THE AGE OF PERICLES IN THE MODERN ATHENS: GREEK HISTORY, SCOTTISH POLITICS, AND THE FADING OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Abstract

This article explores changing responses among late Georgian Scots towards Greek history in general and classical Athens in particular. Tracing the early study of Greece through some of the more innovative Scottish Enlightenment scholars, it argues that Periclean Athens long remained a difficult and controversial topic, mainly because eighteenth-century authors found it hard to offer a fully sympathetic treatment of a historical subject strongly associated with radical political democracy. With the defeat of Napoleon, however, and as new ways were sought to celebrate Scotland's own recent imperial, economic, and intellectual achievements, Athenianism gained in credibility, assisted by the rising tide of cultural Hellenism and political Hellenophilia throughout Britain. Plans were laid for a national monument in Edinburgh, modelled on the Athenian Parthenon. Nevertheless, insufficient support was forthcoming and by 1830 the project had stalled. Not least among the causes of this debacle – popularly known as ‘Scotland's Disgrace’ – were the contradictions involved in Athenian symbolism: the abandoned monument ultimately served to represent only the failings of Scotland's tory establishment.