Historiography: Kagan (1991) treats the buildings as empire made visible and central to Pericles's dominance; Meiggs (1972) shows tribute funding fed allied resentment; Hurwit (1999) insists the religious meaning was real; Podlecki (1998) and Stadter (1989) read the attacks on Pericles's circle source-critically.
Model paragraph (argument line 2): The building program mattered to Pericles's power above all because it could be fought over. According to Plutarch, when Thucydides son of Melesias charged him with squandering the allies' defence money to bedeck Athens "like a vain woman", Pericles did not answer with piety but with a political gambit: he offered to fund everything himself and put his own name on the dedications, daring the Assembly to surrender its glory. The citizens roared that he should spend from the treasury, and within the year his rival was ostracised. A program that could be turned so precisely into a loyalty test, and that broke the last serious challenger to his leadership, was plainly an instrument of Periclean power and not merely an act of devotion.
Judgement: To a significant extent: the program was central to how Pericles built and displayed his dominance, but it worked alongside his other sources of power and carried a real political cost.

Marker's note: Band-6 answers address "to what extent" directly, deploy dated evidence across funding, propaganda and the trials, and use historians as argument; narrating the buildings without linking them to Pericles's power caps the mark at mid-band.