A golden age of Greece, or of Athens?
The name says Greece, but the evidence says Athens. The middle of the fifth century BCE is often called the Golden Age of Greece, particularly of Athens, and almost all the works and people usually listed under that label, the Parthenon, Pheidias, Perikles, the great tragedians, belong to one city. Sparta, Corinth and the other cities had their own histories, but the “golden” story was written, built and paid for in Athens. So the honest answer is: a golden age of Athens, which much of Greece paid for and finally fought.
Dates and money: from 479 to 454 BCE
It starts with a victory. After the defeat of the Persians in 479 BCE, Athens dominated Greece politically, economically and culturally. To ensure the freedom of the Greek cities of the Aegean islands and the coast of Asia Minor, it organised a confederacy of allies, the Delian League, whose members provided either ships or a fixed sum of money kept in a treasury on the island of Delos. With control of the money and a strong fleet, Athens gradually turned its allies into subjects. By 454/453 BCE, when the treasury moved from Delos to the Athenian Acropolis, the city had become a wealthy imperial power, and also the first democracy, in which all adult male citizens took part in the assembly.
Not everyone liked where the money went. According to Plutarch, writing centuries later, critics complained in the assembly that Athens was gilding and adorning itself with the contributions forced from the rest of Greece.
Perikles and the building programme
Perikles, the leading statesman from about 461 to 429 BCE, turned the Acropolis into a lasting monument to that power. His general manager and overseer, Plutarch says, was the sculptor Pheidias, and the works rose with astonishing speed. The Parthenon, dedicated to Athena, was built in 447-438 BCE by the architects Iktinos and Kallikrates, entirely in marble and richly decorated with sculpture; inside stood Pheidias’s colossal gold and ivory Athena. The monumental gateway, the Propylaia, was finished in five years by the architect Mnesikles.
The programme went on after Perikles. The small Ionic Temple of Athena Nike (about 425 BCE) and the Erechtheion (421-406 BCE) were completed during the war, so the Acropolis you see today is the work of more than one generation.
Theatre and painting
The same decades saw the great Athenian drama of Aeschylus, Sophokles and Euripides, performed at the festival of Dionysos. In vase painting, red-figure finally replaced black-figure, and painters made great strides in drawing the human body, clothed or naked, at rest or in motion. In the funeral speech that Thucydides gives Perikles in 431 BCE, the leader calls the city “the school of Hellas”.
How it ended
The Golden Age was short. In 431 BCE the Peloponnesian War broke out between Athens and a league of cities led by Sparta, and it went on, on and off, for almost thirty years. A plague that lasted more than four years devastated the city, and Perikles’ leadership ended in 429 BCE. Athens lost the war in 404 BCE and with it its primacy. Its art, though, went on, and the style formed in those few decades became the model that later ages called “classical”. That is the Golden Age in one sentence: a single city, a few decades of power and money, and a set of buildings and images that outlived both.
Where to see it
The Acropolis of Athens, with the Parthenon, the Propylaia, the Temple of Athena Nike and the Erechtheion, is the Golden Age in stone. The Acropolis Museum, at the foot of the rock, shows the sculptures of the Parthenon. Check opening times on the official sites before you go.
Sources
- C. Hemingway and S. Hemingway, “The Art of Classical Greece (ca. 480-323 B.C.)”, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2008).
- Plutarch, Life of Pericles 12-13, trans. B. Perrin (LacusCurtius, University of Chicago).
- Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.41.1 (Perseus Digital Library).
- Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Odysseus: Parthenon; Temple of Athena Nike; Erechtheion. Acropolis Museum, “The frieze”.
