Pericles of Athens (4 page)

I should first point out that the epigraphical and archaeological sources throw very
little light upon the
stratēgos
’s actions. No decree proposed by Pericles has come down to us, and he is mentioned
by name in only two inscriptions. The first, engraved more than a century after his
death, records that, as
khorēgos
, he financed three tragedies (including
The Persians
) and a satyr play, by Aeschylus. The second, on which Pericles’ name was restored
by epigraphists, alludes to his involvement in the construction of a fountain in the
sanctuary of Eleusis in Attica.
⁹

The archaeological evidence leaves the historian equally at a loss. The bust of Pericles
that adorns the covers of so many books is merely a marble copy dating from the Roman
period. The bronze original, sculpted by Cresilas, a craftsman of Cretan origin, used
to stand on the Acropolis, no doubt as a votive offering (a gift to the deity) dedicated
after his death by those close to him.
¹⁰
Pericles was represented wearing his famous helmet, raised to expose his brow. In
this case too, we should remember that it was an idealized image, designed to represent
a function—that of
stratēgos
—rather than the individual himself, as a snapshot might do.
¹¹

To tackle Pericles’ actions, historians are thus reduced to consulting literary sources.
These are marked by two major features: first, the essential role that is played by
a late text, Plutarch’s
Life of Pericles
, which gathers together many pieces of evidence dating from the fifth and fourth
centuries, whose relative reliability has been demonstrated by historians;
¹²
second, the two-edged nature of the documentation on the
stratēgos
, some of which is laudatory, some critical.

Topping the list is Herodotus, an author whose loyalties remain hard to pin down.
That is not really surprising. In the course of his work devoted to the Persian Wars
and their cause, this historian, a younger contemporary of the
stratēgos
, mentions Pericles only once. Despite the absence of any tangible evidence, many
interpreters nevertheless portray Herodotus as an
enthusiastic partisan of the
stratēgos
.
¹³
He was living in Athens in the 450–440s and was even thought to have slipped in a
discreet laudatory reference to Pericles when he recounted a dream that his mother
had had just before the baby’s birth.
¹⁴
However, there is nothing to support this hypothesis, which rests upon a questionable
assumption—namely, that “the father of history must surely have been a friend of the
father of democracy.” The fact is, though, that in his
Histories
Herodotus gives a critical account, if not of Pericles himself, at least of his ancestors,
and does not hesitate to record traditions hostile to the Alcmaeonids and to Pericles’
father, Xanthippus.
¹⁵
The historian is certainly no totally committed eulogist of Athens. Even if he admired
the city that emerged victorious from the Persian Wars, he expressed barely veiled
criticisms of the imperialist power that, guided by Pericles, oppressed the Ionian
Greeks within the framework of the Delian League. As a native of Halicarnassus, he
was well placed to see that his own community had simply exchanged one form of domination
for another, when it passed from Persian control into that of the Athenians.

While Herodotus’s view of Pericles may lead to some confusion, that is not the case
of other contemporary testimonies. The criticism of the comic poets is undeniably
bitter, as are the comments of Ion of Chios and Stesimbrotus of Thasos. However, Thucydides,
the historian of the Peloponnesian War, was clearly full of admiration.

In Pericles’ lifetime, in the theater, comic poets such as Cratinus and Hermippus
were quick to depict the
stratēgos
as a ridiculous figure.
¹⁶
The comic authors were writing about the contemporary scene, and their often violent
and sometimes abusive plays were performed before the entire city, on the occasion
of the great religious festivals in honor of Dionysus. Most of those comedies have
come down to us only as fragments, but they nevertheless do allow us to sense the
virulence of the accusations launched against Pericles. The poets reproached him for
his tyrannical behavior and, above all, for connections of his that were harmful to
the city. On the stage, Pericles was represented sometimes as an all-powerful leader,
sometimes as a puppet manipulated by his friends (such as Damon) or his lovers (such
as Aspasia).
¹⁷

All the same, those theatrical works are tricky for a historian to handle: in the
first place, for the very reason that they are fragmentary and this often makes it
difficult to reconstruct their authors’ intentions; second, because they aim to shock
and deliberately magnify certain characteristics in order to provoke laughter, in
what seems to be a ritualized verbal ranting; and finally, because they inevitably
make their criticism personal and always attack clearly identified figures—rather
than political and social mechanisms. Attacks
ad personam
are one of the mainsprings of comedy, which defines itself
by naming names (
onomasti komoidein
).
¹⁸
So it is that Comedy invariably tends to concentrate exclusively on individuals whom
it certainly denigrates but nevertheless positions very much centerstage.

The extant fragments of Ion of Chios and Stesimbrotus of Thasos are equally difficult
to interpret. Ion of Chios, who was contemporary with Pericles, excelled in a range
of public genres, including tragedy and dithyrambs. When he visited Athens, he was
a guest of Cimon, whom he describes in flattering terms, whereas he denigrates the
behavior of Pericles, particularly at the time of the war against Samos.
¹⁹
As for Stesimbrotus of Thasos, he was equally ill-disposed toward the
stratēgos
. In his treatise on
Themistocles, Thucydides, and Pericles
, he launches into a classic attack on these three Athenian political leaders, criticizing
both their upbringing and their characters.
²⁰
It is not surprising that he criticized the seemingly high-handed behavior of Pericles;
in the Greek world, lifestyles were an integral part of the definition of politics.
²¹

