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Pericles the Athenian
Without knowing the figure of Pericles, the expansion of democracy in the Western world cannot be understood. During the time when Pericles (c. 495 – 429 BC) ruled the destiny of Athens, it experienced its most brilliant period of political, economic and artistic flourish. Using the supposed memoirs of Anaxagoras, Pericles' teacher, Rex Warner offers the reader not only a complete reconstruction of the peak of Athenian splendor and an accurate biography of its main protagonist, but also a sharp moral examination of power, and the consequences of the various ways of exercising it.
- GenresHistorical FictionGreece
254 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1963
1 person is currently reading
55 people want to read
About the author
Rex Warner
85 books24 followersRex Warner was an English classicist, writer and translator. He is now probably best remembered for The Aerodrome (1941), an allegorical novel whose young hero is faced with the disintegration of his certainties about his loved ones and with a choice between the earthy, animalistic life of his home village and the pure, efficient, emotionally detached life of an airman.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
May 7, 2019
There are many works of historical fiction framed as the surviving narrative of a contemporary witness, but almost none of them put much effort into making this documentary approach feel authentic. How many old soldiers are there who can write their memoirs with the flowery prose of a seasoned novelist? And in good English no less? How likely is a politician to write a searching and multi-volume account of his life on his last night alive (as in Warner’s novels on Caesar)? And how likely is any author to go out of their way to explain mundane details of everyday life and cultural traits that their reader should naturally share? That’s why I find it very impressive to find that this novel manages the task of mimicking authenticity to provide us with a book that would not have looked out of place alongside Classical authors.
The problem with this success is that there is a good reason why such attempts generally make little effort to achieve realism: the ancient approach to historical narrative is so different to the focus of modern approaches that we just don’t find them as compelling. The only other book I’ve read that managed to achieve a near-total realism was Memoirs of Hadrian, which I found unreadable. And the complaints that I make of that book can be applied to this one: it is meandering, pedantic, full of self-satisfaction and pride, and never really digs beneath the surface to grasp the psychological factors defining their personality. But where the books differ (for the better I think) is that this is a work of pseudohistory while that is a pseudo-memoir. Our author, Anaxagoras, is a philosopher and personal friend of Pericles. He is writing the work for the benefit of posterity and seeks to depict the period of Athen’s greatest flourishing, a period which, notably, was not covered by any surviving historians.
You need to come at this book from a certain perspective or you won’t enjoy it. Don’t go in expecting a modern novel with lots of dialogue, description, and psychological explanations for ancient behaviors. Approach it as a sequel to Herodotus and you will not be far off. The author had previously published an acclaimed translation of Herodotus, so he is well-qualified to imitate his style. But in addition to miming histories it is also an imitation of philosophical works. Anaxagoras is constantly extolling his philosophy (honestly, he can find a way to bring his idea that all things are composed of substances and therefore not divine into a conversation on Pericles’ personal life or the work of great playwrights) and we get a very philosophical effort to justify democracy as the ideal form of government. In between bashing other schools of philosophy.
I enjoyed the book but that is not to say it is without faults. What it often reads like is a dissertation. The thesis is that Athens is the worthiest state in Greece and that Pericles’ goals and policies were those best-designed to bring about this flowering of culture. We don’t get a great deal of detail on exactly what Pericles did, only the broad strokes and a philosophical justification for them. This was, in my opinion, unnecessarily restrictive. Herodotus could never restrain himself from telling a good story, and if it is the author’s view that Anaxagoras would have then he should have chosen a different author. As it stands we witness Pericles through a very clouded window.
More difficult still is the fact that this means we are given a similarly hazy vision of Athens itself. The focus on justification means that people who don’t know the details of Athenian history will probably struggle to understand what is going on. I wouldn’t recommend this book to someone as an introduction to the topic. And I think that narrows the target audience excessively.
But if this book still sounds like your sort of thing then it probably is. And there’s something to be said for a book that doesn’t dilute its content to please a wider audience. Just know what you’re getting into before you start.
