After reading the Athenians’ ideological values in Pericles’ Funeral Oration and examining their actions in The Melian Dialogue, it is clear that they are imperialists, first and foremost, and all of their other values are secondary in importance to this preeminent value: succeeding in their imperial conquests. Although Pericles is correct in stating that the Athenians value being worldly and championing liberality in foreign relations, these values are often based on inspirational ideals that are abandoned if these values conflict with their top priority of achieving strategic goals in connection with their imperialist agenda, This priority was clearly exemplified in the ways that they compromised these two lower-priority
