How Was Pericles's Strategy Successful

On the other hand, there are others, such as Platias and Koliopoulos that say Pericles’s strategy could have worked. Both state that "the Athenians lost the war only when they dramatically reversed the Periclean grand strategy that explicitly disdained further conquests". The Athens could have Although his countrymen engaged in several aggressive actions soon after his death, the Athenians remained true to the larger Periclean strategy of seeking to preserve, not expand, the empire, and did not depart from it until the Sicilian Expedition. 33%
Whether Pericles’s plan had a chance to succeed or fail, within just a year it, in 429 BC, the Athenians not only forgave Pericles but also re-elected him as strategos. He was reinstated in command

of the Athenian army and led all its military operations during 429 BC, having once again under his control the levers of power. In that year, however, Pericles suffered severe blows to his morale. Both his legitimate sons from his first wife, Paralus and Xanthippus, perished in the epidemic. His morale undermined, he burst into tears and not even Aspasia's companionship could console him. He himself died of the plague in the autumn of 429 BC. Just before his death, Pericles' friends were concentrated around his bed, enumerating his virtues during peace and underscoring his nine war trophies. Pericles, though moribund, heard them and interrupted them, pointing out that they forgot to mention his fairest and greatest title to their admiration; "for", said he, "no living Athenian ever put on mourning because of me". Pericles lived during the first two and a half years of the Peloponnesian War and, according to Thucydides, his death was a disaster for Athens, since his successors were inferior to him; they preferred to incite all the bad habits of the rabble and followed an unstable policy, endeavoring to be popular rather than useful. With these bitter comments, Thucydides not only laments the loss of a man he admired, but he also heralds the flickering of Athens' unique glory and grandeur.