How did Pericles pay for the Parthenon?

By the accounts historians rely on, Pericles paid for the Parthenon from a treasury that Athens' allies had paid into for a league against Persia. After the Persian invasions, a confederacy of Greek city-states, the Delian League, was founded in 478 BC under the leadership of Athens to keep fighting the Persian Empire. Its members could offer armed forces or pay a tax to the joint treasury, and most chose the tax.

Pericles, whom Thucydides acclaimed as "the first citizen of Athens", turned the Delian League into an Athenian empire. The shift had begun before him, as allies paid tribute instead of manning ships, but he sped it up and completed it. In 454-453 BC Athens transferred the treasury from Delos to Athens, either from genuine fear after a defeat in Egypt or as a pretext to control the League's finances. From that treasury he drew funds for a building plan that included the Parthenon, and in 449 BC he proposed a decree allowing 9,000 talents for the rebuilding of Athenian temples. Construction of the Parthenon began in 447 BC.

Was it theft? A Greek Academician, Angelos Vlachos, calls it one of the largest embezzlements in human history, though one that financed some of the most marvellous artistic creations of the ancient world. Plutarch records that many of Pericles's rivals saw it the same way, as taking the allies' money to fund building projects.

So the temple that symbolises Athenian glory is also, for its critics then and since, a monument to Athenian power over its allies.