Power and exclusion in the Age of Pericles Ovi History Power and exclusion in the age of Pericles Ovi History An Ovi Magazine Books Publication 2026 Ovi Project Publication - All material is copyright of the Ovi magazine & the writer C Ovi books are available in Ovi magazine pages and they are for free. If somebody tries to sell you an Ovi book please contact us immediately. For details, contact: ovimagazine@yahoo.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, printed or digital, altered or selectively extracted by any means (electronic, mechanical, print, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author or the publisher of this book. Power and exclusion in the Age of Pericles Power and exclusion in the age of Pericles Ovi History Ovi History An Ovi Magazine Books Publication 2026 Ovi Project Publication - All material is copyright of the Ovi magazine & the writer C Power and exclusion in the Age of Pericles contents Prologue 7 From Cleisthenes to Pericles 11 A City of Contrasts 22 Daily life in the Athenian Deme 35 Athens and the invention of legal citizenship 47 The machinery of Democracy 60 Pericles’ citizenship law 73 Pericles’ vision of civic duty 83 The economics of empire 93 Pericles’ Justification of Power 105 The Peloponnesian War 117 The funeral oration as a historical document 127 When the dead called the living to war 138 What modern democracies can learn from Athens’ fall 149 Who is “The People”? 162 Ovi History Power and exclusion in the Age of Pericles Prologue In the fifth century BC, on a rocky hill overlooking the Aegean, Athens attempted something extraordi- nary. It sought to make political power not the pri- vate possession of kings, aristocrats or hereditary elites, but the business of ordinary citizens. The ex- periment was imperfect, fiercely contested and radi- cally limited, yet its name has travelled further than almost any other political idea born in the ancient world: democracy. At the centre of this remarkable transformation stood Pericles, statesman, general and master of po- litical rhetoric. Under his leadership, Athens reached a cultural and political brilliance that later genera- tions would remember as a golden age. Temples rose upon the Acropolis, drama flourished, philosophy challenged inherited assumptions, and citizens gath- ered on the Pnyx to debate matters of war, peace, taxation and empire. Athens appeared to have dis- covered a new answer to an ancient question: who should govern? Ovi History Pericles expressed the ideal with characteristic confidence in the Funeral Oration recorded by Thu- cydides. The Athenian citizen, he argued, should not withdraw from public affairs. A man who took no interest in the common life of the city was not harm- less, but useless. It was a striking proposition. Politics was not merely a profession. It was a civic obligation, and citizenship was not simply a privilege but a duty. Yet behind this magnificent declaration lay a com- plicated reality. The democracy of Periclean Athens was direct democracy on an astonishing scale. Cit- izens assembled in person, debated proposals and voted upon decisions. Public offices were often filled by lot rather than inherited or purchased. Large pop- ular juries administered justice, with payment ena- bling poorer citizens to participate. Political power could therefore circulate through the citizen body in ways that would have seemed almost unimaginable elsewhere in the ancient Mediterranean. But who exactly constituted that citizen body? The answer reveals the great contradiction at the heart of Athens. Democracy meant rule by the people, but ‘the people’ was a carefully restricted category. Women were excluded from political participation. Enslaved people, whose labour sustained much of Athenian Power and exclusion in the Age of Pericles society, possessed no political rights. Resident for- eigners could live and work in the city without be- coming citizens. The magnificent political freedom celebrated by Athens therefore rested upon bounda- ries that were neither accidental nor marginal. Nor was Athens merely a peaceful republic of de- bating citizens. Its democracy developed alongside an increasingly powerful empire. The city demanded tribute from its allies, intervened in the affairs of oth- er Greek states and used military force to defend its interests. The same political community that spoke so proudly of liberty could impose its will upon oth- ers. This book therefore does not seek to present Peri- cles as either the father of democracy or the architect of hypocrisy. Both descriptions are too simple. In- stead, it examines the tensions within the Athenian experiment itself: freedom alongside slavery, citizen- ship alongside exclusion, debate alongside coercion, civic equality alongside empire. To walk through Periclean Athens is to encounter the origins of an idea that remains unfinished. Mod- ern democracies have widened the circle of citizen- ship enormously, yet they continue to wrestle with Ovi History questions that the Athenians confronted more than two thousand years ago. Who belongs? Who par- ticipates? What responsibilities accompany political freedom? And what happens to those whom democ- racy leaves outside its gates? The citizen and the ‘useless’ man stand, therefore, not merely as figures from an ancient city, but as op- posing possibilities within every democracy. Athens gave the world a political vocabulary. Its greatest les- son may be that democracy is never simply created. It must continually decide whom it serves, who is heard, and what price is paid for belonging. Power and exclusion in the Age of Pericles from cleisthenes to Pericles Few political inventions have exerted a