Pericles

Definition: Pericles

Pericles

Noun

1. Athenian statesman whose leadership contributed to Athen's political and cultural supremacy in Greece; he ordered the construction of the Parthenon (died in 429 BC).

"Pericles" is a name that signifies or is derived from: "enclose".

Date "Pericles" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1588. (references)

"Pericles" is a common misspelling or typo for: particles, periled.

Specialty Definitions: Pericles

Domain	Definitions
Biographical Satire	PERICLES, of Athens. Political boss, philosopher, and general. Secured his reputation through brains, a voice, and a well-oiled political machine. Started the golden age of Greece with a loud blast of the horn of plenty. Source: Who was Who: 5000BC - 1914.
Literature	Pericles Prince of Tyre (Shakespeare). The story is from the Gesta Romanorum, where Pericles, is called "Apollonius, King of Tyre." The story is also related by Gower in his Confessio Amantis (bk. viii.). Source: Brewer's Dictionary.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Specialty Definition: Pericles

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Pericles (c. 495 BC - 429 BC) was an influential and important leader of Athens during the Athenian Golden Age (specifically, between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars), from the Alcmaeonidae family. The period from 461 BC to 379 BC is sometimes known as "The Age of Pericles". He was responsible for a great many building projects which include most of the surviving structures on the Acropolis (including the Parthenon). He also persuaded the city to build the Long Walls that protected four-mile route to Peiraeus, the port for Athens. Of particular importance to us, is the fact that he fostered the power of democracy which was at that time considered to be a very radical idea.

Life of Pericles

Pericles started his political career at an early age. At first, however, he restrained his ambitions because he was fearful that due to his high social standing, he would be considered to be a tyrant or even dangerous. To get around this problem, he promoted the interests of the Demos -- the most numerous class of middle and low income citizens -- so as to avoid their suspicion.

Pericles was educated by the sophist Daman (who taught him politics), by Zeno the Eleatic (who taught him argumentation), and by Anaxagoras (who taught him nobility of purpose and character). Largely due to the teachings of Anaxagoras, Pericles was very careful of the way in which he spoke, and what he chose to say.

Cimon was a political rival of Pericles for many years. Cimon was a wealthy man who gained favor with the people by spending his own money on feeding, clothing and caring for those Athenians who needed assistance. To counter Cimon, Pericles spent public money in building projects. Pericles even was eventually able to have Cimon ostracized and banished from the city for a period of time. However, before his period of exile was up, Cimon returned to lead Athenians in a battle against Sparta. Unfortunately, some friends of Pericles had Cimon sent away and the battle went badly for the Athenians. At that point Pericles was able to look past his own ambitions, and recalled Cimon so that Athens might be victorious.

Pericles then set about strengthening Athens and improving the infrastructure. However, during his forty year predominance, he was cautious and did not take on opponents without first weighing his options and measuring his potential losses. Unfortunately, his infatuation with a woman named Aspasia would slightly change the way in which he initiated conflicts. According to Plutarch, Pericles was persuaded by her to mount an expedition against one of her enemies.

Pericles is often referred to as the founder of democracy in Athens. However, recent critical studies doubt that and describe the formation of democracy as a slow process. The credit for creating the first democracy on earth goes to social, political and economical cicumstances which one man alone could not possibly influence.

Pericles then began to fall out of favor in Athens while still being able to maintain power. The Spartans attacked and he ordered that Athens should prepare for a siege. Unfortunetely, during the siege, a plague spread through Athens and its allies, but not its enemies, killing many, including Pericles himself and most of his family. However, after Pericles lost his last Athenian son, the Athenians allowed a change in the law that made Pericles non-Athenian son a citizen and legitimate heir.

Unfortunately the information we have about Pericles is highly distorted by centuries of legends and myth. The biography most people rely on is written by Plutarch, who lived about 500 years later. Plutarch was more interested in studying the character of men than in writing history.

Pericles is also the title character of Pericles Prince of Tyre, a play by William Shakespeare.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Pericles."