These many attacks were the source of a tradition hostile to Pericles. Thucydides
(the historian) was indisputably at the origin of an idealized representation of the
stratēgos
.
²²
This historian, who was himself a
stratēgos
before he was exiled from Athens in 424, presents, in his
History of the Peloponnesian War
, an idealized account of the actions of Pericles, reconstructing several of his speeches,
including the famous funeral oration delivered in 431 in honor of the Athenians killed
in the first year of the war. Yet Thucydides gives a detailed account of only the
last two years of Pericles’ life. In part 1 of his
History
, which contains an account of the
pentēkontaetia
, the fifty-year period between the end of the Persian Wars and the start of the Peloponnesian
War, the
stratēgos
is mentioned, fleetingly, only three times: when he beat the Sicyonians and attacked
Oiniadae in 454 (1.111.2), when he defeated Euboea in 446 (1.114), and when he crushed
the revolt in Samos in 440/39 (1.116–117). In effect, Pericles takes on the foremost
roles only at the end of book I and already disappears halfway through book II (2.65)
in this work that runs to a total of eight books. Thucydides dwells upon the
stratēgos
only as an actor in the Peloponnesian War and is not concerned to present a detailed
account of his life before the outbreak of those hostilities. The historian is, in
any case, interested in power and its mechanisms more than individuals themselves—although
he does take care to underline the mark that Pericles left on Athenian political life
(2.65).
²³

Throughout the fourth century, the ancient sources continue to oscillate between praise
and blame, depending on the objectives of the authors and those of their public. With
very few exceptions, the attitude of the philosophers is negative. Among Socrates’
disciples, Pericles becomes a subject of reflection both political and philosophical,
and soon turns into an anti-model.
Antisthenes (445–365), an admirer of Sparta and full of contempt for democracy, criticizes
Pericles openly and showers insults upon his companion, Aspasia. As for Plato, he
presents the
stratēgos
as a dangerous demagogue who corrupts the masses and is incapable even of raising
his own children in a suitable manner. The Socratics thus used Pericles as a foil,
within the framework of critical thinking about democracy and its innately vicious
functioning.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Attic orators are more inclined to celebrate
Pericles, although the
stratēgos
is frequently eclipsed by the brilliant aura surrounding Solon. Their discreet but
positive comments may be explained by the fact that they were addressing a popular
public rather than a select audience such as that of philosophic circles, in which
anti-democratic views could be expressed more freely.
²⁴

In the last third of the fourth century, Aristotle and his school presented two contrasting
pictures of Pericles. In his
Politics
, Aristotle turns the
stratēgos
into the very embodiment of
phronēsis
, prudence—that is to say, the ability to deliberate skilfully in an ever-changing
world.
²⁵
Meanwhile, the author of the
Constitution of the Athenians
—whether Aristotle himself or a member of his school—unequivocally criticizes the
introduction of the
misthos
and accuses Pericles of having sought by this means to corrupt the masses. In this
way, he picks up the Platonic line.

In this succession of ancient texts, there is one that, although late, is a decisive
link in the chain:
The Life of Pericles
by Plutarch (A.D. 46 to 125) This Greek gentleman, a native of Chaeronea in Boeotia,
composed his
Parallel Lives
in the early second century A.D., at a time when Greece had already long since fallen
under Roman domination. When setting up this particular parallel between a Greek and
a Roman, Plutarch chose, in the name of the prudence that characterized them both,
to compare Pericles and Fabius Maximus. This work, which was influenced by Plato,
gathered together, in the form of more or less explicit citations, most of the comic
fragments on Pericles, the criticisms of the
stratēgos
made by Ion of Chios and Stesimbrotus of Thasos, and also the hostile remarks of
Antisthenes and the Socratics. So Plutarch’s handling of the subject inevitably presents
today’s historians with a delicate problem.

In the first place, his work is marked by a desire to construct a unifying framework—a
Life
—drawing on material that, although abundant, is heterogeneous. This profusion of
texts often leads Plutarch to attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable and, in his
account, to juxtapose totally opposed traditions. For example, he devotes equal space
to, on the one hand, Thucydides’ cool analysis of the underlying causes of the Peloponnesian
War and, on the
other, to the vituperations of the comic poets who delighted in emphasizing the role
that Pericles’ partner, Aspasia, played in the outbreak of hostilities.

In this combination of as much praise as blame, Plutarch himself conveys a mixed view
of Pericles’ actions. On the one hand, he is clearly intent on celebrating the man
behind the great architectural works—the monuments that, at the time when he was composing
his
Lives
,
²⁶
testified to the ancient power of Greece; yet, at the same time, as a good disciple
of Plato and an admirer of Cimon, he wanted to denigrate Pericles, the democrat. This
tension sometimes makes it difficult to grasp his true intentions. To resolve this
contradiction, Plutarch divides the life of his hero into two artificially opposed
parts. He suggests that at first Pericles behaved as a demagogue, showering gifts
upon the masses and thereby fostering pernicious habits among them (9.1). Then, when
his own position was definitively assured, following the ostra cism of Thucydides
of Alopeke, Pericles is portrayed as radically changing his attitude and, without
hesitation, restraining the aspirations of the people, at the risk of incurring its
anger (15.2–3).

One further difficulty makes interpreting Plutarch’s text a particularly delicate
matter. Because he lived at the time of the Caesars, he does not always understand
the facts that he claims to describe. He tends to interpret Pericles’ actions in the
light of his own time, attributing to his hero the behavior or even the authority
of a Roman emperor. The fact that the people might exercise truly effective sovereignty
never even crosses his mind.

Exhaustive though it is, the
Life of Pericles
does not herald an end to the controversies that surrounded the figure of the
stratēgos
. A few decades after the death of Plutarch, Aelius Aristides (A.D. 117–185), in his
speech
Against Plato; in Defence of the Four
, without the slightest reservation, pays emphatic homage to the democratic leader.
On the strength of Thucydides’ authority, he maintains that Pericles never corrupted
the people in the slightest way, contrary to the popular view among Platonists, echoed
by Plutarch.
²⁷