greater in- fluence on the modern world than democracy, yet the democracy of classical Athens was neither born in a single moment nor created by a single statesman. It was the product of political conflict, institutional experimentation and, above all, the gradual realisa- tion that power could be taken away from a narrow aristocratic elite and placed in the hands of the citi- zen body. Between the reforms of Cleisthenes at the end of the sixth century BC and the political domi- nance of Pericles in the mid-fifth century, Athens un- derwent one of the most remarkable constitutional transformations in human history. It is tempting to portray Cleisthenes as the ‘father of democracy’ and Pericles as its great champion. Such labels are useful, but they simplify a consider- ably more complicated story. Athenian democracy emerged not from an abstract philosophical com- Ovi History mitment to equality but from struggles over power, factional rivalry and the practical necessities of gov- erning a volatile city-state. Its radicalism lay precise- ly in this: ordinary male citizens were increasingly given institutions through which they could exercise political authority directly. Before Cleisthenes, Athens was formally governed by institutions that already contained elements of collective participation, but political influence re- mained heavily concentrated among aristocratic families. The reforms of Solon in the early sixth cen- tury BC had challenged some of the old structures of privilege, while the tyranny of Peisistratus and his sons subsequently demonstrated the fragility of aristocratic government. The overthrow of the Pei- sistratid tyranny in 510 BC created the opportunity for a fundamental constitutional struggle. Cleisthenes emerged from that struggle. His re- forms, traditionally dated to around 508/507 BC, were revolutionary not because they immediately created modern democracy but because they reor- ganised the political community itself. Instead of al- lowing aristocratic family networks and traditional regional loyalties to dominate political organisation, Cleisthenes reorganised citizens into ten new tribes. Power and exclusion in the Age of Pericles These tribes deliberately mixed populations from different parts of Attica. The importance of this change is easy to underesti- mate. Politics was being reconstructed around a new conception of citizenship. The old aristocratic logic was based heavily upon family, locality and inherited influence. Cleisthenes attempted to break those connections by creating political units that cut across them. The citizen was no longer simply a member of a powerful family or local community. He was increasingly a participant in a wider political body: the Athenian demos The creation of the Council of Five Hundred was equally significant. Replacing the older Council of Four Hundred, it became an important mechanism for preparing business for the Assembly and admin- istering the affairs of the polis. Citizens from the ten tribes supplied representatives, creating a much broader institutional foundation for participation. Yet it would be misleading to imagine that Cleis- thenes suddenly handed Athens to ‘the people’ in the modern sense. Women remained excluded from political citizenship, as were slaves and resident for- eigners. Economic inequalities did not disappear. Ovi History Aristocratic families retained considerable prestige, wealth and influence. Nor did every citizen partici- pate equally in practice. Nevertheless, something fundamental had changed. The political community had acquired in- stitutions through which the collective citizen body could increasingly become the ultimate source of po- litical legitimacy. The Persian Wars then transformed the political circumstances in which this new system developed. Athens emerged from the conflicts with the Persian Empire enormously strengthened. Its navy had played a crucial role, and the expansion of naval power had an unintended constitutional consequence: poorer citizens, particularly those who served as rowers, be- came indispensable to Athenian military power. This mattered politically. A democracy cannot easily deny political importance to people whose labour is essential to the survival of the state. Mili- tary service and citizenship became increasingly in- tertwined, while Athens’ growing maritime empire supplied wealth and influence that helped sustain the city’s political institutions. Power and exclusion in the Age of Pericles The generation after Cleisthenes therefore inher- ited a political system that was democratic, but still contested. The next decisive development came through the rivalry between Themistocles and the aristocratic politician Cimon, followed by the rise of Ephialtes and Pericles. Ephialtes’ reforms of the 460s BC at- tacked one of the remaining pillars of aristocratic au- thority: the Areopagus. The Areopagus, composed largely of former ar- chons, possessed substantial judicial and political in- fluence. Ephialtes transferred many of its powers to the Assembly, the Council and popular courts. This was one of the great constitutional turning points of Athenian history. Authority was moving downwards. The Assembly became increasingly central. The citizen body could debate legislation, determine important matters of policy and decide questions of war and peace. Pop- ular courts gave large citizen juries an extraordinary role in the administration of justice. The principle was increasingly clear: political authority did not simply belong to those who possessed wealth, birth or office. It could belong directly to citizens acting collectively. Ovi History Then came Pericles. Pericles did not invent Athe- nian democracy. His