Parenting & Family Quote by Pericles

Pericles puts Time on the throne and then dares you to argue with the succession. In a culture that prized human excellence and civic glory, this is a cold reminder that even the most meticulously earned reputation is a tenant, not an owner. Calling Time "the king of all men" isn’t decorative; it’s a political metaphor aimed at the proud. Kings distribute favors by whim, not by merit, and Pericles drags that uncomfortable truth into the moral universe: you don’t get what you deserve, you get what the calendar allows.

The line turns sharper with the double image of parent and grave. Time doesn’t merely end lives; it authorizes them. It produces generations, then erases them, a cycle that makes individual craving look almost childish. That word choice matters: "crave" suggests appetite, urgency, the hot demand of citizens who want victory, security, honor, immortality. Pericles answers with something like statesmanly discipline: desire is loud, Time is law.

The context is the Athenian moment Pericles helped define - democratic confidence, imperial ambition, war-shadowed reality. His rhetoric often praised Athens while tutoring it, and this feels like the tutoring: a warning against hubris, panic, and the belief that political will can bully fate. It also smuggles in a kind of consolation. If Time governs impartially, then loss and limitation aren’t personal humiliations; they’re the common tax of being human, paid by rulers and citizens alike.