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Crosswords: Pericles

Specialty definitions using "Pericles": Aspasia ♦ Dying Sayings ♦ Ismene ♦ Odour of Sanctity ♦ PERICLES ♦ Science Persecuted. (references)

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Modern Usage: Pericles

Domain	Usage
Clever	Wait for that wisest of all counselors -- TIME. (references; author: Pericles)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Commercial Usage: Pericles

Domain	Title
Books	Pericles of Athens (reference) Pericles, Prince of Tyre: Cymbeline: The Two Noble Kinsmen (Shakespeare, William,) (reference) Vitae Parallelae: Pericles Et Fabius Maximus, Nicias Et Crassus, Alcibiades Et Coriolanus, Demosthenes Et Cicero (Bibliotheca Teubneriana) (reference) The Children's Shakespeare: As You Like It, Hamlet, King Lear, a Midsummer Night's Dream, Pericles, Romeo & Juliet, and the Winter's Tale [UNABRIDGED] (reference) Pericles, Cymbeline, and Two Noblemen (New Rev) (reference) (more book examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Image Slideshow: Pericles

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Familiar Quotations: Pericles

Author	Quotation
Pericles	Wait for that wisest of all counselors -- TIME.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

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Usage Frequency: Pericles

"Pericles" is generally used as a noun (proper) -- approximately 75.21% of the time. "Pericles" is used about 117 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Noun (proper)	75.21%	88	35,154
Noun (plural)	24.79%	29	64,444
Total	100.00%	117	N/A

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: Pericles

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Expression	Frequency per Day	Expression	Frequency per Day
pericles	194	democracy pericles	3
funeral oration pericles	16	de pericles siglo	3
pericles shakespeare	10	pericles prince of tyre	2
pericles picture	7	pericles stratford	2
pericles plato	4	ancient greece pericles	2
the age of pericles	4	pericles of athens	2
de el pericles siglo	4	de epitafio pericles	2
de de oro pericles siglo	4	biografia de pericles	2
life pericles	4	by pericles shakespeare	2
maillis pericles	3	funeral note pericles speech	2
funeral oration pericles summary	3	pericles quote	2
biography pericles	3
		pericles quote	2
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Modern Translations: Pericles

Language		Translations for "Pericles"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Greek		� ερικλέουσ, � ερικλήσ. (various references)

Pig Latin		ericlespay

Russian		перикл. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

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Anagrams: Pericles

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Direct Anagrams: preslice, resplice.
	Words within the letters "c-e-e-i-l-p-r-s"
	-1 letter: ceilers, eclipse, piecers, pierces, precise, recipes, replies, spieler, splicer.
	-2 letters: ceiler, cerise, clepes, creels, creeps, crepes, cripes, lepers, lisper, perils, piecer, pieces, pierce, pliers, precis, prices, recipe, relics, relies, repels, resile, slicer, specie, spicer, splice.
	-3 letters: ceils, cepes, ceres, cires, clepe, clips, creel, creep, crepe, cries, cripe, crisp, epics, leers, leper, liers, peels.
	Words containing the letters "c-e-e-i-l-p-r-s"
	+1 letter: pencilers, pickerels, precisely, prelacies, presliced, preslices, priceless, replicase, respliced, resplices, specialer.
	+2 letters: fireplaces, percalines, pericycles, preclusive, princelets, recompiles, replicases, replicates.
	+3 letters: altarpieces, forcepslike, helicopters, imprecisely, lectureship, necropoleis, percentiles, predicables, prelections, presciently, pricelessly, princeliest, processible, projectiles, putrescible, supercoiled.
	+4 letters: coleopterist, compressible, corpulencies, lectureships, narcolepsies, necropolises, neuroleptics, percussively, perspectival, phylacteries, placekickers, precessional, preclusively, preeclampsia, preelections, preselecting, preselection, princeliness, reduplicates, repellencies, respectively, sepulchering, stepchildren, superhelical, superhelices, superspecial, ultraprecise.
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