Pericles: A Biography in ContextPericles was the most famous leader of the most famous ancient Greek democracy and also the most controversial in his own time and ever since. Was he a brutal imperialist ready to oppress other Greeks, or a clear eyed defender of Athens' need for power to survive in a relentlessly hostile world? How did his intellectual training in ideas that many Athenians regarded as dangerous make him the most persuasive leader Athenian democracy ever knew? Why was