The problem with this success is that there is a good reason why such attempts generally make little effort to achieve realism: the ancient approach to historical narrative is so different to the focus of modern approaches that we just don’t find them as compelling. The only other book I’ve read that managed to achieve a near-total realism was Memoirs of Hadrian, which I found unreadable. And the complaints that I make of that book can be applied to this one: it is meandering, pedantic, full of self-satisfaction and pride, and never really digs beneath the surface to grasp the psychological factors defining their personality. But where the books differ (for the better I think) is that this is a work of pseudohistory while that is a pseudo-memoir. Our author, Anaxagoras, is a philosopher and personal friend of Pericles. He is writing the work for the benefit of posterity and seeks to depict the period of Athen’s greatest flourishing, a period which, notably, was not covered by any surviving historians.
You need to come at this book from a certain perspective or you won’t enjoy it. Don’t go in expecting a modern novel with lots of dialogue, description, and psychological explanations for ancient behaviors. Approach it as a sequel to Herodotus and you will not be far off. The author had previously published an acclaimed translation of Herodotus, so he is well-qualified to imitate his style. But in addition to miming histories it is also an imitation of philosophical works. Anaxagoras is constantly extolling his philosophy (honestly, he can find a way to bring his idea that all things are composed of substances and therefore not divine into a conversation on Pericles’ personal life or the work of great playwrights) and we get a very philosophical effort to justify democracy as the ideal form of government. In between bashing other schools of philosophy.
I enjoyed the book but that is not to say it is without faults. What it often reads like is a dissertation. The thesis is that Athens is the worthiest state in Greece and that Pericles’ goals and policies were those best-designed to bring about this flowering of culture. We don’t get a great deal of detail on exactly what Pericles did, only the broad strokes and a philosophical justification for them. This was, in my opinion, unnecessarily restrictive. Herodotus could never restrain himself from telling a good story, and if it is the author’s view that Anaxagoras would have then he should have chosen a different author. As it stands we witness Pericles through a very clouded window.
More difficult still is the fact that this means we are given a similarly hazy vision of Athens itself. The focus on justification means that people who don’t know the details of Athenian history will probably struggle to understand what is going on. I wouldn’t recommend this book to someone as an introduction to the topic. And I think that narrows the target audience excessively.
But if this book still sounds like your sort of thing then it probably is. And there’s something to be said for a book that doesn’t dilute its content to please a wider audience. Just know what you’re getting into before you start.
November 17, 2015
The lost book of Athens
Herodotus finishes his History with Greek victory over the Persians in 478 BC; Thucydides begins his with the outbreak of war between Athens and Sparta in 431 BC. In between lies the rise of the Athenian democracy to power and dominion, the strategies of Themistocles, the campaigns of Cimon, and the leadership of Pericles. It was the great ancient historian Sir Moses Finley who remarked that no surviving literature from the time actually extolled the triumph of the Athenian democracy. Rex Warner attempts to fill the gap and complete the task with this very clever novel.
The narrative is written as the biography of Pericles as presented by his close friend and ally, the philosopher and scientist Anaxagoras, shortly after Pericles’ death in the early stages of the Peloponnesian War. Anaxagoras who was known for his idea that the world is governed by Intelligence gives a keenly argued and rational account of why Pericles and the Athenian democracy were the most important developments in Greek history. He presents arguments for and against the actions and policies of Pericles throughout his career and shows how Pericles fashioned and framed the great age of Athens by word and personal example. This is an encomium, but one which depends on logical and rational discussion, and consequently, for anyone interested in the period, it is a highly seductive text.
The written style is wholly in role – that is that of a Fifth Century philosopher, not unlike the apparently objective and measured style of Thucydides, replete with quotation and aphorism. This is both strength and weakness of the novel – it is often difficult to remember that it is a novel, and not an authentic document rediscovered from the time. It lacks sensation, much dialogue, a plot which goes beyond the strictly historical. It has little good to say about Sparta, Athens’ great enemy, nor is that to be expected; but Anaxagoras does underplay, I think, Spartan cunning and shrewdness, even if his central argument about the negativity of Spartan society must be accepted. There is some amusing criticism of the philosophical ideas of others, especially Pythagoras. The novel presents an appeal ultimately to the good in mankind, the avoidance of extremism and intolerance, the primacy of liberty and freedom, the triumph of the mind.
