Hubris: Pericles, the Parthenon, and the Invention of Athens

Historian Stuttard (Nemesis) reframes ancient Greece’s “golden age” as a turbulent period of culture wars centered around the construction of the Parthenon. The temple complex, Stuttard argues, was a masterwork of political theater, “honed... to project Athenian power” and “justify imperialism.” It was part of a public works program celebrating the city’s repelling of Persian invasion and its “new experimental democratic constitution.” Accompanying this period of civic revitalization was a flowering of “bold” questions aimed at established truths, including the existence of the gods. Among those embracing these new ideas was Pericles, Athens’ leading statesman, beloved by the working class for his populism, but despised by landowners and religious conservatives. Pericles, whose family had been temple builders for over a century, helmed the Parthenon’s construction, resulting in its anomalous designation as a civic, rather than religious, temple, with “no altar and no priestess.” A year after its completion, however, Pericles’s imperialist policies plunged Athens into war, and a plague killed a third of the city’s population, including Pericles himself. This “proof” that the “gods.... were angered” by Pericles’ impiety led to decades of reactionary backlash, including the execution of Socrates. Stuttard brings ancient Athens to vivid life as a world riven by intense moral and religious debate rather than a dry realm of ponderous metaphysics. It’s an elegant corrective to the soft-focus nostalgia with which Classical Greece is often viewed. (Mar.)