Plutarch, a Greek writing in the Roman Empire around 100 AD, made Parallel Lives: paired lives of Greeks and Romans, judged by character. This life is Pericles of Athens, set opposite Fabius of Rome, two men who held a democracy to a long, unpopular plan.

Pericles led Athens for a generation without a crown. He took the tribute of allied cities and spent it on marble; the Parthenon rose while the fleet held the Aegean. Aspasia lived in his house; Anaxagoras, a philosopher, was in his ear. He made the city a spectacle of itself. When Sparta invaded, he locked people inside the Long Walls, the fortified road to the sea, and let the farms burn. Crowding brought plague. They fined him, then gave him back the generalship. He died with the Peloponnesian War, the fight with Sparta, still young, naming as his best deed that no Athenian had put on mourning because of him.