Rex Warner’s great translation of Thucydides remains one of my favourite books; this is an excellent (fictional) companion volume.
Herodotus finishes his History with Greek victory over the Persians in 478 BC; Thucydides begins his with the outbreak of war between Athens and Sparta in 431 BC. In between lies the rise of the Athenian democracy to power and dominion, the strategies of Themistocles, the campaigns of Cimon, and the leadership of Pericles. It was the great ancient historian Sir Moses Finley who remarked that no surviving literature from the time actually extolled the triumph of the Athenian democracy. Rex Warner attempts to fill the gap and complete the task with this very clever novel.
The narrative is written as the biography of Pericles as presented by his close friend and ally, the philosopher and scientist Anaxagoras, shortly after Pericles’ death in the early stages of the Peloponnesian War. Anaxagoras who was known for his idea that the world is governed by Intelligence gives a keenly argued and rational account of why Pericles and the Athenian democracy were the most important developments in Greek history. He presents arguments for and against the actions and policies of Pericles throughout his career and shows how Pericles fashioned and framed the great age of Athens by word and personal example. This is an encomium, but one which depends on logical and rational discussion, and consequently, for anyone interested in the period, it is a highly seductive text.
The written style is wholly in role – that is that of a Fifth Century philosopher, not unlike the apparently objective and measured style of Thucydides, replete with quotation and aphorism. This is both strength and weakness of the novel – it is often difficult to remember that it is a novel, and not an authentic document rediscovered from the time. It lacks sensation, much dialogue, a plot which goes beyond the strictly historical. It has little good to say about Sparta, Athens’ great enemy, nor is that to be expected; but Anaxagoras does underplay, I think, Spartan cunning and shrewdness, even if his central argument about the negativity of Spartan society must be accepted. There is some amusing criticism of the philosophical ideas of others, especially Pythagoras. The novel presents an appeal ultimately to the good in mankind, the avoidance of extremism and intolerance, the primacy of liberty and freedom, the triumph of the mind.
Rex Warner’s great translation of Thucydides remains one of my favourite books; this is an excellent (fictional) companion volume.
July 6, 2014
Se puede catalogar esta novela más como un ensayo histórico sobre la democracia, la política, las artes y los inicios de la Guerra del Peloponeso, que como una novela histórica sobre Pericles. Expone los abundantes datos históricos de una forma ordenada, detallada y explicada por el amigo de Pericles y filósofo Anaxágoras. Lo peor son las escasas descripciones de la vida privada y sentimental del gran estadista, se echa de menos la ficción en es la parte personal del personaje histórico.
Es conveniente tener al menos unas nociones básicas sobre la historia de la Grecia clásica para afrontar y poder disfrutar de esta lectura, de este periodo tan interesante. A veces puede resultar bastante denso y sus explicaciones largas, pero es muy recomendable.
Mi nota: 6.
Es conveniente tener al menos unas nociones básicas sobre la historia de la Grecia clásica para afrontar y poder disfrutar de esta lectura, de este periodo tan interesante. A veces puede resultar bastante denso y sus explicaciones largas, pero es muy recomendable.
Mi nota: 6.
July 13, 2021
Pericles the Athenian purports to be a memoir by the philosopher Anaxagoras, Pericles' friend, confidante, and former tutor. Unfortunately it is a dry account, containing no dialogue, and in large part it reads far more like an ordinary history book than a work of historical fiction. Warner neglects the opportunity to spark Pericles into vivid, imaginative, three-dimensional life that the genre provides. Neither Pericles nor his supposed biographer, Anaxagoras, ever really lift off the page.
