• '

  Paul Cartledge's Pericles: Statesman, Demagogue, Eccentric belongs in Beijing's presidential library. Even a man as suspicious as Xi can trust a Cambridge historian who begins with Thucydides and the other ancient sources, picks through the biographical evidence (no flights of imagination) and ends with a succinct account of how Pericles has been received in the modern era by leaders from Abraham Lincoln to John F Kennedy. Professor Cartledge does not offer global strategy. Rather, this is a biography from Reaktion's new series, Great Lives of the Ancient World. Beyond a concise analysis of statesmanship and demagoguery in a turbulent democratic city, the author supplies sex and comedy to support the case, made in his subtitle, for his subject's eccentricity.

  '

  Literary Review

• '

  Paul Cartledge’s new book is definitive: not just as a biography of Pericles but also as an analysis of the role he played in the Athenian democracy during its heyday.

  '

  Tom Holland, historian, novelist, broadcaster, and co-host of the podcast The Rest is History

• '

  Paul Cartledge brings his wealth of knowledge and depth of insight to this engrossing exploration of one of the most influential and controversial politicians of all time. He situates Pericles fully in Athens and gives scope to all the nuances that are identified – sometimes inaccurately – by the adjective 'Periclean'. This is a masterly investigation of the complex and troubling relationship between demagoguery and democracy that speaks to the current era as much it does to one that will forever be inseparable from Pericles’s name.

  '

  Robert Garland, author of Athens Burning

• '

  A wonderfully witty and learned biography, an ideal approach to the witty, learned, and pragmatic politician who built the awe-inspiring Athens we still visit to this day.

  '

  Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor, Harvard University, and author of Why Plato Wrote and Justice by Means of Democracy

• '

  Written with his trademark consideration, clarity and wit, Cartledge’s Pericles, complete with 25 illustrations, a timeline, end notes, a fine bibliography and index, is a valuable addition to the corpus, will engage the general historian, and deserves to find a useful place in school and university libraries.

  '

  Classics for All

• '

  An expansive, exacting and epic study of one of the most fascinating characters from Ancient Greek history. For me, one of the geniuses of Pericles was the inspiration he took from his consort Aspasia. A reminder that even though women were second-class citizens in ancient Athens – and Aspasia was a foreigner so enjoyed even fewer rights – they could nonetheless have status and standing in one of the most influential epochs of world history.

  '

  Bettany Hughes, Best Books, The I

List of abbreviations
Chronology
Prologue: Why Pericles?
1 Pericles For and Against
2 The Historical Pericles
3 Pericles the Demagogue
4 Pericles the Builder
5 Pericles in the Orbit of Love
6 The Intellectual Pericles
7 The Fictional (Comic) Pericles
Epilogue: Pericles Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

References
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
photo Acknowledgements
Index

Paul Cartledge is A. G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge, and Emeritus A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, University of Cambridge. His many books include Democracy: A Life (2018) and Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece (2020).