achievement was to consoli- date, deepen and, in some respects, radicalise a sys- tem created by earlier generations. His most important contribution was arguably not a single constitutional reform but the political cul- ture he helped create around democratic participa- tion. Pericles understood that democracy required citizens to believe that participation was not merely a privilege but an obligation. The famous funeral speech attributed to him by Thucydides presents Athens as a political society in which public life was not the exclusive preserve of a governing class. Citizens were expected to partici- pate in deliberation, judgement and military service. The contrast with Sparta, with its highly distinctive oligarchic and militarised social order, was implicit and deliberate. Periclean democracy also became more socially accessible. Payment for participation in certain pub- lic functions, particularly jury service, helped cit- izens who could not afford to spend their working days performing unpaid civic duties. The principle was profoundly important. If political participation Power and exclusion in the Age of Pericles requires leisure, democracy risks becoming govern- ment by the wealthy. Payment could therefore make participation more genuinely democratic. But Pericles’ Athens also ex- poses the contradictions at the heart of the demo- cratic experiment. The city that celebrated freedom depended upon slavery. The political rights of citizens were defended through an imperial system that extracted resourc- es and tribute from subject communities. Athenian democracy became increasingly confident at home partly because Athens was increasingly powerful abroad. There was also an important narrowing of citi- zenship. Pericles’ citizenship law of 451/450 BC re- stricted citizenship to those with an Athenian father and, significantly, an Athenian mother. The measure strengthened the boundaries of the political com- munity at precisely the moment when democratic participation within that community was becoming more extensive. This contradiction should not be dismissed as a historical curiosity. It goes to the heart of the Athe- nian experiment. Ovi History Democracy was radical because it widened po- litical participation among citizens, but it was also exclusive because citizenship itself was narrowly de- fined. The demos was powerful precisely because it had boundaries. That is why the Athenian achievement should neither be romanticised nor dismissed. It was not modern liberal democracy. There were no universal suffrage rights, no representative parliament in the contemporary sense and no modern conception of individual political equality. Athens could be major- itarian, volatile and sometimes brutal. The Assem- bly could make disastrous decisions. Popular courts could become instruments of political revenge. Leaders could manipulate public opinion, while the citizen body could be swept along by emotion, fear or ambition. Yet these weaknesses do not erase the extraordi- nary achievement. The Athenians created something politically unprecedented: a large city-state in which thousands of citizens could meet, deliberate, vote and exercise direct authority over matters of state. They transformed political participation from an oc- casional concession by rulers into a defining feature of citizenship. Power and exclusion in the Age of Pericles The crucial intellectual revolution was therefore not simply the idea that ‘the people should rule’. It was the much more disruptive idea that ordinary cit- izens were capable of ruling. That proposition would become one of the great fault lines of political thought. Ancient critics such as Plato regarded democracy with deep suspicion, see- ing in it the danger of rule by an uninformed major- ity and the instability of popular passions. Aristotle, more empirically minded, treated democracy as one constitutional form among several and examined its strengths and weaknesses with considerable sophis- tication. Centuries later, modern democratic think- ers would return to Athens both as an inspiration and as a warning. The journey from Cleisthenes to Pericles therefore represents neither a simple march towards political perfection nor an inevitable progression towards modern democracy. It was an experiment built through conflict. Cleisthenes changed the political map of Athens. Ephialtes weakened the remaining institutional pow- er of the aristocratic elite. Pericles gave the resulting democracy political confidence, cultural identity and Ovi History greater practical accessibility. Together, these devel- opments transformed Athens into the most famous democratic experiment of the ancient world. Its greatest lesson may be that democracy is never simply a constitutional arrangement. It is a continu- ing struggle over who counts as part of the political community, who possesses power, who gets heard and who is capable of exercising authority. The Athe- nians did not solve those questions. They made them impossible to ignore. That is why the road from Cleisthenes to Pericles still matters. Modern democracies have expanded the definition of citizenship far beyond anything the Athenians imagined. Women, minorities and pre- viously excluded populations have claimed political rights that classical Athens denied them. Represen- tative institutions, constitutional law and universal suffrage have transformed the democratic ideal. Yet beneath all these differences remains the an- cient and unsettling question posed by Athens: should political power belong to a governing few who claim superior knowledge, wealth or birth, or should ordinary citizens possess the right to decide the affairs of their own community?