Rex Warner was a brilliant scholar and a fine writer. On the heels of his outstanding Young Caesar and Imperial Caesar, Pericles the Athenian is a disappointment. It is well written, intelligent and erudite, but it lacks colour, energy and interest. For the casual reader looking for an introduction to Pericles it is a dull book best avoided.
Rex Warner was a brilliant scholar and a fine writer. On the heels of his outstanding Young Caesar and Imperial Caesar, Pericles the Athenian is a disappointment. It is well written, intelligent and erudite, but it lacks colour, energy and interest. For the casual reader looking for an introduction to Pericles it is a dull book best avoided.
May 18, 2022
Leí este libro hace unos años. Sinceramente no tengo un recuerdo especial del mismo como sí me sucede con otros libros leídos mucho tiempo antes.
Habla de Atenas y Pericles en la época que abarca del final de las guerras médicas con el imperio Persa y el inicio de la guerra del Peloponeso.
Narrado como si fueran las memorias de Anaxagoras filosofo amigo de Pericles. En parte parece un ensayo sobre las virtudes de la política y cultura ateniense frente a otras formas de gobierno.
Habla de Atenas y Pericles en la época que abarca del final de las guerras médicas con el imperio Persa y el inicio de la guerra del Peloponeso.
Narrado como si fueran las memorias de Anaxagoras filosofo amigo de Pericles. En parte parece un ensayo sobre las virtudes de la política y cultura ateniense frente a otras formas de gobierno.
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October 3, 2024Es la primera vez que me ha pasado, pero considero que para leer este libro necesitas tener ciertos conocimientos algo más profundos sobre toda la época en la que se ambienta, es más un ensayo de toda la época que abarca más que una novela, y por eso mismo me ha costado muchísimo leerlo, considero que no es un libro fácil de leer en ese sentido
October 28, 2024
Un retrato no solo de la vida de Pericles en todos sus aspectos, sino de Atenas en este periodo, con su filosofía, teatro, guerras, pactos, etc. Todo en voz de Anaxágoras.
Me ha parecido bestial cómo te sumerge en el periodo.
Me ha parecido bestial cómo te sumerge en el periodo.
December 11, 2023
Interesante como biografía histórica, le faltó estructurar mejor el contenido.
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February 27, 2017Rex Wagner's 196 Historical novel, Pericles the Athenian follows the famed Athenian leader from the end of the Persian War to his death during the early years of the Peloponnesian war. Told from the point of view of his friend and contemporary, the philosopher Anaxagoras, the novel works to describe how a man managed to lead Athens from it's near destruction at the end of the Persian War (Greece vs. the Persian Empire), into becoming the head of the Athenian Empire leading up to the Peloponnesian war (the war between Athens and Sparta).
This was my fifteenth book on the list of 36 Historical Novels set in Ancient Greece since January of last year, and although there was a lot I liked about it; Wagner is writing about an era in which we don't have a lot of primary sources to refer to and the fact that Athens at the time tended to exile any leader who got too powerful makes Pericles story quite the interesting one, I did feel at times that the book worked better as a textbook, or perhaps as creative non-fiction, rather than a perfect story on it's own.
An interesting read, but not one I would suggest as a starting point for people interested in the topic.
This was my fifteenth book on the list of 36 Historical Novels set in Ancient Greece since January of last year, and although there was a lot I liked about it; Wagner is writing about an era in which we don't have a lot of primary sources to refer to and the fact that Athens at the time tended to exile any leader who got too powerful makes Pericles story quite the interesting one, I did feel at times that the book worked better as a textbook, or perhaps as creative non-fiction, rather than a perfect story on it's own.
An interesting read, but not one I would suggest as a starting point for people interested in the topic.
February 22, 2021
Da la impresión de un libro póstumo, un diario personal escrito sin la intención de ser publicado. Pareciera la observación psicológica de parte de un filosofo que trata de describir una visión poética e idealizada con racionalidad alrededor de la figura de Pericles.
December 7, 2014
An excellent first book on Pericles for anyone to read.
January 4, 2018
Simply fantastic piece of art.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews