Listed 11 sub titles with search on: Biographies for wider area of: "CHOLARGOS Ancient demos ATTIKI" .
CHOLARGOS (Ancient demos) ATTIKI
Pericles, (Perikles). The greatest of Athenian statesmen. He
was the son of Xanthippus and Agariste, both of whom belonged to the noblest families
of Athens. The fortune of his parents procured for him a careful education, which
his extraordinary abilities and diligence turned to the best account. He received
instruction from Damon, Zeno of Elea, and Anaxagoras. With Anaxagoras he lived
on terms of the most intimate friendship till the philosopher was compelled to
retire from Athens. From this great and original thinker Pericles was believed
to have derived not only the cast of his mind, but the character of his eloquence,
which, in the elevation of its sentiments and the purity and loftiness of its
style, was the fitting expression of the force and dignity of his character and
the grandeur of his conceptions. Of the oratory of Pericles no specimens remain
to us, but it is described by ancient writers as characterized by singular force
and energy. He was described as thundering and lightening when he spoke, and as
carrying the weapons of Zeus upon his tongue.
In B.C. 469 Pericles began to take part in public affairs,
forty years before his death, and was soon regarded as the head of the more democratic
part in the State in opposition to Cimon. He gained the favour of the people by
the laws which he succeeded in passing for their benefit. Thus it was enacted
through his means that the citizens should receive from the public treasury the
price of their admittance to the theatre, amounting to two oboli apiece; that
those who served in the courts of the Heliaea should be paid for their attendance;
and that those citizens who served as soldiers should likewise be paid. It was
at his instigation that his friend Ephialtes proposed, in 461, the measure by
which the Areopagus was deprived of those functions which rendered it formidable
as an antagonist to the popular party. This success was followed by the ostracism
of Cimon, who was charged with Laconism, and Pericles was thus placed at the head
of public affairs at Athens. Pericles was distinguished as a general as well as
a statesman, and frequently commanded the Athenian armies in their wars with the
neighbouring States. In 454 he commanded the Athenians in their campaigns against
the Sicyonians and Acarnanians; in 448 he led the army which assisted the Phocians
in the Sacred War; and in 445 he rendered the most signal service to the State
by recovering the island of Euboea, which had revolted from Athens. Cimon had
been previously recalled from exile without any opposition from Pericles, but
had died in 449. On his death the aristocratic party was headed by Thucydides,
the son of Melesias; but on the ostracism of the latter in 444 the organized opposition
of the aristocratic party was broken up, and Pericles was left without a rival.
Throughout the remainder of his political course [p. 1202] no one appeared to
contest his supremacy; but the boundless influence which he possessed was never
perverted by him to sinister or unworthy purposes. So far from being a mere selfish
demagogue, he neither indulged nor courted the multitude. The next important event
in which Pericles was engaged was the war against Samos, which had revolted from
Athens, and which he subdued after an arduous campaign, 440. The poet Sophocles
was one of the generals who fought with Pericles against Samos.
For the next ten years, till the outbreak of the Peloponnesian
War, the Athenians were not engaged in any considerable military operations. During
this period Pericles devoted especial attention to the Athenian navy, as her supremacy
rested on her maritime superiority, and he adopted various judicious means for
consolidating and strengthening her empire over the islands of the Aegaean. The
funds derived from the tribute of the allies and from other sources were, to a
large extent, devoted by him to the erection of those magnificent temples and
public buildings which rendered Athens the wonder and admiration of Greece. Under
his administration the Propylaea and the Parthenon and the Odeum were erected
as well as numerous other temples and public buildings. With the stimulus afforded
by these works architecture and sculpture reached their highest perfection, and
some of the greatest artists of antiquity were employed in erecting or adorning
the buildings. The chief direction and oversight of the public edifices was intrusted
to Phidias. These works, calling into activity almost every branch of industry
and commerce at Athens, diffused universal prosperity while they proceeded, and
thus contributed in this, as well as in other ways, to maintain the popularity
and influence of Pericles. But he still had many enemies, who were not slow to
impute to him base and unworthy motives. From the comic poets Pericles had to
sustain numerous attacks. They exaggerated his power, spoke of his party as Pisistratids,
and called upon him to swear that he was not about to assume the tyranny. His
high character and strict probity, however, rendered all these attacks harmless.
But as his enemies were unable to ruin his reputation by these means, they attacked
him through his friends. His friends Phidias and Anaxagoras, and his mistress
Aspasia, were all accused before the people. Phidias was condemned and cast into
prison; Anaxagoras was also sentenced to pay a fine and leave Athens; and Aspasia
was only acquitted through the entreaties and tears of Pericles.
The Peloponnesian War has been falsely ascribed to the ambitious
schemes of Pericles. It is true that he counselled the Athenians not to yield
to the demands of the Lacedaemonians, and he pointed out the immense advantages
which the Athenians possessed in carrying on the war; but he did this because
he saw that war was inevitable; and that as long as Athens retained the great
power which she then possessed, Sparta would never rest contented. On the outbreak
of the war in 431 a Peloponnesian army under Archidamus invaded Attica; and upon
his advice the Athenians conveyed their movable property into the city and their
cattle and beasts of burden to Euboea, and allowed the Peloponnesians to desolate
Attica without opposition. Next year (430), when the Peloponnesians again invaded
Attica, Pericles pursued the same policy as before. In this summer a plague made
its appearance in Athens. The Athenians, being exposed to the devastation of the
war and the plague at the same time, began to turn their thoughts to peace, and
looked upon Pericles as the author of all their distresses, inasmuch as he had
persuaded them to go to war. Pericles attempted to calm the public ferment; but
such was the irritation against him that he was sentenced to pay a fine. The ill-feeling
of the people having found this vent, Pericles soon resumed his accustomed sway,
and was again elected one of the generals for the ensuing year (429). Meantime
Pericles had suffered in common with his fellow-citizens. The plague carried off
most of his near connections. His son Xanthippus, a profligate and undutiful youth,
his sister, and most of his intimate friends died of it. Still he maintained unmoved
his calm bearing and philosophic composure. At last his only surviving legitimate
son, Paralus, a youth of greater promise than his brother, fell a victim. The
firmness of Pericles then at last gave way; as he placed the funeral garland on
the head of the lifeless youth, he burst into tears and sobbed aloud. He had one
son remaining, his child by Aspasia; and he was allowed to enroll this son in
his own tribe and give him his own name. In the autumn of 429 Pericles himself
died of a lingering sickness. He survived the commencement of the war two years
and six months. The name of the wife of Pericles is not mentioned. She had been
the wife of Hipponicus, by whom she was the mother of Callias. She bore two sons
to Pericles, Xanthippus and Paralus. She lived unhappily with Pericles, and a
divorce took place by mutual consent, when Pericles connected himself with Aspasia.
Of his strict probity he left the decisive proof in the fact that at his death
he was found not to have added a single drachma to his hereditary property. His
greatest fault as a statesman was his inability to see that personal government
in the long run is injurious to a nation; for it impairs the capacity of the people
for self-government, and on the death of the chief leaves them helpless and inexperienced.
On his death-bed his friends were commenting on his victories and triumphs, when
he interrupted them with the remark, "That which you have left unnoticed
is that of which I am the proudest; no Athenian ever wore mourning through any
act of mine." His life is sketched for us by Thucydides and Plutarch.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited June 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Periclaes (Perikles). The greatest of Athenian statesmen, was the son of Xanthippus,
under whose command the victory of Mycale was gained, and of Agariste, the great
grand-daughter of Cleisthenes,
tyrant of Sicyon, and niece of Cleisthenes,
the founder of the later Athenian constitution (Herod. vi. 131; comp. Cleisthenes).
Both Herodotus (l. c.) and Plutarch have thought the story, that before his birth
his mother dreamed that she gave birth to a lion, of sufficient interest to deserve
recording. Pericles belonged to the deme Cholargos in the tribe Acamantis. The
date of his birth is not known. The early period of his life was spent in retirement,
in the prosecution of a course of study in which his noble genius found the most
appropriate means for its cultivation and expansion; till, on emerging from his
obscurity, his unequalled capabilities rapidly raised him to that exalted position
which thence-forwards he maintained throughout the whole of his long and brilliant
career till his death. His rank and fortune enabled him to avail himself of the
instructions of all those who were most eminent in their several sciences and
professions. Music, which formed so essential an element in the education of a
Greek, he studied under Pythocleides (Aristot. ap. Plut. Per. 3; Plat. Alcib).
The musical instructions of Damon were, it is said, but a pretext; his real lessons
having for their subject political science. Pericles was the first statesman who
recognised the importance of philosophical studies as a training for his future
career; he devoted his attention to the subtleties of the Eleatic school, under
the guidance of Zeno of E!ea. But the philosopher who exercised the most important
and lasting influence on his mind, and to a very large extent formed his habits
and character, was Anaxagoras. With this great and original thinker, the propounder
of the sublimest doctrine which Greek philosophy had yet developed, that the arrangements
of the universe are the dispositions of an ordering intelligence, Pericles lived
on terms of the most intimate friendship, till the philosopher was compelled to
retire from Athens. From him Pericles was believed to have derived not only the
cast of his mind, but the character of his eloquence, which, in the elevation
of its sentiments, and the purity and loftiness of its style, was the fitting
expression of the force and dignity of his character and the grandeur of his conceptions.
Of the oratory of Pericles no specimens remain to us, but it appears to have been
characterised by singular force and energy. He was described as thundering and
lightening when he spoke, and as carrying the weapons of Zeus upon his tongue
(Plut. Moral.; Diod. xii. 40; Aristoph. Acharn. 503; Cic. de Orat. iii. 34; Quintil.
x. 1.82). The epithet Olympius which was given to him was generally understood
as referring to his eloquence. By the unanimous testimony of ancient authors his
oratory was of the highest kind (Plat. Phaedr.). His orations were the result
of elaborate preparation; he used himself to say that he never ascended the bema
without praying that no inappropriate word might drop from his lips (Quintil.
xii. 9.13). According to Suidas (s. v. Perikl.), Pericles was the first who committed
a speech to writing before delivery. The influence of Anaxagoras was also traced
in the deportment of Pericles, the lofty bearing and calm and easy dignity of
which were sustained by an almost unrivalled power of self-command. The most annoying
provocation never made him forsake his dignified composure. His voice was sweet,
and his utterance rapid and distinct; in which respect, as well as in his personal
appearance, he resembled Peisistratus. His figure was graceful and majestic, though
a slight deformity in the disproportionate length of his head furnished the comic
poets of the day with an unfailing theme for their pleasantry, and procured him
the nicknames of schinokethalos and kephalegeretes.
In his youth he stood in some fear of the people, and, aware of the
resemblance which was discovered in him to Peisistratus, he was fearful of exciting
jealousy and alarm; but as a soldier he conducted himself with great intrepidity.
However, when Aristeides was dead, Themistocles ostracised, and Cimon much engaged
in military expeditions at a distance from Greece, he began to take a more active
part in the political movements of the time. In putting himself at the head of
the more democratical party in the state, there can be no question that he was
actuated by a sincere predilection. The whole course of his political career proves
such to have been the case. There is not the slightest foundation for the contrary
supposition, except that his personal character seemed to have greater affinities
with the aristocratical portion of the community. If he ever entertained the slightest
hesitation, his hereditary prepossessions as the grand-nephew of Cleisthenes would
have been quite sufficient to decide his choice. That that choice was determined
by selfish motives, or political rivalry, are suppositions which, as they have
nothing to rest upon, and are contradicted by the whole tenor of his public life,
are worth absolutely nothing.
As his political career is stated to have lasted above forty years
(Plut. Cic. l.c.), it must have been somewhat before B. C. 469 when he first came
forward. He then devoted himself with the greatest assiduity to public affairs;
was never to be seen in the streets except on his way to the place of assembly
or the senate; and withdrew [p. 193] entirely from the convivial meetings of his
acquaintance, once only breaking through this rule to honour the marriage of his
nephew Euryptolemus, and admitting to his society and confidence only a few intimate
friends. He took care, however, not to make himself too cheap, reserving himself
for great occasions, and putting forward many of his propositions through his
partisans. Among the foremost and most able of these was Ephialtes.
The fortune of Pericles, which, that his integrity might be kept free
even from suspicion, was husbanded with the strictest economy under the careful
administration of his steward Euangelus, insomuch as even to excite the discontent
of the women of his household, was not sufficient to enable Pericles qut of his
private resources to vie with the profuse liberality of Cimon. Accordingly, to
ingratiate himself with the people, he followed the suggestion of his friend Demonides,
to make the public treasury available for similar objects, and proposed a series
of measures having for their object to provide the poorer citizens not only with
amusement, but with the means of subsistence. To enable them to enjoy the theatrical
amuseents, he got a law passed that they should receive from the public treasury
the price of their admittance, amounting to two obluses apiece. The measure was
unwise as a precedent, and being at a later period carried to a much greater extent
in connection with various other festivals led to the establishment of the Theoric
fund. Another measure, in itself unobjectionable and equitable, was one which
ordained that the citizens who served in the courts of the Heliaea should be paid
for their attendance (misthos dikastikos--to heliastikon). It was of course not
in the power of Pericles to foresee the mischievous increase of litigation which
characterised Athens at a later time, or to anticipate the propositions of later
demagogues by whom the pay was tripled, and the principle of payment extended
to attendance at the public assembly: a measure which has been erroneously attributed
to Pericles himself. According to Ulpian (ad Demosth. peri suntax.) the practice
of paying the citizens who served as soldiers was first introduced by Pericles.
To affirm that in proposing these measures Pericles did violence to his better
judgment in order to secure popularity, would be to do him a great injustice.
The whole course of his administration, at a time when he had no rival to dispute
his pre-eminence, shows that these measures were the results of a settled principle
of policy, that the people had a right to all the advantages and enjoyments that
could be procured for them by the proper expenditure of the treasures of which
they were masters. That in proposing them he was not insensible to the popularity
which would accrue to their author, may be admitted without fixing any very deep
stain upon his character. The lessons of other periods of history will show that
the practice of wholesale largess, of which Cimon was beginning to set the example,
is attended with influences even more corrupting and dangerous. If Pericles thought
so, his measures, though perverted to mischief through consequences beyond his
foresight or control, must be admitted to have been wise and statesmanlike, and
not the less so because they were dexterously timed for the advancement of his
personal influence.
The first occasion on which we find the two rival parties assuming
anything like a hostile attitude towards each other, was when Cimon, on his return
from Thasos, was brought to tria. Pericles was one of those appointed to conduct
the impeachment. But whether the prosecution was not according to his wishes,
or he had yielded to the intercession of Elpinice, he only rose once, for form's
sake, and put forth none of his eloquence. The result, according to Plutarch,
was, that Cimon was acquitted. It was shortly after this, that Pericles, secure
in the popularity which he had acquired, assailed the aristocracy in its strong-hold,
the Areiopagus. Here, again, the prominent part in the proceedings was taken by
Ephialtes, who in the assembly moved the psephisma by which the Areiopagus was
deprived of those functions which rendered it formidable as an antagonist to the
democratical party. The opposition which Cimon and his party might have offered
was crippled by the events connected with the siege of Ithome; and in B. C. 461
the measure was passed. That Pericles was influenced by jealousy because, owing
to his not having been archon, he had no seat in the council, or that Ephialtes
seconded his views out of revenge for an offence that had been given him in the
council, are notions which, though indeed they have no claims to attention, have
been satisfactorily refuted. Respecting the nature of the change effected in the
jurisdiction of the Areiopagus, the reader is referred to the Dictionary of Antiquities,
art. Areiopagus. This success was soon followed by the ostracism of Cimoin, who
was charged with Laconism.
In B. C. 457 the unfortunate battle of Tanagra took place. The request
made by Cimon to be allowed to take part in the engagement was rejected through
the influence of the friends of Pericles; and Cimon having left his panoply for
his friends to fight round, Pericles, as if in emulation of them, performed prodigies
of valour. We do not learn distinctly what part he took in the movements which
ensued. The expedition to Egypt he disapproved of; and through his whole career
he showed himself averse to those ambitious schemes of foreign conquest which
the Athenians were fond of cherishing; and at a later period effectually withstood
the dreams of conquest in Sicily, Etruria. and Carthage, which, in consequence
of the progress of Greek settlements in the West, some of the more enterprising
Athenians had begun to cherish. In B. C. 454, after the failure of the expedition
to Thessaly, Pericles led an armament which embarked at Pegae, and invaded the
territory of Sicyon, routing those of the Sicyonians who opposed him. Then, taking
with him some Achaean troops, he proceeded to Acarnania, and besieged Oeniadae,
though without success (Thucyd. i. 111). It was probably after these events, that
the recal of Cimon took place. If there was some want of generosity in his ostracism,
Pericles at least atoned for it by himself proposing the decree for his recal.
The story of the private compact entered into between Pericles and Cimon through
the intervention of Elpinice, that Cimon should have the command abroad, while
Pericles took the lead at home, is one which might safely have been questioned
had it even rested on better authority than that of the gossip-mongers through
whom Plutarch became acquainted with it.
It was not improbably about this time that Pericles took some steps
towards the realisation of a noble idea which he had formed, of uniting all the
Grecian states in one general confederation. He got a decree passed for inviting
all the Hellenic states in Europe and Asia to send deputies to a congress, to
be held at Athens, to deliberate in the first place about rebuilding the temples
burnt by the Persians, and providing the sacrifices vowed in the time of danger;
but also, and this was the most important part of the scheme, about the means
of securing freedom and safety of navigation in every direction, and of establishing
a general peace between the different Hellenic states. To bear these proposals
to the different states, twenty men were selected of above fifty years of age,
who were sent in detachments of five in different directions. But through the
jealousy and counter machinations of Sparta, the project came to nothing.
In B. C. 448 the Phocians deprived the Delphians of the oversight
of the temple and the guardianship of the treasures in it. In this they seem at
least to have relied on the assistance of the Athenians, if the proceeding had
not been suggested by them. A Lacedaemonian force proceeded to Phocis, and restored
the temple to the Delphians, who granted to Sparta the right of precedence in
consulting the oracle. But as soon as the Lacedaemonians had retired, Pericles
appeared before the city with an Athenian army, replaced the Phocians in possession
of the temple, and had the honour which had been granted to the Lacedaemonians
transferred to the Athenians (Thucyd. i. 112). Next year (B. C. 447), when preparations
were being made by Tolmides, to aid the democratical party in the towns of Boeotia
in repelling the efforts and machinations of the oligarchical exiles, Pericles
opposed the measure as rash and unseasonable. His advice was disregarded at the
time; but when, a few days after, the news arrived of the disaster at Coroneia,
he gained great credit for his wise caution and foresight. The ill success which
had attended the Athenians on this occasion seems to have aroused the hopes of
their enemies; and when the five years' truce had expired (a. c. 445), a general
and concerted attack was made on them. Euboea revolted; and before Pericles, who
had crossed over with an army to reduce it, could effect anything decisive, news
arrived of a revolution in Megara and of the massacre of the greater part of the
Athenian garrison, the rest of whom had fled to Nisaea; and intelligence was also
brought of the approach of a Lacedaemonian army under the command of Pleistoanax,
acting under the guidance of Cieandridas. Pericles, abandoning Euboea for the
present, at once marched back to Athens. The Peloponnesians had already begun
to ravage the country; Pericles, with his usual prudence, declined the risk of
a battle; he found a bribe(1) a simpler and safer way of getting
rid of the enemy. When this more important enemy had been disposed of, Pericles
returned to Euboea with an armament of 50 galleys and 5000 heavy-armed soldiers,
by which all resistance was overpowered. The land-owners of Chalcis (or at least
some of them) were stripped of their estates. On the Histiaeans, who had given
deeper provocation by murdering the whole crew of an Athenian galley which fell
into their hands, a severer vengeance was inflicted. They were expelled from their
territory, on which was settled a colony of 2000 Athenians, in a new town, Oreus,
which took the place of Histiaea. These events were followed by the thirty years'
truce, the Athenians consenting to evacuate Troezen, Pegae, Nisaea, and Achaea.
The influence of the moderate counsels of Pericles may probably be traced in their
consenting to submit to such terms. The conjecture hazarded by Bishop Thirlwall
(vol. iii. p. 44), that the treaty was the work of the party opposed to Pericles,
seems improbable. It may at least be assumed that the terms were not opposed by
Pericles. The moment when his deeply-rooted and increasing influence had just
been strengthened by the brilliant success which had crowned his exertions to
rescue Athens from a most perilous position, would hardly have been chosen by
his political opponents as one at which to set their policy in opposition to his.
After the death of Cimon the aristocratical party was headed by Thucydides,
the son of Melesias. He formed it into a more regular organization, producing
a more marked separation between it and the democratical party. Though a better
political tactician than Cimon, Thucydides was no match for Pericles, either as
a politician or as an orator, which, indeed, he acknowledged, when once, being
asked by Archidamus whether he or Pericles was the better wrestler, he replied
that when he threw Pericles the latter always managed to persuade the spectators
that he had never been down. The contest between the two parties was brought to
an issue in B. C. 444. Thucydides and his party opposed the lavish expenditure
of the public treasure on the magnificent and expensive buildings with which Pericles
was adorning the city, and on the festivals and other amusements which he instituted
for the amusement of the citizens. In reply to the clamour which was raised against
him in the assembly, Pericles offered to discharge the expense of the works, on
condition that the edifices should be inscribed with his name, not with that of
the people of Athens. The assembly with acclamation empowered him to spend as
much as he pleased. The contest was soon after decided by ostracism, and Pericles
was left without a rival; nor did any one throughout the remainder of his political
course appear to contest his supremacy. Nothing could be more dignified or noble
than the attitude which under these circumstances he assumed towards the people.
The boundless influence which he possessed was never perverted by him to sinister
or unworthy purposes. So far from being a mere selfish demagogue, he neither indulged
nor courted the multitude. "As long as he was at the head of the state in peace
he administered its affairs with moderation, and kept a safe guard over it, and
it became in his time very great. Being powerful on the ground both of his reputation
and of his judgment, and having clearly shown himself thoroughly incorruptible,
he restrained the multitude with freedom, and was not so much led by it as himself
led it, because he did not seek to acquire power by unworthy means, bringing forward
propositions which would gratify the people, but on the ground of his high character
being able to speak in opposition even to its angry feelings. And so, whenever
he saw them insolently confident beyond what the occasion justified, by his speeches
he reduced them to a more wary temper, and when on the other hand they were unreasonably
alarmed, he restored them again to confidence. And there was in name a democracy,
but in reality a government in the hands of the first man" (Thucyd. ii. 65). After
the ostracism of Thucydides the organized opposition of the aristocratical party
was broken up, though, as we shall see, the malevolence of the enemies of Pericles
exposed him subsequently to some troublesome contests.
A few years after the commencement of the 30 years' truce a war broke
out between Samos and Miletus about the towns of Priene and Anaea. The Milesians,
being vanquished, applied for help to Athens, and were backed by the democratical
party in Samos itself. So favourable an opportunity for carrying out the policy
which Athens pursued towards her allies was quite sufficient to render the intervention
of Aspasia unnecessary for the purpose of inducing Pericles to support the cause
of the Milesians. The Samians were commanded to desist from hostilities, and submit
their dispute to the decision of an Athenian tribunal. This they showed themselves
slow to do, and Pericles was sent with a fleet of 40 galleys to enforce the commands
of the Athenians. He established a democratical constitution in Samos, and took
100 hostages from the oligarchical party, which he lodged in Lemnos. He also levied
a contribution of 80 talents. The bribe of a talent from each of the hostages,
with a large sum besides from the oligarchical party and from Pissuthnes, the
satrap of Sardes, is said to have been offered to Pericles to induce him to relinquish
his intention, and of course refused. He then returned, leaving a small garrison
of Athenians in Samos. When he had left, a body of Samians, who had left the island
as he approached, having concerted measures with Pissuthnes, recovered the hostages,
overpowered the Athenian garrison and their political opponents, and renounced
the Athenian alliance. A Phoenician fleet was promised to assist them; the enemies
of Athens in Greece were urged, though without success, to take up the cause of
the Samians; and Byzantium was induced to join in the revolt. Pericles, with nine
colleagues and a fleet of 60 vessels, returned to put down the revolt. Detachments
were sent to get reinforcements from the other allies, and to look out for the
Phoenician fleet. With the remaining ships, amounting to 44 in number, Pericles
attacked a Samian fleet of 70, as it was returning from Miletus, and gained the
victory. Having received reinforcements, he landed a body of troops, drove the
Samians within the walls, and proceeded to invest the town. A victory, though
probably a slight one, was gained by the Samians under the command of Melissus,
and Pericles, with 60 ships, sailed to meet the Phoenician fleet. In his absence,
the force which he had left behind was defeated, and the Samians exerted themselves
actively in introducing supplies into the town. On the return of Pericles they
were again closely besieged. An additional squadron of 40 ships was sent from
Athens under the command of Hagnon, Phormion, and Thucydides. The Samians, being
again decisively defeated in a sea-fight, were closely blockaded. Though Pericles
is said to have made use of some new kinds of battering engines, the Samians held
out resolutely, and murmurs were heard among the Athenian soldiers, whose dissolute
habits (comp. Athen. xiii.) soon rendered them weary of the tedious process of
blockade. There is a story that, in order to pacify them, Pericles divided his
army into eight parts, and directed them to cast lots, the division which drew
a white bean being allowed to feast and enjoy themselves, while the others carried
on the military operations. At the end of nine months the Samians capitulated,
on condition that they should give up their ships, dismantle their fortifications,
and pay the cost of the siege by instalments. Their submission was speedily followed
by that of the Byzantines. On his return to Athens, Pericles celebrated with great
magnificence the obsequies of those who had fallen in the war. He was chosen to
deliver the customary oration. At its close the women who were present showered
upon him their chaplets and garlands. Elpinice alone is said to have contrasted
his hardwon triumph with the brilliant victories of her brother Cimon. Pericles
had indeed good reason to be proud of his success; for Thucydides (viii. 76) does
not scruple to say that the Samians were within a very little of wresting from
the Athenians their maritime supremacy. But the comparison with the Trojan War,
if ever really made, was more likely to have come from some sycophantic partisan,
than from Pericles himself (Plut. l.c.; Thucyd. i. 115--117; Diod. xii. 27, 28;
Suidas, s. v. Samion ho demos ; Aelian, V. H. ii. 9; Aristoph. Aclitarn. 850).
Between the Samian war, which terminated in B. C. 440, and the Peloponnesian
war, which began in B. C. 431, the Athenians were not engaged in any considerable
military operations. On one occasion, though the date is uncertain, Pericles conducted
a great armament to the Euxine, apparently with very little object beyond that
of displaying the power and maritime supremacy of the Athenians, overawing the
barbarians, and strengthening the Athenian influence in the cities in that quarter.
Sinope was at the time under the power of the tyrant Timesilaus. Application was
made to Pericles for assistance to expel the tyrant. A body of troops, which was
left under the command of Lamachus, succeeded in effecting this object, and a
body of 600 Athenians was afterwards sent to take possession of the confiscated
property of the tyrant and his partisans.
While the Samian war was a consequence of the policy which Athens exercised towards
her allies, the issue of it tended greatly to confirm that direct authority which
she exercised over them. This policy did not originate with Pericles, but it was
quite in accordance with his views, and was carried out by him in the most complete
manner. By the commutation of military service for tribute, many of the allied
states had been stripped of their means of defence in the time of Cimon. It appears,
however, to have been on the proposition of Pericles that the treasure of the
confederacy was removed from Delos to Athens (about B. C. 461), and openly appropriated
to objects which had no immediate connection with the purpose for which the confederacy
was first formed, and the contributions levied. In justification of this procedure,
Pericles urged that so long as the Athenians fulfilled their part of the compact,
by securing the safety of their allies against the attacks of the Persian power,
they were not obliged to render any account of the mode in which the money was
expended; and if they accomplished the object for which the alliance was formed
with so much vigour and skill as to have a surplus treasure remaining out of the
funds contributed by the allies, they had a right to expend that surplus in any
way they pleased. Under the administration of Pericles the contributions were
raised from 460 to 600 talents. The greater part of this increase may have arisen
from the commutation of service for money. There is nothing to show that any of
the states were more heavily burdened than before. The direct sovereignty which
the Athenians claimed over their allies was also exercised ill most instances
in establishilng or supporting democratieal government, and in compelling all
those who were reduced to the condition of subject allies to refer, at all events,
the more important of their judicial causes to the Athenian courts for trial.
Pericles was not insensible to the real nature of the supremacy which Athens thus
exercised. He admitted that it was of the nature of a tyranny (Thucyd. ii. 63).
In defence of the assumption of it he would doubtless have urged, as the Athenian
ambassadors did at Sparta, that the Athenians deserved their high position on
account of their noble sacrifices in the cause of Greece, since any liberty which
the Greek states enjoyed wastile result of that self-devotion; that the supremacy
was offered to them, not seized by force; and that it was the jealousy and hostility
of Sparta which rendered it necessary for the Athenians in self-defence to convert
their hegemony into a dominion, which every motive of national honour and interest
urged them to maintain; that the Athenians had been more moderate in the exercise
of their dominion than could have been expected, or than any other state would
have been under similar circumstances; and that the right of the Athenians had
been tacitly acquiesced in by the Lacedaemonitans themselves until actual causes
of quarrel had arisetn between them (Thucyd. i. 73, especially 75, 76). In point
of fact, we find the Corinthians at an earlier period, in the congress held to
deliberate respecting the application of the Samians, openly laying down the maxim
that each state had a right to punish its own allies (Thucyd. i. 40). If Pericles
did not rise above the maxims of his times and country, his political morality
was certainly not below that of the age; nor would it be easy even in more modern
times to point out a nation or statesman whose procedure in similar circumstances
would have been widely different.
The empire which arose out of this consolidation of the Athenian confederacy,
was still further strengthened by planting colonies, which commonly stood to the
parent state in that peculiar relation which was understood by the term klerouchoi
(see Colonia).
Colonies of this kind were planted at Oreus in Euboea, at Chalcis, in Naxos, Andros,
among the Thracians, and in the Thracian Chersonesus. The settlement at Sinope
has been already spoken of. The important colony of Thurii was founded in B. C.
444. Amphipolis was founded by Hagnon in B. C. 437. These colonies also served
the very important purpose of drawing off from Athens a large part of the more
troublesome and needy citizens, whom it might have been found difficult to keep
employed at a time when no military operations of any great magnitude were being
carried on. Pericles, however, was anxious rather for a well consolidated empire
than for an extensive dominion, and therefore refused to sanction those plans
of extensive conquest which many of his contemporaries had begun to cherish. Such
attempts, surrounded as Athens was by jealous rivals and active enemies, he knew
would be too vast to be attended with success.
Pericles thoroughly understood that the supremacy which it was his
object to secure for Athens rested on her maritime superiority. The Athenian navy
was one of the objects of his especial care. A fleet of 60 galleys was sent out
every year and kept at sea for eight months, mainly, of course, for the purpose
of training the crews, though the subsistence thus provided for the citizens who
served in the fleet was doubtless an item in his calculations. To render the communication
between Athens and Peiraeeus still more secure, Pericles built a third wall between
the two first built, parallel to the Peiraic wall.
The internal administration of Pericles is characterised chiefly by
the mode in which the public treasures were expended. The funds derived from the
tribute of the allies and other sources were devoted to a large extent to the
erection of those magnificent temples and public buildings which rendered Athens
the wonder and admiration of Greece. A detailed description of the splendid structures
which crowned the Acropolis, belongs rather to an account of Athens. The Propylaea,
and the Parthenon, with its sculptured pediments and statue of Athene, exhibited
a perfection of art never before seen, and never since surpassed. Besides these,
the Odeum, a theatre designed for the musical entertainments which Pericles appended
to the festivities of the Panathenaea, was construtcted under his direction; and
the temples at Eleusis and other places in Attica, which had been destroyed by
the Persians, were rebuilt. The rapidity with which these works were finished
excited astonishment. The Propylaea, the most expensive of them, was finished
in five years. Under the stimulus afforded by these works architecture and sculpture
reached their highest perfection, and some of the greatest artists of antiquity
were employed in erecting or adorning the buildings. The chief direction and oversight
of the [p. 197] public edifices was entrusted to Pheidias, under whose superintendence
were employed his two pupils Alcamenes and Agoracritus, Ictinus and Callicrates
the architects of the Parthenon, Mnesicles the architect of the Propylaea, Coroebus
the architect who began the temple at Eleusis, Callimachus, Metagenes, Xenocles
and others. These works calling into activity, as they did in various ways, almost
every branch of industry and commerce at Athens, diffused universal prosperity
while they proceeded. Such a variety of instruments and materials were now needed,
that there could hardly be an artisan in the city who would not find scope for
his industry and skill; and as every art required the services of a number of
subordinate labourers, every class of the labouring citizens found employment
and support. This, however, though a most important object, and one which Pericles
had distinctly in view, was not the only one which he set before himself in this
expenditure. Independently of the gratification of his personal taste, which in
this respect accorded with that of the people, his internal and external policy
formed parts of one whole. While he raised A tiens to that supremacy which in
his judgment she deserved to possess, on account both of the natural capabilities
of the people and the glorious sacrifices which the had made for the safety and
freedom not of themselves only but of Greece, the magnificent aspect which the
city assumed under his directions was designed to keep alive among the people
a present consciousness of their greatness and power (Comp. Demosth. Aristocr.)
This feature of his policy is distinctly expressed in the speech delivered by
him over the slain in the first winter of the Peloponnesian war, a speech equally
valuable as an embodiment of his views, whether the sentiments contained in it
be, as is most probable, such as he actually delivered, or such as his contemporary
Thucydides knew him to entertain (Thucyd. ii. 35--46). He calls upon the survivors
to resolve that the spirit they cherish towards their enemies shall be no less
daring than that of those who had fallen; considering not alone the immediate
benefit resulting from repelling their enemies, but rather the power of the city,
contemplating it in reality daily, and becoming lovers (erastas) of it; and whenever
it seems to them to be great, considering that men acquired this magnificence
by daring, and judging what was necessary, and maintaining a sense of honour in
action (c. 43). The design of his policy was that Athens should be thoroughly
prepared for war, while it contained within itself every thing that could render
the citizens satisfied with peace; to make them conscious of their greatness,
and inspire them with that self-reliance and elastic vigour, which was a surer
safeguard than all the jealous measures resorted to by the Spartans (c. 36--39).
Nothing could well be further from the truth than the estimate Plato formed of
the policy of Pericles, if he makes Socrates express his own views, in saying
that Pericles made the Athenians idle, and cowardly, and talkative, and money-loving,
by first accustoming them to receive pay (Gory. p. 515, e.). The great object
of Pencles was to get the Athenians to set before themselves a great ideal of
what Athens and an Athenian ought to be. His commendations of the national characteristics
partook quite as much of the nature of exhortation as of that of praise. This
object, of leading the Athenians to value highly their station and privileges
as Athenian citizens, may doubtless be traced in the law which he got passed at
an early period, that the privileges of citizenship should be confined to those
whose parents were both Athenians; a law which was called into exercise ill B.
C. 444, on the occasion of a present of corn being sent by Psammetichus from Egypt,
to be distributed among the Athenian citizens. At the scrutiny which was set on
foot only about 14,000 were found to be genuine Athenians, nearly 5000 being discovered
to be aliens. That he had not miscalculated the effect likely to be produced on
the minds of his fellowcitizens, is shown by the interest and pride which they
took in the progress and beauty of the public works. When it was a matter or discussion
in the assembly whether marble or ivory should be used in the construction of
the great statue of Athene, the latter was selected, apparently for scarcely any
other reason than that it was the more costly. We have already seen that the bare
idea of having their name disconnected with the works that adorned their city,
was sufficient to induce them to sanction Pericles in his lavish application of
the public treasures. Pity, that an expenditure so wise in its ends, and so magnificent
in its kind, should have been founded on an act of appropriation, which a strict
impartiality cannot justify, though a fair consideration of all the circumstances
of the age and people will find much to palliate it. The honesty of the objections
raised against it by the enemies of Pericles on the score of its injustice is
very questionable. The issue of the opposition of Thucydides and his party has
already been noticed.
It was not the mere device of a demagogue anxious to secure popularity, but a
part of a settled policy, which led Pericles to provide amusement for the people
in the shape of religious festivals and musical and dramatic entertainments. These
were at the same time intended to prepare the citizens by cheerful relaxation
and intellectual stimulus for enduring the exertions necessary for the greatness
and well-being of the state, and to lead them, as they became conscious of the
enjoyment as well as dignity of their condition, as Athenian citizens, to be ready
to put forth their most strenuous exertions in defending a position which secured
to them so many advantages (Thucyd. ii. 38, 40). The impulse that would be given
to trade and commerce by the increase of requirements on the part of the Athenians
was also an element in his calculations (Thueyd. ii. 38). The drama especially
characterised the age of Pericles. From the comic poets Pericles had to sustain
numerous attacks. Their ridicule of his personal peculiarity coull excite nothing
more than a passing laugh. More serious attempts were made by them to render his
position suspicious in the eyes of the people. They exaggerated his power, spoke
of his party as Peisistratids, and called upon him to swear that he was not about
to assume the tyranny. Cratinus threw out insinuations as to the tardiness with
which the building of the third long wall to Peiraeeus proceeded. His connection
with Aspasia was made the ground of frequent sallies (Plut. Per. 24). His high
character and strict probity, however, rendered all these attacks harmless. But
that Pericles was the author of a law passed B. C. 440, restraining the exhibition
of comedy, is not probable (Cic. de Rep. iv. 10, 11). The enemies of Pericles,
unable to ruin his reputation by these means, attacked him through his friends.
A charge was brought against Pheidias of appropriating part of the gold destined
to adorn the statue of the goddess on the Acropolis; and Menon, a workman who
had been employed by Pheidias, was suborned to support the charge. By the directionof
Pericles, however, the golden ornaments had been so fixed as to admit of being
taken off. Pericles challenged the accusers to weigh them. They shrank from the
test, but the probity of Pheidias was established. This charge having been fruitless,
a second attack was made on him for having in the sculpture on the shield of the
goddess, representing the battle with the Amazons, introduced portraits of himself
and Pericles. To support this charge, again Menon was brought forward, and Pheidias
was cast into prison as having shown dishonour to the national religion. According
to Plutarch he died there, either by poison, or by a natural death.
The next attack was intended to wound Pericles on a still more sensitive
side. The connection between Pericles and Aspasia, and the great ascendancy which
she had over him, has already been spoken of in the article Aspasia
(Respecting the benefit which the oratory of Pericles was supposed to have derived
from her instructions, see Plat. Menex.). The comic poet Hermippus instituted
a prosecution against her, on the ground of impiety, and of pandering to the vices
of Pericles by corrupting the Athenian women; a charge beyond all doubt as slanderous
as that made against Pheidias of doing the same under pretence of admitting Athenian
ladies to view the progress of his works. Apparently, while this trial was pending,
Diopeithes got a decree passed that those who denied the existence of the gods,
or introduced new opinions about celestial phaenomena, should be informed against
and impeached according to the process termed eisangelia (see Eisangelia).
This decree was aimed at Anaxagoras, and through him at Pericles. Another decree
was proposed by Dracontides, that Pericles should give in an account of his expenditure
of the public money before the Prytanes, who were to conduct the trial with peculiar
solemnity. On the amendment of Agnon it was decreed that the trial should take
place before 1500 dicasts. Aspasia was acquitted, though Pericles was obliged
to descend to entreaties and tears to save her. The fate of Anaxagoras
is uncertain. Of the proceedings against Pericles himself we hear nothing further
(Plut. l. c. ; Athen. xiii, where several of the gossiping stories about Pericles
will be found; Diod. xii. 39; Diog. Laert. ii. 12). It was the opinion entertained
by many ancient writers that the dread of the impending prosecution was at least
one of the motives which induced Pericles to hurry on the outbreak of the war
with Sparta. That this unworthy charge was a false one is abundantly evident from
the impartial and emphatic statements of Thucydides. The honesty of Pericles was
unimpeachable, and the outbreak of hostilities inevitable.
When the Corcyraeans applied to Athens for assistance against Corinth,
one of their main arguments was that hostilities between the rival confederacies
could not be postponed much longer. Pericles doubtless foresaw this when by his
advice a defensive alliance was contracted with the Corcyraeans, and ten galleys
sent to assist them, under Lacedaemonius the son of Cimon, which were only to
be brought into action in case a descent upon the territories of the Corcyraeans
were threatened. Plutarch represents Pericles as sending so small a force through
jealousy of the family of Cimon. Pericles might safely have defied the rivalry
of a much more formidable person than Lacedaemonius. A larger squadron of 20 ships
was sent out not long after, in case the force first sent should prove too small
(Thucyd. i. 31--54). The measures taken by the Athenians with respect to Potidaea
doubtless had the sanction of Pericles, if they were not suggested by him (Thucyd.
i. 56). After war had been declared by the congress of the Peloponnesian alliance,
as the members of it were not in a condition to commence hostilities immediately,
various embassies were sent to Athens, manifestly rather with the intention of
multiplying causes of hostility, than with a sincere intention to prevent the
outbreak of war. The first demand made was, that the Athenians should banish all
that remained of the accursed family of the Alcmaeonids. This was clearly aimed
at Pericles, who by his mother's side was connected with that house. The design
of the Lacedaemonians was to render Pericles an object of odium when the difficulties
of the war came to be felt by the Athenians, by making it appear that he was the
obstacle in the way of peace (Thucyd. i. 127). The demand was disregarded, and
the Lacedaemonians in their turn directed to free themselves from the pollution
contracted by the death of Pausanias. Subsequent demands were made that the Athenians
should raise the siege of Potidaea, restore Aegina to independence, and especially
repeal the decree against the Megarians, by which the latter were excluded, on
pain of death, from the agora of Athens, and from all ports in the Athenian dominions.
One of the scandalous stories of the time represented this decree as having been
procured by Pericles from private motives, some Megarians having carried off two
girls belonging to the train of Aspasia (Aristoph. Acharn. 500). There was quite
sufficient ground for the decree in the long-standing enmity between the Athenians
and Megarians, which, just before the decree was passed on the motion of Charinus,
had been inflamed by the murder of an Athenian herald, who had been sent to obtain
satisfaction from the Megarians for their having encroached upon the consecrated
land that lay between the territories of the two states. This demand of the Lacedaemonians
was succeeded by one that the Athenians should leave all Greek states independent,
that is, that Athens should relinquish her empire, intimations being given that
peace might be expected if these conditions were complied with. An assembly was
held to deliberate on the answer to be given to the Lacedaemlonians. The true
motives which actuated Pericles in resisting these demands are given by Thucydides
in the speech which he puts into his mouth on the occasion (i. 140--144). Pericles
judged rightly in telling the Athenians that the demands made of them, especially
that about Megara, [p. 199] which was most insisted on, were mere pretexts by
which the Lacedaemonians were trying the spirit and resolution of the Athenians;
and that in that point of view, involving the whole principle of submission to
Sparta, it became of the utmost importance not to yield. He pointed out the advantages
which Athens, as the head of a compact dominion, possessed over a disjointed league
like that of the Peloponnesians, which, moreover, had not at its immediate command
the resources necessary for carrying on the war, and would find the greatest difficulty
in raising them ; showed how impossible it was that the Peloponesians should be
able to cope with the Athenians by sea, and how utterly fruitless their attack
would be while Athens remained mistress of the sea. The course which he recommended
therefore was, that the Athenians should not attempt to defend their territory
when invaded, but retire within the city, and devote all their attention to securing
the strength and efficiency of their navy, with which they could make severe retaliations
on the territories of their enemies; since a victor by land would be of no service,
and defeat would immediately be followed by the revolt of their subject allies.
He warned them, however, that they must be content with defending what they already
possessed, and must not attempt to extend their dominion. War, he bade them observe,
could not be avoided; and they would the iss feel the ill effects of it, if they
met their antagonists with alacrity. At his suggestion the Athenians gave for
answer to the Lacedaemonian ambassadors, that they would rescind the decree against
Megara if the Lacedaemonians would cease to exclude strangers from intercourse
with their citizens; that they would leave their allies independent if they were
so at the conclusion of the treaty, and if Sparta would grant real independence
to her allies; and that they were still willing to submit their differences to
arbitration.
In one sense, indeed, Pericles may be looked upon as the author of
the Peloponnesian war, inasmuch as it was mainly his enlightened policy which
had raised Athens to that degree of power which produced in the Lacedaemonians
the jealousy and alarm which Thucydides (i. 23) distinetly affirms to have been
the real cause of the Peloponnesian war. How accurately Pericles had ealculated
the resources of Athens, and how wisely he had discerned her true policy in the
war, was rendered manifest by the spirited struggle which she maintained even
when the Peloponnesians were supplied with Persian gold, and by the irreparable
disasters into which she was plunged by her departure from the policy enjoined
by Pericles.
In the spring of B. C. 431 Plataea was seized. Both sides prepared
with vigour for hostilities ; and a Peloponnesian army having assembled at the
isthmus, another embassy was sent to the Athenians by Archidamus to see if they
were disposed to yield. In accordance with a decree which Pericles had had passed,
that no herald or embassy should be received after the Lacedaemonians had taken
the field, the ambassador, Melesippus, was not suffered to enter the city. Pericles,
suspecting that Archidamus in his invasion might leave his property untouched,
either out of private friendship, or by the direction of the Peloponnesians, in
order to excite odium against him, leclared in an assembly of the people that
if his lands were left unravaged, he would give them up to be the property of
the state (Thucyd. ii. 13). He took the opportunity at the same time of giving
the Athenians an account of the resources they had at their command. Acting upon
his advice they conveyed their moveable property into the city, transporting their
cattle and beasts of burden to Euboea. When the Peloponnesian army advanced desolating
Attica, the Athenians were clamorous to be led out against the enemy, and were
angry with Pericles because he steadily adhered to the policy he had recommended.
He would hold no assembly or meeting of any kind. He, however, kept close guard
on the walls, and sent out cavalry to protect the lands near the city. While the
Peloponnesian army was in Attica, a fleet of 100 ships was sent round Peloponnesus
(Thucyd. ii. 18). The foresight of Pericles may probably be traced in the setting
apart 1000 talents, and 100 of the best sailing galleys of the year, to be employed
only in case of an attack being made on Athens by sea. Any one proposing to appropriate
them to any other purpose was to suffer death. Anotller fleet of thirty ships
was sent along the coasts of Locris and Euboea: and in this same summer the population
of Aegina was expelled, and Athenian colonists sent to take possession of the
island. An alliance was also entered into with Sitalces, king of Thrace. In the
autumn Pericles in person led an army into Megaris, and ravaged most of the country.
The decree against Megara before spoken of enacted that the Athenian generals
on entering office should swear to invade Megaris twice a year (Plut. l.c.; Thuicyd.
iv. 66). In the winter (B. C. 431--430), on the occasion of paying funeral honours
to those who had fallen in the course of the hostilities, Pericles was chosen
to deliver the oration (Thucyd. ii. 35--46). In the summer of the next year, when
the Peloponnesians invaded Attica, Pericles pursued the same policy as before.
In this summer the plague made its appearance in Athens (Thucyd. ii. 48). An armament
of 100 ships (Thucyd. ii. 56) was conducted by Pericles in person to the coast
of Peloponnesus. An eclipse of the sun which happened just before the fleet set
sail afforded Pericles an opportunity of applying the astronomical knowledge which
he had derived from Anaxagoras in quieting the alarm which it occasioned (Plut.
Per. 35).
The Athenians, being exposed to the devastation of the war and the
plague at the same time, not unnaturally began to turn their thoughts to peace,
and looked upon Pericles as the author of all their distresses, inasmuch as he
had persuaded them to go to war. Pericles was unable to prevent the sending of
an embassy to Sparta, with proposals for peace. It was however fruitless. Pericles
then called an assembly , and endeavoured to bring the people to a better mind;
set forth the grounds they had for hoping for success; pointed out the unreasonableness
of being cast down and diverted from a course of action deliberately taken up
by an unforeseen accident like that of the plague, and especially the injustice
of holding him in any way responsible for the hardships they were suffering on
account of it. It was impossible now to retreat ; their empire must be defended
at any sacrifice, for it was perilous to abandon it (Thucyd. ii. 60--64). Though
his speech to some extent allayed the public ferment, it did not remove from their
minds the irritation they felt. Clecn appears among his [p. 200] foremost enemies.
According to Plutarch a decree was passed that Pericles should be deprived of
his command and pay a fine, the amount of which was variously stated. Thucvdides
merely says that he was fined. The ill feeling of the people having found this
vent, Pericles soon resumed his accustomed sway, and was again elected one of
the generals for the ensuing year.
The military operations of B. C. 429 were doubtless conducted under
the general superintendence of Pericles, though he does not appear to have conducted
any in person. The plague carried off most of his near connections. His son Xanthippus,
a profligate and undutiful youth, his sister, and most of his intimate friends
died of it. Still Pericles maintained unmoved his calm bearing and philosophic
composure, and did not even attend the funeral rites of those who were carried
off. At last his only surviving legitimate son, Paralus, a youth of greater promise
than his brother, fell a victim. The firmness of Pericles then at last gave way;
as he placed the funeral garland on the head of the lifeless youth he burst into
tears and sobbed aloud. He had one son remaining, his child by Aspasia. Either
by a repeal of the law respecting legitimacy which he himself had before got passed,
or by a special vote, he was allowed to enrol this son in his own tribe and give
him his own name. In the autumn of B. C. 429 Pericles himself died of a lingering
sickness, which, if a variety of the plague, was not attended by its usual violent
symptoms, but was of such a nature that he wasted away by slow degrees. Theophrastus
preserved a story, that he allowed the women who attended him to hang an amulet
round his neck, which he showed to a friend to indicate the extremity to which
sickness had reduced him, when he could submit to such a piece of superstition.
When at the point of death, as his friends were gathered round his bed, recalling
his virtues and successes and enumerating his triumphs (in the course of his military
career, in which he was equally remarkable for his prudence(2)
and his courage, he had erected as many as nine trophies), overhearing their remarks,
he said that they had forgotten his greatest praise: that no Athenian through
his means had been made to put on mourning. He survived the commencement of the
war two years and six months (Thuc. ii. 65). His death was an irreparable loss
to Athens. The policy he had laid down for the guidance of his fellow-citizens
was soon departed from; and those who came after him being far inferior to him
in personal abilities and merit and more on a level with each other, in their
eagerness to assume the reins of the state, betook themselves to unworthy modes
of securing popular favour, and, so far from checking the wrong inclinations of
the people, fostered and encouraged them, while the operations of the forces abroad
and the counsels of the people at home were weakened by division and strife (Thuc.
ii. 65).
The name of the wife of Pericles is not mentioned. She had been the
wife of Hipponicus, by whom she was the mother of Callias. She bore two sons to
Pericles, Xanthippus and Paralus. She lived unhappily with Pericles, and a divorce
took place by mutual consent, when Pericles connected himself with Aspasia by
a tie as close as the law allowed. His union with her continued in uninterrupted
harmony till his death. It is possible enough that Aspasia occasioned the alienation
of Pericles from his wife; but at the same time it appears that she had been divorced
by her former husband likewise. By Aspasia Pericles had one son, who bore his
name. Of his strict probity he left the decisive proof in the fact that at his
death he was found not to have added a single drachma to his hereditary property.
Cicero (Brut. 7. 27, de Orut. ii. 22. 93) speaks of written orations by Pericles
as extant. It is not unlikely that he was deceived by some spurious productions
bearing his name (Quint. I. O. iii. 1). He mentions the tomb of Pericles at Athens
(de Fin. v. 2). It was on the way to the Academy (Paus. i. 29.3). There was also
a statue of him at Athens (Paus. i. 28. § 2). (Plut. Pericles)
(1) When, some time after, in a transient outbreak of ill-feeling,
Pericles was called upon to submit his accounts for inspection, there appeared
an item of ten talents spent for a necessary purpose. As the purpose to which
the sum had been applied was tolerably well understood, the statenent was allowed
to pass without question (Aristoph. Nub. 832, with the Scholiast; Thucyd. ii.
21). It was probably this incident which gave rise to the story which Plutarch
found in several writers, that Pericles, for the purpose of postponing the Peloponnesian
war, which he perceived to be inevitable, sent ten talents yearly to Sparta, with
which he bribed the most influential persons, and so kept the Spartans quiet;
a statement which, though probably incorrect, is worth noting, as indicating a
belief that the war was at any rate not hurried on by Pericles out of private
motives.
(2) He used to say that as far as their fate depended upon him,
the Athenians should be immortal.
This text is from: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) (eds. William Smith, LLD, William Wayte, G. E. Marindin). Cited June 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Pericles, Plutarch, Lives (ed. Bernadotte Perrin)
Pericles. On seeing certain wealthy foreigners in Rome carrying
puppies and young monkeys about in their bosoms and fondling them, Caesar asked,
we are told, if the women in their country did not bear children, thus in right
princely fashion rebuking those who squander on animals that proneness to love
and loving affection which is ours by nature, and which is due only to our fellow-men.
Since, then, our souls are by nature possessed of great fondness for learning
and fondness for seeing, it is surely reasonable to chide those who abuse this
fondness on objects all unworthy either of their eyes or ears, to the neglect
of those which are good and serviceable. Our outward sense, since it apprehends
the objects which encounter it by virtue of their mere impact upon it, must the
exercise of his mind every man, if he pleases, has the natural power to turn himself
away in every case, and to change, without the least difficulty, to that object
upon which he himself determines. It is meet, therefore, that he pursue what is
best, to the end that he may not merely regard it, but also be edified by regarding
it. A color is suited to the eye if its freshness, and its pleasantness as well,
stimulates and nourishes the vision; and so our intellectual vision must be applied
to such objects as, by their very charm, invite it onward to its own proper good.
Such objects are to be found in virtuous deeds; these implant in those who search
them out a great and zealous eagerness which leads to imitation. In other cases,
admiration of the deed is not immediately accompanied by an impulse to do it.
Nay, many times, on the contrary, while we delight in the work, we despise the
workman, as, for instance, in the case of perfumes and dyes; we take a delight
in them, but dyers and perfumers we regard as illiberal and vulgar folk. Therefore
it was a fine saying of Antisthenes, when he heard that Ismenias was an excellent
piper: "But he's a worthless man", said he, "otherwise he wouldn't
be so good a piper". And so Philip2 once said to his son, who, as the wine
went round, plucked the strings charmingly and skilfully, "Art not ashamed
to pluck the strings so well"? It is enough, surely, if a king have leisure
to hear others pluck the strings, and he pays great deference to the Muses if
he be but a spectator of such contests.
Labour with one's own hands on lowly tasks gives witness, in the toil
thus expended on useless things, to one's own indifference to higher things. No
generous youth, from seeing the Zeus at Pisa or the Hera at Argos, longs to be
Pheidias or Polycleitus; nor to be Anacreon or Philetas or Archilochus out of
pleasure in their poems. For it does not of necessity follow that, if the work
delights you with its grace, the one who wrought it is worthy of your esteem.
Wherefore the spectator is not advantaged by those things at sight of which no
ardor for imitation arises in the breast, nor any uplift of the soul arousing
zealous impulses to do the like. But virtuous action straightway so disposes a
man that he no sooner admires the works of virtue than he strives to emulate those
who wrought them. The good things of Fortune we love to possess and enjoy; those
of Virtue we love to perform. The former we are willing should be ours at the
hands of others; the latter we wish that others rather should have at our hands.
The Good creates a stir of activity towards itself, and implants at once in the
spectator an active impulse; it does not form his character by ideal representation
alone, but through the investigation of its work it furnishes him with a dominant
purpose. For such reasons I have decided to persevere in my writing of Lives,
and so have composed this tenth book, containing the life of Pericles, and that
of Fabius Maximus, who waged such lengthy war with Hannibal. The men were alike
in their virtues, and more especially in their gentleness and rectitude, and by
their ability to endure the follies of their peoples and of their colleagues in
office, they proved of the greatest service to their countries. But whether I
aim correctly at the proper mark must be decided from what I have written.
Pericles was of the tribe Acamantis, of the deme Cholargus, and of
the foremost family and lineage on both sides. His father, Xanthippus, who conquered
the generals of the King at Mycale (479 BC), married Agariste, granddaughter of
that Cleisthenes who, in such noble fashion, expelled the Peisistratidae and destroyed
their tyranny, instituted laws, and established a constitution best tempered for
the promotion of harmony and safety. She, in her dreams, once fancied that she
had given birth to a lion, and a few days thereafter bore Pericles.
His personal appearance was unimpeachable, except that his head was
rather long and out of due proportion. For this reason the images of him, almost
all of them, wear helmets, because the artists, as it would seem, were not willing
to reproach him with deformity. The comic poets of Attica used to call him "Schinocephalus",
or Squill-head (the squill is sometimes called "schinus"). So the comic
poet Cratinus, in his "Cheirons", says: "Faction and Saturn, that
ancient of days, were united in wedlock; their offspring was of all tyrants the
greatest, and lo! he is called by the gods the head-compeller". And again
in his "Nemesis": "Come, Zeus! of guests and heads the Lord!"
And Telecleides speaks of him as sitting on the acropolis in the greatest perplexity,
"now heavy of head, and now alone, from the eleven-couched chamber of his
head, causing vast uproar to arise". And Eupolis, in his "Demes",
having inquiries made about each one of the demagogues as they come up from Hades,
says, when Pericles is called out last:
The very head of those below hast thou now brought.
Eupolis, Demes
His teacher in music, most writers state, was Damon (whose name, they
say, should be pronounced with the first syllable short); but Aristotle (Plato,
rather, in Plat. Alc. 1 118c.) says he had a thorough musical training at the
hands of Pythocleides. Now Damon seems to have been a consummate sophist, but
to have taken refuge behind the name of music in order to conceal from the multitude
his real power, and he associated with Pericles, that political athlete, as it
were, in the capacity of rubber and trainer. However, Damon was not left unmolested
in this use of his lyre as a screen, but was ostracized for being a great schemer
and a friend of tyranny, and became a butt of the comic poets. At all events,
Plato (Plato the comic poet) represented some one as inquiring of him thus:
In the first place tell me then, I beseech thee,
thou who art
The Cheiron, as they say, who to Pericles gave his
craft.
Pericles was also a pupil of Zeno the Eleatic, who discoursed on the natural world,
like Parmenides, and perfected a species of refutative catch which was sure to
bring an opponent to grief; as Timon of Phlius expressed it:
His was a tongue that could argue both ways with
a fury resistless,
Zeno's; assailer of all things. Timon, unknown
But the man who most consorted with Pericles, and did most to clothe him with
a majestic demeanor that had more weight than any demagogue's appeals, yes, and
who lifted on high and exalted the dignity of his character, was Anaxagoras the
Clazomenian, whom men of that day used to call "Nous", either because
they admired that comprehension of his, which proved of such surpassing greatness
in the investigation of nature; or because he was the first to enthrone in the
universe, not Chance, nor yet Necessity, as the source of its orderly arrangement,
but Mind (Nous) pure and simple, which distinguishes and sets apart, in the midst
of an otherwise chaotic mass, the substances which have like elements.
This man Pericles extravagantly admired, and being gradually filled
full of the so-called higher philosophy and elevated speculation, he not only
had, as it seems, a spirit that was solemn and a discourse that was lofty and
free from plebeian and reckless effrontery, but also a composure of countenance
that never relaxed into laughter, a gentleness of carriage and cast of attire
that suffered no emotion to disturb it while he was speaking, a modulation of
voice that was far from boisterous, and many similar characteristics which struck
all his hearers with wondering amazement. It is, at any rate, a fact that, once
on a time when he had been abused and insulted all day long by a certain lewd
fellow of the baser sort, he endured it all quietly, though it was in the marketplace,
where he had urgent business to transact, and towards evening went away homewards
unruffled, the fellow following along and heaping all manner of contumely upon
him. When he was about to go in doors, it being now dark, he ordered a servant
to take a torch and escort the fellow in safety back to his own home.
The poet Ion, however, says that Pericles had a presumptuous and somewhat
arrogant manner of address, and that into his haughtiness there entered a good
deal of disdain and contempt for others; he praises, on the other hand, the tact,
complaisance, and elegant address which Cimon showed in his social intercourse.But
we must ignore Ion, with his demand that virtue, like a dramatic tetralogy, have
some sort of a farcical appendage. Zeno, when men called the austerity of Pericles
a mere thirst for reputation, and swollen conceit, urged them to have some such
thirst for reputation themselves, with the idea that the very assumption of nobility
might in time produce, all unconsciously, something like an eager and habitual
practice of it.
These were not the only advantages Pericles had of his association
with Anaxagoras. It appears that he was also lifted by him above superstition,
that feeling which is produced by amazement at what happens in regions above us.
It affects those who are ignorant of the causes of such things, and are crazed
about divine intervention, and confounded through their inexperience in this domain;
whereas the doctrines of natural philosophy remove such ignorance and inexperience,
and substitute for timorous and inflamed superstition that unshaken reverence
which is attended by a good hope. A story is told that once on a time the head
of a one-horned ram was brought to Pericles from his country-place, and that Lampon
the seer, when he saw how the horn grew strong and solid from the middle of the
forehead, declared that, whereas there were two powerful parties in the city,
that of Thucydides and that of Pericles, the mastery would finally devolve upon
one man,--the man to whom this sign had been given. Anaxagoras, however, had the
skull cut in two, and showed that the brain had not filled out its position, but
had drawn together to a point, like an egg, at that particular spot in the entire
cavity where the root of the horn began. At that time, the story says, it was
Anaxagoras who won the plaudits of the bystanders; but a little while after it
was Lampon, for Thucydides was overthrown, and Pericles was entrusted with the
entire control of all the interests of the people.
Now there was nothing, in my opinion, to prevent both of them, the
naturalist and the seer, from being in the right of the matter; the one correctly
divined the cause, the other the object or purpose. It was the proper province
of the one to observe why anything happens, and how it comes to be what it is;
of the other to declare for what purpose anything happens, and what it means.
And those who declare that the discovery of the cause, in any phenomenon, does
away with the meaning, do not perceive that they are doing away not only with
divine portents, but also with artificial tokens, such as the ringing of gongs,
the language of fire-signals, and the shadows of the pointers on sundials. Each
of these has been made, through some causal adaptation, to have some meaning.
However, perhaps this is matter for a different treatise.
As a young man, Pericles was exceedingly reluctant to face the people,
since it was thought that in feature he was like the tyrant Peisistratus; and
when men well on in years remarked also that his voice was sweet, and his tongue
glib and speedy in discourse, they were struck with amazement at the resemblance.
Besides, since he was rich, of brilliant lineage, and had friends of the greatest
influence, he feared that he might be ostracized, and so at first had naught to
do with politics, but devoted himself rather to a military career, where he was
brave and enterprising. However, when Aristides was dead (Soon after 468 B.C.)
and Themistocles in banishment (after 472 B.C.) and Cimon was kept by his campaigns
for the most part abroad, then at last Pericles decided to devote himself to the
people, espousing the cause of the poor and the many instead of the few and the
rich, contrary to his own nature, which was anything but popular. But he feared,
as it would seem, to encounter a suspicion of aiming at tyranny, and when he saw
that Cimon was very aristocratic in his sympathies, and was held in extraordinary
affection by the party of the "Good and True", he began to court the
favour of the multitude, thereby securing safety for himself, and power to wield
against his rival. Straightway, too, he made a different ordering in his way of
life. On one street only in the city was he to be seen walking,--the one which
took him to the market-place and the council-chamber. Invitations to dinner, and
all such friendly and familiar intercourse, he declined, so that during the long
period that elapsed while he was at the head of the state, there was not a single
friend to whose house he went to dine, except that when his kinsman Euryptolemus
gave a wedding feast, he attended until the libations were made, and then straightway
rose up and departed. Conviviality is prone to break down and overpower the haughtiest
reserve, and in familiar intercourse the dignity which is assumed for appearance's
sake is very hard to maintain. Whereas, in the case of true and genuine virtue,
"fairest appears what most appears", and nothing in the conduct of good
men is so admirable in the eyes of strangers, as their daily walk and conversation
is in the eyes of those who share it.
And so it was that Pericles, seeking to avoid the satiety which springs
from continual intercourse, made his approaches to the people by intervals, as
it were, not speaking on every question, nor addressing the people on every occasion,
but offering himself like the Salaminian trireme, as Critolaus says, for great
emergencies. The rest of his policy he carried out by commissioning his friends
and other public speakers. One of these, as they say, was Ephialtes, who broke
down the power of the Council of the Areiopagus, and so poured out for the citizens,
to use the words of Plato, too much "undiluted freedom", by which the
people was rendered unruly, just like a horse, and, as the comic poets say, "no
longer had the patience to obey the rein, but nabbed Euboea and trampled on the
islands".
Moreover, by way of providing himself with a style of discourse which
was adapted, like a musical instrument, to his mode of life and the grandeur of
his sentiments, he often made an auxiliary string of Anaxagoras, subtly mingling,
as it were, with his rhetoric the dye of natural science. It was from natural
science, as the divine Plato says, that he "acquired his loftiness of thought
and perfectness of execution, in addition to his natural gifts", and by applying
what he learned to the art of speaking, he far excelled all other speakers. It
was thus, they say, that he got his surname; though some suppose it was from the
structures with which he adorned the city, and others from his ability as a statesman
and a general, that he was called Olympian. It is not at all unlikely that his
reputation was the result of the blending in him of many high qualities. But the
comic poets of that day who let fly, both in earnest and in jest, many shafts
of speech against him, make it plain that he got this surname chiefly because
of his diction; they spoke of him as "thundering" and "lightening"
when he harangued his audience, and as "wielding a dread thunderbolt in his
tongue".
There is on record also a certain saying of Thucydides, the son of
Melesias, touching the clever persuasiveness of Pericles, a saying uttered in
jest. Thucydides belonged to the party of the "Good and True", and was
for a very long time a political antagonist of Pericles. When Archidamus, the
king of the Lacedaemonians, asked him whether he or Pericles was the better wrestler,
he replied: "Whenever I throw him in wrestling, he disputes the fall, and
carries his point, and persuades the very men who saw him fall".
The truth is, however, that even Pericles, with all his gifts, was
cautious in his discourse, so that whenever he came forward to speak he prayed
the gods that there might not escape him unawares a single word which was unsuited
to the matter under discussion. In writing he left nothing behind him except the
decrees which he proposed, and only a few in all of his memorable sayings are
preserved, as, for instance, his urging the removal of Aegina as the "eye-sore
of the Piraeus", and his declaring that he "already beheld war swooping
down upon them from Peloponnesus". Once also when Sophocles, who was general
with him on a certain naval expedition (Against Samos, 440-439 B.C.) praised a
lovely boy, he said: "It is not his hands only, Sophocles, that a general
must keep clean, but his eyes as well". Again, Stesimbrotus says that, in
his funeral oration over those who had fallen in the Samian War, he declared that
they had become immortal, like the gods; "the gods themselves", he said,
"we cannot see, but from the honors which they receive, and the blessings
which they bestow, we conclude that they are immortal". So it was, he said,
with those who had given their lives for their country.
Thucydides describes the administration of Pericles as rather aristocratic,
"in name a democracy, but in fact a government by the greatest citizen".
But many others say that the people was first led on by him into allotments of
public lands, festival-grants, and distributions of fees for public services,
thereby falling into bad habits, and becoming luxurious and wanton under the influence
of his public measures, instead of frugal and self-sufficing. Let us therefore
examine in detail the reason for this change in him.
In the beginning, as has been said, pitted as he was against the reputation
of Cimon, he tried to ingratiate himself with the people. And since he was the
inferior in wealth and property, by means of which Cimon would win over the poor
-furnishing a dinner every day to any Athenian who wanted it, bestowing raiment
on the elderly men, and removing the fences from his estates that whosoever wished
might pluck the fruit- Pericles, outdone in popular arts of this sort, had recourse
to the distribution of the people's own wealth. This was on the advice of Damonides,
of the deme Oa, as Aristotle has stated.
And soon, what with festival-grants and jurors' wages and other fees
and largesses, he bribed the multitude by the wholesale, and used them in opposition
to the Council of the Areiopagus. Of this body he himself was not a member, since
the lot had not made him either First Archon, or Archon Thesmothete, or King Archon,
or Archon Polemarch. These offices were in ancient times filled by lot, and through
them those who properly acquitted themselves were promoted into the Areiopagus.
For this reason all the more did Pericles, strong in the affections of the people,
lead a successful party against the Council of the Areiopagus. Not only was the
Council robbed of most of its jurisdiction by Ephialtes, but Cimon also, on the
charge of being a lover of Sparta and a hater of the people, was ostracized (461
B.C.) -a man who yielded to none in wealth and lineage, who had won most glorious
victories over the Barbarians, and had filled the city full of money and spoils,
as is written in his Life. Such was the power of Pericles among the people.
Now ostracism involved legally a period of ten years' banishment.
But in the meanwhile (457 B.C.) the Lacedaemonians invaded the district of Tanagra
with a great army, and the Athenians straightway sallied out against them. So
Cimon came back from his banishment and stationed himself with his tribesmen in
line of battle, and determined by his deeds to rid himself of the charge of too
great love for Sparta, in that he shared the perils of his fellow-citizens. But
the friends of Pericles banded together and drove him from the ranks, on the ground
that he was under sentence of banishment. For which reason, it is thought, Pericles
fought most sturdily in that battle, and was the most conspicuous of all in exposing
himself to danger. And there fell in this battle all the friends of Cimon to a
man, whom Pericles had accused with him of too great love for Sparta. Wherefore
sore repentance fell upon the Athenians, and a longing desire for Cimon, defeated
as they were on the confines of Attica, and expecting as they did a grievous war
with the coming of spring. So then Pericles, perceiving this, hesitated not to
gratify the desires of the multitude, but wrote with his own hand the decree which
recalled the man. Whereupon Cimon came back from banishment and made peace (450B.C.)
between the cities. For the Lacedaemonians were as kindly disposed towards him
as they were full of hatred towards Pericles and the other popular leaders.
Some, however, say that the decree for the restoration of Cimon was
not drafted by Pericles until a secret compact had been made between them, through
the agency of Elpinice, Cimon's sister, to the effect that Cimon should sail out
with a fleet of two hundred ships and have command in foreign parts, attempting
to subdue the territory of the King, while Pericles should have supreme power
in the city. And it was thought that before this, too, Elpinice had rendered Pericles
more lenient towards Cimon, when he stood his trial on the capital charge of treason
(463 B.C.). Pericles was at that time one of the committee of prosecution appointed
by the people, and on Elpinice's coming to him and supplicating him, said to her
with a smile: "Elpinice, thou art an old woman, thou art an old woman, to
attempt such tasks". However, he made only one speech, by way of formally
executing his commission, and in the end did the least harm to Cimon of all his
accusers.
How, then, can one put trust in Idomeneus, who accuses Pericles of
assassinating the popular leader Ephialtes, though he was his friend and a partner
in his political program, out of mere jealousy and envy of his reputation? These
charges he has raked up from some source or other and hurled them, as if so much
venom, against one who was perhaps not in all points irreproachable, but who had
a noble disposition and an ambitious spirit, wherein no such savage and bestial
feelings can have their abode. As for Ephialtes, who was a terror to the oligarchs
and inexorable in exacting accounts from those who wronged the people, and in
prosecuting them, his enemies laid plots against him, and had him slain secretly
by Aristodicus of Tanagra, as Aristotle says. As for Cimon, he died on his campaign
in Cyprus (449 B.C.).
Then the aristocrats, aware even some time before this that Pericles
was already become the greatest citizen, but wishing nevertheless to have some
one in the city who should stand up against him and blunt the edge of his power,
that it might not be an out and out monarchy, put forward Thucydides of Alopece,
a discreet man and a relative of Cimon, to oppose him. He, being less of a warrior
than Cimon, and more of a forensic speaker and statesman, by keeping watch and
ward in the city, and by wrestling bouts with Pericles on the bema, soon brought
the administration into even poise.
He would not suffer the party of the "Good and True", as
they called themselves, to be scattered up and down and blended with the populace,
as heretofore, the weight of their character being thus obscured by numbers, but
by culling them out and assembling them into one body, he made their collective
influence, thus become weighty, as it were a counterpoise in the balance. Now
there had been from the beginning a sort of seam hidden beneath the surface of
affairs, as in a piece of iron, which faintly indicated a divergence between the
popular and the aristocratic programme; but the emulous ambition of these two
men cut a deep gash in the state, and caused one section of it to be called the
"Demos", or the People, and the other the "Oligoi", or the
Few. At this time, therefore, particularly, Pericles gave the reins to the people,
and made his policy one of pleasing them, ever devising some sort of a pageant
in the town for the masses, or a feast, or a procession, "amusing them like
children with not uncouth delights", and sending out sixty triremes annually,
on which large numbers of the citizens sailed about for eight months under pay,
practising at the same time and acquiring the art of seamanship. In addition to
this, he despatched a thousand settlers to the Chersonesus (447 B.C.), and five
hundred to Naxos, and to Andros half that number, and a thousand to Thrace to
settle with the Bisaltae, and others to Italy, when the site of Sybaris was settled
(444 B.C.), which they named Thurii. All this he did by way of lightening the
city of its mob of lazy and idle busybodies, rectifying the embarrassments of
the poorer people, and giving the allies for neighbors an imposing garrison which
should prevent rebellion.
But that which brought most delightful adornment to Athens, and the
greatest amazement to the rest of mankind; that which alone now testifies for
Hellas that her ancient power and splendor, of which so much is told, was no idle
fiction -I mean his construction of sacred edifices- this, more than all the public
measures of Pericles, his enemies maligned and slandered. They cried out in the
assemblies: "The people has lost its fair fame and is in ill repute because
it has removed the public moneys of the Hellenes from Delos into its own keeping,
and that seemliest of all excuses which it had to urge against its accusers, to
wit, that out of fear of the Barbarians it took the public funds from that sacred
isle and was now guarding them in a stronghold, of this Pericles has robbed it.
And surely Hellas is insulted with a dire insult and manifestly subjected to tyranny
when she sees that, with her own enforced contributions for the war, we are gilding
and bedizening our city, which, for all the world like a wanton woman, adds to
her wardrobe precious stones and costly statues and temples worth their millions".
For his part, Pericles would instruct the people that it owed no account
of their moneys to the allies provided it carried on the war for them and kept
off the Barbarians; "not a horse do they furnish", said he, "not
a ship, not a hoplite, but money simply; and this belongs, not to those who give
it, but to those who take it, if only they furnish that for which they take it
in pay. And it is but meet that the city, when once she is sufficiently equipped
with all that is necessary for prosecuting the war, should apply her abundance
to such works as, by their completion, will bring her everlasting glory, and while
in process of completion will bring that abundance into actual service, in that
all sorts of activity and diversified demands arise, which rouse every art and
stir every hand, and bring, as it were, the whole city under pay, so that she
not only adorns, but supports herself as well from her own resources".
And it was true that his military expeditions supplied those who were
in the full vigor of manhood with abundant resources from the common funds, and
in his desire that the unwarlike throng of common laborers should neither have
no share at all in the public receipts, nor yet get fees for laziness and idleness,
he boldly suggested to the people projects for great constructions, and designs
for works which would call many arts into play and involve long periods of time,
in order that the stay-at-homes, no whit less than the sailors and sentinels and
soldiers, might have a pretext for getting a beneficial share of the public wealth.
The materials to be used were stone, bronze, ivory, gold, ebony, and cypress-wood;
the arts which should elaborate and work up these materials were those of carpenter,
moulder, bronze-smith, stone-cutter, dyer, worker in gold and ivory, painter,
embroiderer, embosser, to say nothing of the forwarders and furnishers of the
material, such as factors, sailors and pilots by sea, and, by land, wagon-makers,
trainers of yoked beasts, and drivers. There were also rope-makers, weavers, leather-workers,
road-builders, and miners. And since each particular art, like a general with
the army under his separate command, kept its own throng of unskilled and untrained
laborers in compact array, to be as instrument unto player and as body unto soul
in subordinate service, it came to pass that for every age, almost, and every
capacity the city's great abundance was distributed and scattered abroad by such
demands.
So then the works arose, no less towering in their grandeur than inimitable
in the grace of their outlines, since the workmen eagerly strove to surpass themselves
in the beauty of their handicraft. And yet the most wonderful thing about them
was the speed with which they rose. Each one of them, men thought, would require
many successive generations to complete it, but all of them were fully completed
in the heyday of a single administration. And yet they say that once on a time
when Agatharchus the painter was boasting loudly of the speed and ease with which
he made his figures, Zeuxis heard him, and said, "Mine take, and last, a
long time". And it is true that deftness and speed in working do not impart
to the work an abiding weight of influence nor an exactness of beauty; whereas
the time which is put out to loan in laboriously creating, pays a large and generous
interest in the preservation of the creation. For this reason are the works of
Pericles all the more to be wondered at; they were created in a short time for
all time. Each one of them, in its beauty, was even then and at once antique;
but in the freshness of its vigor it is, even to the present day, recent and newly
wrought. Such is the bloom of perpetual newness, as it were, upon these works
of his, which makes them ever to look untouched by time, as though the unfaltering
breath of an ageless spirit had been infused into them. His general manager and
general overseer was Pheidias, although the several works had great architects
and artists besides. Of the Parthenon, for instance, with its cella of a hundred
feet in length, Callicrates and Ictinus were the architects; it was Coroebus who
began to build the sanctuary of the mysteries at Eleusis, and he planted the columns
on the floor and yoked their capitals together with architraves; but on his death
Metagenes, of the deme Xypete, carried up the frieze and the upper tier of columns;
while Xenocles, of the deme Cholargus, set on high the lantern over the shrine.
For the long wall, concerning which Socrates says he himself heard Pericles introduce
a measure, Callicrates was the contractor. Cratinus pokes fun at this work for
its slow progress, and in these words:
Since ever so long now
In word has Pericles pushed the thing; in fact he
does not budge it. Cratinus
The Odeum, which was arranged internally with many tiers of seats and many pillars,
and which had a roof made with a circular slope from a single peak, they say was
an exact reproduction of the Great King's pavilion, and this too was built under
the superintendence of Pericles. Wherefore Cratinus, in his "Thracian Women",
rails at him again:
The squill-head Zeus! lo! here he comes,
The Odeum like a cap upon his cranium,
Now that for good and all the ostracism is o'er.Cratinus
Then first did Pericles, so fond of honor was he, get a decree passed that a musical
contest be held as part of the Panathenaic festival. He himself was elected manager,
and prescribed how the contestants must blow the flute, or sing, or pluck the
zither. These musical contests were witnessed, both then and thereafter, in the
Odeum. The Propylaea of the acropolis were brought to completion in the space
of five years, Mnesicles being their architect. A wonderful thing happened in
the course of their building, which indicated that the goddess was not holding
herself aloof, but was a helper both in the inception and in the completion of
the work. One of its artificers, the most active and zealous of them all, lost
his footing and fell from a great height, and lay in a sorry plight, despaired
of by the physicians. Pericles was much cast down at this, but the goddess appeared
to him in a dream and prescribed a course of treatment for him to use, so that
he speedily and easily healed the man. It was in commemoration of this that he
set up the bronze statue of Athena Hygieia on the acropolis near the altar of
that goddess, which was there before, as they say. But it was Pheidias who produced
the great golden image of the goddess, and he is duly inscribed on the tablet
as the workman who made it. Everything, almost, was under his charge, and all
the artists and artisans, as I have said, were under his superintendence, owing
to his friendship with Pericles. This brought envy upon the one, and contumely
on the other, to the effect that Pheidias made assignations for Pericles with
free-born women who would come ostensibly to see the works of art. The comic poets
took up this story and bespattered Pericles with charges of abounding wantonness,
connecting their slanders with the wife of Menippus, a man who was his friend,
and a colleague in the generalship, and with the bird-culture of Pyrilampes, who,
since he was the comrade of Pericles, was accused of using his peacocks to bribe
the women with whom Pericles consorted. And why should any one be astonished that
men of wanton life lose no occasion for offering up sacrifices, as it were, of
contumelious abuse of their superiors, to the evil deity of popular envy, when
even Stesimbrotus of Thasos has ventured to make public charge against Pericles
of a dreadful and fabulous impiety with his son's wife? To such degree, it seems,
is truth hedged about with difficulty and hard to capture by research, since those
who come after the events in question find that lapse of time is an obstacle to
their proper perception of them; while the research of their contemporaries into
men's deeds and lives, partly through envious hatred and partly through fawning
flattery, defiles and distorts the truth.
Thucydides and his party kept denouncing Pericles for playing fast
and loose with the public moneys and annihilating the revenues. Pericles therefore
asked the people in assembly whether they thought he had expended too much, and
on their declaring that it was altogether too much, "Well then", said
he, "let it not have been spent on your account, but mine, and I will make
the inscriptions of dedication in my own name". When Pericles had said this,
whether it was that they admired his magnanimity or vied with his ambition to
get the glory of his works, they cried out with a loud voice and bade him take
freely from the public funds for his outlays, and to spare naught whatsoever.
And finally he ventured to undergo with Thucydides the contest of the ostracism,
wherein he secured his rival's banishment,1 and the dissolution of the faction
which had been arrayed against him.
Thus, then, seeing that political differences were entirely remitted
and the city had become a smooth surface, as it were, and altogether united, he
brought under his own control Athens and all the issues dependent on the Athenians,--tributes,
armies, triremes, the islands, the sea, the vast power derived from Hellenes,
vast also from Barbarians, and a supremacy that was securely hedged about with
subject nations, royal friendships, and dynastic alliances. But then he was no
longer the same man as before, nor alike submissive to the people and ready to
yield and give in to the desires of the multitude as a steersman to the breezes.
Nay rather, forsaking his former lax and sometimes rather effeminate management
of the people, as it were a flowery and soft melody, he struck the high and clear
note of an aristocratic and kingly statesmanship, and employing it for the best
interests of all in a direct and undeviating fashion, he led the people, for the
most part willingly, by his persuasions and instructions. And yet there were times
when they were sorely vexed with him, and then he tightened the reins and forced
them into the way of their advantage with a master's hand, for all the world like
a wise physician, who treats a complicated disease of long standing occasionally
with harmless indulgences to please his patient, and occasionally, too, with caustics
and bitter drugs which work salvation. For whereas all sorts of distempers, as
was to be expected, were rife in a rabble which possessed such vast empire, he
alone was so endowed by nature that he could manage each one of these cases suitably,
and more than anything else he used the people's hopes and fears, like rudders,
so to speak, giving timely check to their arrogance, and allaying and comforting
their despair. Thus he proved that rhetoric, or the art of speaking, is, to use
Plato's words, "an enchantment of the soul", and that her chiefest business
is a careful study of the affections and passions, which are, so to speak, strings
and stops of the soul, requiring a very judicious fingering and striking. The
reason for his success was not his power as a speaker merely, but, as Thucydides
says, the reputation of his life and the confidence reposed in him as one who
was manifestly proven to be utterly disinterested and superior to bribes. He made
the city, great as it was when he took it, the greatest and richest of all cities,
and grew to be superior in power to kings and tyrants. Some of these actually
appointed him guardian of their sons, but he did not make his estate a single
drachma greater than it was when his father left it to him.
Of his power there can be no doubt, since Thucydides gives so clear
an exposition of it, and the comic poets unwittingly reveal it even in their malicious
gibes, calling him and his associates ?new Peisistratidae,? and urging him to
take solemn oath not to make himself a tyrant, on the plea, forsooth, that his
preeminence was incommensurate with a democracy and too oppressive. Telecleides
says that the Athenians had handed over to him
With the cities' assessments the cities themselves,
to bind or release as he pleases,
Their ramparts of stone to build up if he likes,
and then to pull down again straightway,
Their treaties, their forces, their might, peace,
and riches, and all the fair gifts of good fortune. Telecleides
And this was not the fruit of a golden moment, nor the culminating popularity
of an administration that bloomed but for a season; nay rather he stood first
for forty years (Reckoning roundly from 469 to 429 B.C.) among such men as Ephialtes,
Leocrates, Myronides, Cimon, Tolmides, and Thucydides, and after the deposition
of Thucydides and his ostracism, for no less than fifteen of these years did he
secure an imperial sway that was continuous and unbroken, by means of his annual
tenure of the office of general. During all these years he kept himself untainted
by corruption, although he was not altogether indifferent to money-making; indeed,
the wealth which was legally his by inheritance from his father, that it might
not from sheer neglect take to itself wings and fly away, nor yet cause him much
trouble and loss of time when he was busy with higher things, he set into such
orderly dispensation as he thought was easiest and most exact. This was to sell
his annual products all together in the lump, and then to buy in the market each
article as it was needed, and so provide the ways and means of daily life. For
this reason he was not liked by his sons when they grew up, nor did their wives
find in him a liberal purveyor, but they murmured at his expenditure for the day
merely and under the most exact restrictions, there being no surplus of supplies
at all, as in a great house and under generous circumstances, but every outlay
and every intake proceeding by count and measure. His agent in securing all this
great exactitude was a single servant, Evangelus, who was either gifted by nature
or trained by Pericles so as to surpass everybody else in domestic economy.
It is true that this conduct was not in accord with the wisdom of
Anaxagoras, since that philosopher actually abandoned his house and left his land
to lie fallow for sheep-grazing, owing to the lofty thoughts with which he was
inspired. But the life of a speculative philosopher is not the same thing, I think,
as that of a statesman. The one exercises his intellect without the aid of instruments
and independent of external matters for noble ends; whereas the other, inasmuch
as he brings his superior excellence into close contact with the common needs
of mankind, must sometimes find wealth not merely one of the necessities of life,
but also one of its noble things, as was actually the case with Pericles, who
gave aid to many poor men. And, besides, they say that Anaxagoras himself, at
a time when Pericles was absorbed in business, lay on his couch all neglected,
in his old age, starving himself to death, his head already muffled for departure,
and that when the matter came to the ears of Pericles, he was struck with dismay,
and ran at once to the poor man, and besought him most fervently to live, bewailing
not so much that great teacher's lot as his own, were he now to be bereft of such
a counsellor in the conduct of the state. Then Anaxagoras -so the story goes-
unmuffled his head and said to him, "Pericles, even those who need a lamp
pour oil therein".
When the Lacedaemonians began to be annoyed by the increasing power
of the Athenians, Pericles, by way of inciting the people to cherish yet loftier
thoughts and to deem it worthy of great achievements, introduced a bill to the
effect that all Hellenes wheresoever resident in Europe or in Asia, small and
large cities alike, should be invited to send deputies to a council at Athens.
This was to deliberate concerning the Hellenic sanctuaries which the Barbarians
had burned down, concerning the sacrifices which were due to the gods in the name
of Hellas in fulfillment of vows made when they were fighting with the Barbarians,
and concerning the sea, that all might sail it fearlessly and keep the peace.
To extend this invitation, twenty men, of such as were above fifty years of age,
were sent out, five of whom invited the Ionians and Dorians in Asia and on the
islands between Lesbos and Rhodes; five visited the regions on the Hellespont
and in Thrace as far as Byzantium; five others were sent into Boeotia and Phocis
and Peloponnesus, and from here by way of the Ozolian Locrians into the neighboring
continent as far as Acarnania and Ambracia; while the rest proceeded through Euboea
to the Oetaeans and the Maliac Gulf and the Phthiotic Achaeans and the Thessalians,
urging them all to come and take part in the deliberations for the peace and common
welfare of Hellas. But nothing was accomplished , nor did the cities come together
by deputy, owing to the opposition of the Lacedaemonians, as it is said, since
the effort met with its first check in Peloponnesus. I have cited this incident,
however, to show forth the man's disposition and the greatness of his thoughts.
In his capacity as general, he was famous above all things for his
saving caution; he neither undertook of his own accord a battle involving much
uncertainty and peril, nor did he envy and imitate those who took great risks,
enjoyed brilliant good-fortune, and so were admired as great generals; and he
was for ever saying to his fellow-citizens that, so far as lay in his power, they
would remain alive forever and be immortals. So when he saw that Tolmides, son
of Tolmaeus, all on account of his previous good-fortune and of the exceeding
great honor bestowed upon him for his wars, was getting ready, quite inopportunely,
to make an incursion into Boeotia, and that he had persuaded the bravest and most
ambitious men of military age to volunteer for the campaign,--as many as a thousand
of them, aside from the rest of his forces,--he tried to restrain and dissuade
him in the popular assembly, uttering then that well remembered saying, to wit,
that if he would not listen to Pericles, he would yet do full well to wait for
that wisest of all counsellors, Time. This saying brought him only moderate repute
at the time; but a few days afterwards, when word was brought that Tolmides himself
was dead after defeat in battle near Coroneia (447 B.C.), and that many brave
citizens were dead likewise, then it brought Pericles great repute as well as
goodwill, for that he was a man of discretion and patriotism.
Of all his expeditions, that to the Chersonesus (447 B.C.) was held
in most loving remembrance, since it proved the salvation of the Hellenes who
dwelt there. Not only did he bring thither a thousand Athenian colonists and stock
the cities anew with vigorous manhood, but he also belted the neck of the isthmus
with defensive bulwarks from sea to sea, and so intercepted the incursions of
the Thracians who swarmed about the Chersonesus, and shut out the perpetual and
grievous war in which the country was all the time involved, in close touch as
it was with neighboring communities of Barbarians, and full to overflowing of
robber bands whose haunts were on or within its borders. But he was admired and
celebrated even amongst foreigners for his circumnavigation of the Peloponnesus
(453 B.C.), when he put to sea from Pegae in the Megarid with a hundred triremes.He
not only ravaged a great strip of seashore, as Tolmides had done before him, but
also advanced far into the interior with the hoplites from his ships, and drove
all his enemies inside their walls in terror at his approach, excepting only the
Sicyonians, who made a stand against him in Nemea, and joined battle with him;
these he routed by main force and set up a trophy for his victory. Then from Achaia,
which was friendly to him, he took soldiers on board his triremes, and proceeded
with his armament to the opposite mainland, where he sailed up the Achelous, overran
Acarnania, shut up the people of Oeniadae behind their walls, and after ravaging
and devastating their territory, went off homewards, having shown himself formidable
to his enemies, but a safe and efficient leader for his fellow-citizens. For nothing
untoward befell, even as result of chance, those who took part in the expedition.
He also sailed into the Euxine Sea (Probably about 436. B.C.) with
a large and splendidly equipped armament. There he effected what the Greek cities
desired, and dealt with them humanely, while to the neighboring nations of Barbarians
with their kings and dynasts he displayed the magnitude of his forces and the
fearless courage with which they sailed whithersoever they pleased and brought
the whole sea under their own control. He also left with the banished Sinopians
thirteen ships of war and soldiers under command of Lamachus to aid them against
Timesileos. When the tyrant and his adherents had been driven from the city, Pericles
got a bill passed providing that six hundred volunteers of the Athenians should
sail to Sinope and settle down there with the Sinopians, dividing up among themselves
the houses and lands which the tyrant and his followers had formerly occupied.
But in other matters he did not accede to the vain impulses of the citizens, nor
was he swept along with the tide when they were eager, from a sense of their great
power and good fortune, to lay hands again upon Egypt and molest the realms of
the King which lay along the sea. Many also were possessed already with that inordinate
and inauspicious passion for Sicily which was afterwards kindled into flame by
such orators as Alcibiades. And some there were who actually dreamed of Tuscany
and Carthage, and that not without a measure of hope, in view of the magnitude
of their present supremacy and the full-flowing tide of success in their undertakings.
But Pericles was ever trying to restrain this extravagance of theirs,
to lop off their expansive meddlesomeness, and to divert the greatest part of
their forces to the guarding and securing of what they had already won. He considered
it a great achievement to hold the Lacedaemonians in check, and set himself in
opposition to these in every way, as he showed, above all other things, by what
he did in the Sacred War (About 448 B.C.) The Lacedaemonians made an expedition
to Delphi while the Phocians had possession of the sanctuary there, and restored
it to the Delphians; but no sooner had the Lacedaemonians departed than Pericles
made a counter expedition and reinstated the Phocians. And whereas the Lacedaemonians
had had the "promanteia", or right of consulting the oracle in behalf
of others also, which the Delphians had bestowed upon them, carved upon the forehead
of the bronze wolf in the sanctuary, he secured from the Phocians this high privilege
for the Athenians, and had it chiselled along the right side of the same wolf.
That he was right in seeking to confine the power of the Athenians
within lesser Greece, was amply proved by what came to pass. To begin with, the
Euboeans revolted (446 B.C.), and he crossed over to the island with a hostile
force. Then straightway word was brought to him that the Megarians had gone over
to the enemy, and that an army of the enemy was on the confines of Attica under
the leadership of Pleistoanax, the king of the Lacedaemonians. Accordingly, Pericles
brought his forces back with speed from Euboea for the war in Attica. He did not
venture to join battle with hoplites who were so many, so brave, and so eager
for battle, but seeing that Pleistoanax was a very young man, and that out of
all his advisers he set most store by Cleandridas, whom the ephors had sent along
with him, by reason of his youth, to be a guardian and an assistant to him, he
secretly made trial of this man's integrity, speedily corrupted him with bribes,
and persuaded him to lead the Peloponnesians back out of Attica. When the army
had withdrawn and had been disbanded to their several cities, the Lacedaemonians,
in indignation, laid a heavy fine upon their king, the full amount of which he
was unable to pay, and so betook himself out of Lacedaemon, while Cleandridas,
who had gone into voluntary exile, was condemned to death. He was the father of
that Gylippus who overcame the Athenians in Sicily. And nature seems to have imparted
covetousness to the son, as it were a congenital disease, owing to which he too,
after noble achievements, was caugt in base practices and banished from Sparta
in disgrace. This story, however, I have told at length in my life of Lysander.
When Pericles, in rendering his accounts for this campaign, recorded
an expenditure of ten talents as "for sundry needs", the people approved
it without officious meddling and without even investigating the mystery. But
some writers, among whom is Theophrastus the philosopher, have stated that every
year ten talents found their way to Sparta from Pericles, and that with these
he conciliated all the officials there, and so staved off the war, not purchasing
peace, but time, in which he could make preparations at his leisure and then carry
on war all the better. However that may be, he again turned his attention to the
rebels, and after crossing to Euboea with fifty ships of war and five thousand
hoplites, he subdued the cities there. Those of the Chalcidians who were styled
Hippobotae, or Knights, and who were preeminent for wealth and reputation, he
banished from their city, and all the Hestiaeans he removed from the country and
settled Athenians in their places, treating them, and them only, thus inexorably,
because they had taken an Attic ship captive and slain its crew.
After this, when peace had been made for thirty years between the
Athenians and the Lacedaemonians, be got a decree passed for his expedition to
Samos (440 B.C.), alleging against its people that, though they were ordered to
break off their war against the Milesians, they were not complying.
Now, since it is thought that he proceeded thus against the Samians
to gratify Aspasia, this may be a fitting place to raise the query what great
art or power this woman had, that she managed as she pleased the foremost men
of the state, and afforded the philosophers occasion to discuss her in exalted
terms and at great length. That she was a Milesian by birth, daughter of one Axiochus,
is generally agreed; and they say that it was in emulation of Thargelia, an Ionian
woman of ancient times, that she made her onslaughts upon the most influential
men. This Thargelia came to be a great beauty and was endowed with grace of manners
as well as clever wits. Inasmuch as she lived on terms of intimacy with numberless
Greeks, and attached all her consorts to the king of Persia, she stealthily sowed
the seeds of Persian sympathy in the cities of Greece by means of these lovers
of hers, who were men of the greatest power and influence. And so Aspasia, as
some say, was held in high favour by Pericles because of her rare political wisdom.
Socrates sometimes came to see her with his disciples, and his intimate friends
brought their wives to her to hear her discourse, although she presided over a
business that was any- thing but honest or even reputable, since she kept a house
of young courtesans. And Aeschines says that Lysicles the sheep-dealer, a man
of low birth and nature, came to be the first man at Athens by living with Aspasia
after the death of Pericles. And in the "Menexenus" of Plato, even though
the first part of it be written in a sportive vein, there is, at any rate, thus
much of fact, that the woman had the reputation of associating with many Athenians
as a teacher of rhetoric. However, the affection which Pericles had for Aspasia
seems to have been rather of an amatory sort. For his own wife was near of kin
to him, and had been wedded first to Hipponicus, to whom she bore Callias, surnamed
the Rich; she bore also, as the wife of Pericles, Xanthippus and Paralus. Afterwards,
since their married life was not agreeable, he legally bestowed her upon another
man, with her own consent, and himself took Aspasia, and loved her exceedingly.
Twice a day, as they say, on going out and on coming in from the market-place,
he would salute her with a loving kiss.
But in the comedies she is styled now the New Omphale, now Deianeira,
and now Hera. Cratinus flatly called her a prostitute in these lines:
As his Hera, Aspasia was born, the child of Unnatural
Lust,
A prostitute past shaming. Cratinus, Cheirons
And it appears also that he begat from her that bastard son about whom Eupolis,
in his "Demes", represented him as inquiring with these words:
And my bastard, doth he live? Eupolis, Demes
to which Myronides replies:
Yea, and long had been a man,
Had he not feared the mischief of his harlot-birth.
Eupolis, Demes
So renowned and celebrated did Aspasia become, they say, that even Cyrus, the
one who went to war with the Great King for the sovereignty of the Persians, gave
the name of Aspasia to that one of his concubines whom he loved best, who before
was called Milto. She was a Phocaean by birth, daughter of one Hermotimus, and,
after Cyrus had fallen in battle, was carried captive to the King, and acquired
the greatest influence with him. These things coming to my recollection as I write,
it were perhaps unnatural to reject and pass them by.
But to return to the war against the Samians, they accuse Pericles of getting
the decree for this passed at the request of Aspasia and in the special behalf
of the Milesians. For the two cities were waging their war for the possession
of Priene, and the Samians were getting the better of it, and when the Athenians
ordered them to stop the contest and submit the case to arbitration at Athens,
they would not obey. So Pericles set sail and broke up the oligarchical government
which Samos had, and then took fifty of the foremost men of the state, with as
many of their children, as hostages, and sent them off to Lemnos. And yet they
say that every one of these hostages offered him a talent on his own account,
and that the opponents of democracy in the city offered him many talents besides.
And still further, Pissouthnes, the Persian satrap, who had much good-will towards
the Samians, sent him ten thousand gold staters and interceded for the city. However,
Pericles took none of these bribes, but treated the Samians just as he had determined,
set up a democracy and sailed back to Athens. Then the Samians at once revolted,
after Pissouthnes had stolen away their hostages from Lemnos for them, and in
other ways equipped them for the war. Once more, therefore, Pericles set sail
against them. They were not victims of sloth, nor yet of abject terror, but full
of exceeding zeal in their determination to contest the supremacy of the sea.
In a fierce sea-fight which came off near an island called Tragia, Pericles won
a brilliant victory, with four and forty ships outfighting seventy, twenty of
which were infantry transports.
Close on the heels of his victorious pursuit came his seizure of the harbor, and
then he laid formal siege to the Samians, who, somehow or other, still had the
daring to sally forth and fight with him before their walls. But soon a second
and a larger armament came from Athens, and the Samians were completely beleaguered
and shut in. Then Pericles took sixty triremes and sailed out into the main sea,
as most authorities say, because he wished to meet a fleet of Phoenician ships
which was coming to the aid of the Samians, and fight it at as great a distance
from Samos as possible; but according to Stesimbrotus, because he had designs
on Cyprus, which seems incredible. But in any case, whichever design he cherished,
he seems to have made a mistake. For no sooner had he sailed off than Melissus,
the son of Ithagenes, a philosopher who was then acting as general at Samos, despising
either the small number of ships that were left, or the inexperience of the generals
in charge of them, persuaded his fellow-citizens to make an attack upon the Athenians.
In the battle that ensued the Samians were victorious, taking many of their enemy
captive, and destroying many of their ships, so that they commanded the sea and
laid in large store of such necessaries for the war as they did not have before.
And Aristotle says that Pericles was himself also defeated by Melissus in the
sea-fight which preceded this.
The Samians retaliated upon the Athenians by branding their prisoners
in the forehead with owls; for the Athenians had once branded some of them with
the samaena. Now the samaena is a ship of war with a boar's head design for prow
and ram, but more capacious than usual and paunchlike, so that it is a good deep-sea
traveller and a swift sailor too. It got this name because it made its first appearance
in Samos, where Polycrates the tyrant had some built. To these brand-marks, they
say, the verse of Aristophanes made riddling reference:
For oh! how lettered is the folk of the Samians!
Aristophanes, Babylonians
Be that true or not, when Pericles learned of the disaster which had befallen
his fleet, he came speedily to its aid. And though Melissus arrayed his forces
against him, he conquered and routed the enemy and at once walled their city in,
preferring to get the upper hand and capture it at the price of money and time,
rather than of the wounds and deadly perils of his fellow-citizens. And since
it was a hard task for him to restrain the Athenians in their impatience of delay
and eagerness to fight, he separated his whole force into eight divisions, had
them draw lots, and allowed the division which got the white bean to feast and
take their ease, while the others did the fighting. And this is the reason, as
they say, why those who have had a gay and festive time call it a "white
day",--from the white bean.
Ephorus says that Pericles actually employed siege-engines, in his
admiration of their novelty, and that Artemon the engineer was with him there,
who, since he was lame, and so had to be brought on a stretcher to the works which
demanded his instant attention, was dubbed Periphoretus. Heracleides Ponticus,
however, refutes this story out of the poems of Anacreon, in which Artemon Periphoretus
is mentioned many generations before the Samian War and its events. And he says
that Artemon was very luxurious in his life, as well as weak and panic-stricken
in the presence of his fears, and therefore for the most part sat still at home,
while two servants held a bronze shield over his head to keep anything from falling
down upon it. Whenever he was forced to go abroad, he had himself carried in a
little hammock which was borne along just above the surface of the ground. On
this account he was called Periphoretus.
After eight months the Samians surrendered, and Pericles tore down
their walls, took away their ships of war, and laid a heavy fine upon them, part
of which they paid at once, and part they agreed to pay at a fixed time, giving
hostages therefor. To these details Duris the Samian adds stuff for tragedy, accusing
the Athenians and Pericles of great brutality, which is recorded neither by Thucydides,
nor Ephorus, nor Aristotle. But he appears not to speak the truth when he says,
forsooth, that Pericles had the Samian trierarchs and marines brought into the
market-place of Miletus and crucified there, and that then, when they had already
suffered grievously for ten days, he gave orders to break their heads in with
clubs and make an end of them, and then cast their bodies forth without burial
rites. At all events, since it is not the wont of Duris, even in cases where he
has no private and personal interest, to hold his narrative down to the fundamental
truth, it is all the more likely that here, in this instance, he has given a dreadful
portrayal of the calamities of his country, that he might calumniate the Athenians.
When Pericles, after his subjection of Samos, had returned to Athens,
he gave honorable burial to those who had fallen in the war, and for the oration
which he made, according to the custom, over their tombs, he won the greatest
admiration. But as he came down from the bema, while the rest of the women clasped
his hand and fastened wreaths and fillets on his head, as though he were some
victorious athlete, Elpinice drew nigh and said: "This is admirable in thee,
Pericles, and deserving of wreaths, in that thou hast lost us many brave citizens,
not in a war with Phoenicians or Medes, like my brother Cimon, but in the subversion
of an allied and kindred city". On Elpinice's saying this, Pericles, with
a quiet smile, it is said, quoted to her the verse of Archilochus:
Thou hadst not else, in spite of years, perfumed
thyself. West, Iambi et Elegi Graeci i. 205
Ion says that he had the most astonishingly great thoughts of himself for having
subjected the Samians; whereas Agamemnon was all of ten years in taking a barbarian
city, he had in nine months time reduced the foremost and most powerful people
of Ionia. [6] And indeed his estimate of himself was not unjust, nay, the war
actually brought with it much uncertainty and great peril, if indeed, as Thucydides
(Thuc. 8.76.4) says, the city of Samos came within a very little of stripping
from Athens her power on the sea.
After this, when the billows of the Peloponnesian War were already
rising and swelling, he persuaded the people to send aid and succour to the Corcyraeans
(433 B.C.) in their war with the Corinthians, and so to attach to themselves an
island with a vigorous naval power at a time when the Peloponnesians were as good
as actually at war with them. But when the people had voted to send the aid and
succour, he despatched Lacedaemonius, the son of Cimon, with only ten ships, as
it were in mockery of him. Now there was much good-will and friendship on the
part of the house of Cimon towards the Lacedaemonians. In order, therefore, that
in case no great or conspicuous achievement should be performed under the generalship
of Lacedaemonius, he might so be all the more calumniated for his Iaconism, or
sympathy with Sparta, Pericles gave him only a few ships, and sent him forth against
his will. And in general he was prone to thwart and check the sons of Cimon, on
the plea that not even in their names were they genuinely native, but rather aliens
and strangers, since one of them bore the name of Lacedaemonius, another that
of Thessalus, and a third that of Eleius. And they were all held to be the sons
of a woman of Arcadia. Accordingly, being harshly criticized because of these
paltry ten ships on the ground that he had furnished scanty aid and succour to
the needy friends of Athens, but a great pretext for war to her accusing enemies,
he afterwards sent out other ships, and more of them, to Corcyra,--the ones which
got there after the battle (Thuc. 1.50.5).
The Corinthians were incensed at this procedure, and denounced the
Athenians at Sparta, and were joined by the Megarians, who brought their complaint
that from every market-place and from all the harbors over which the Athenians
had control, they were excluded and driven away, contrary to the common law and
the formal oaths of the Greeks; the Aeginetans also, deeming themselves wronged
and outraged, kept up a secret wailing in the ears of the Lacedaemonians, since
they had not the courage to accuse the Athenians openly. At this juncture Potidaea,
too, a city that was subject to Athens, although a colony of Corinth, revolted,
and the siege laid to her hastened on the war all the more.
Notwithstanding all, since embassies were repeatedly sent to Athens,
and since Archidamus, the king of the Lacedaemonians, tried to bring to a peaceful
settlement most of the accusations of his allies and to soften their anger, it
does not seem probable that the war would have come upon the Athenians for any
remaining reasons, if only they could have been persuaded to rescind their decree
against the Megarians and be reconciled with them. And therefore, since it was
Pericles who was most of all opposed to this, and who incited the people to abide
by their contention with the Megarians, he alone was held responsible for the
war.
They say that when an embassy had come from Lacedaemon to Athens to
treat of these matters, and Pericles was shielding himself behind the plea that
a certain law prevented his taking down the tablet on which the decree was inscribed,
Polyalces, one of the ambassadors, cried: "Well then, don't take it down,
but turn the tablet to the wall; surely there's no law preventing that".
Clever as the proposal was, however, not one whit the more did Pericles give in.
He must have secretly cherished, then, as it seems, some private grudge against
the Megarians; but by way of public and open charge he accused them of appropriating
to their own profane uses the sacred territory of Eleusis, and proposed a decree
that a herald be sent to them, the same to go also to the Lacedaemonians with
a denunciation of the Megarians. This decree, at any rate, is the work of Pericles,
and aims at a reasonable and humane justification of his course. But after the
herald who was sent, Anthemocritus, had been put to death through the agency of
the Megarians, as it was believed, Charinus proposed a decree against them, to
the effect that there be irreconcilable and implacable enmity on the part of Athens
towards them, and that whosoever of the Megarians should set foot on the soil
of Attica be punished with death; and that the generals, whenever they should
take their ancestral oath of office, add to their oath this clause, that they
would invade the Megarid twice during each succeeding year; and that Anthemocritus
be buried honorably at the Thriasian gates, which are now called the Dipylum.
But the Megarians denied the murder of Anthemocritus, and threw the
blame for Athenian hate on Aspasia and Pericles, appealing to those far-famed
and hackneyed versicles of the "Acharnians":
Simaetha, harlot, one of Megara's womankind,
Was stolen by gilded youths more drunk than otherwise;
And so the Megarians, pangs of wrath all reeking
hot,
Paid back the theft and raped of Aspasia's harlots
two. Aristoph. Ach. 524-527
Well, then, whatever the original ground for enacting the decree -and it is no
easy matter to determine this- the fact that it was not rescinded all men alike
lay to the charge of Pericles. Only, some say that he persisted in his refusal
in a lofty spirit and with a clear perception of the best interests of the city,
regarding the injunction laid upon it as a test of its submissiveness, and its
compliance as a confession of weakness; while others hold that it was rather with
a sort of arrogance and love of strife, as well as for the display of his power,
that he scornfully defied the Lacedaemonians.
But the worst charge of all, and yet the one which has the most vouchers,
runs something like this. Pheidias the sculptor was contractor for the great statue,
as I have said, and being admitted to the friendship of Pericles, and acquiring
the greatest influence with him, made some enemies through the jealousy which
he excited; others also made use of him to test the people and see what sort of
a judge it would be in a case where Pericles was involved. These latter persuaded
one Menon, an assistant of Pheidias, to take a suppliant's seat in the market-place
and demand immunity from punishment in case he should bring information and accusation
against Pheidias. The people accepted the man's proposal, and formal prosecution
of Pheidias was made in the assembly. Embezzlement, indeed, was not proven, for
the gold of the statue, from the very start, had been so wrought upon and cast
about it by Pheidias, at the wise suggestion of Pericles, that it could all be
taken off and weighed (Thuc. 2.13.5), and this is what Pericles actually ordered
the accusers of Pheidias to do at this time.
But the reputation of his works nevertheless brought a burden of jealous
hatred upon Pheidias, and especially the fact that when he wrought the battle
of the Amazons on the shield of the goddess, he carved out a figure that suggested
himself as a bald old man lifting on high a stone with both hands, and also inserted
a very fine likeness of Pericles fighting with an Amazon. And the attitude of
the hand, which holds out a spear in front of the face of Pericles, is cunningly
contrived as it were with a desire to conceal the resemblance, which is, however,
plain to be seen from either side.
Pheidias, accordingly, was led away to prison, and died there of sickness;
but some say of poison which the enemies of Pericles provided, that they might
bring calumny upon him. And to Menon the informer, on motion of Glycon, the people
gave immunity from taxation, and enjoined upon the generals to make provision
for the man's safety.
About this time also Aspasia was put on trial for impiety, Hermippus
the comic poet being her prosecutor, who alleged further against her that she
received free-born women into a place of assignation for Pericles. And Diopeithes
brought in a bill providing for the public impeachment of such as did not believe
in gods, or who taught doctrines regarding the heavens, directing suspicion against
Pericles by means of Anaxagoras. The people accepted with delight these slanders,
and so, while they were in this mood, a bill was passed, on motion of Dracontides,
that Pericles should deposit his accounts of public moneys with the prytanes,
and that the jurors should decide upon his case with ballots which had lain upon
the altar of the goddess on the acropolis. But Hagnon amended this clause of the
bill with the motion that the case be tried before fifteen hundred jurors in the
ordinary way, whether one wanted to call it a prosecution for embezzlement and
bribery, or malversation.
Well, then, Aspasia he begged off, by shedding copious tears at the
trial, as Aeschines says, and by entreating the jurors; and he feared for Anaxagoras
so much that he sent him away from the city. And since in the case of Pheidias
he had come into collision with the people, he feared a jury in his own case,
and so kindled into flame the threatening and smouldering war, hoping thereby
to dissipate the charges made against him and allay the people's jealousy, inasmuch
as when great undertakings were on foot, and great perils threatened, the city
entrusted herself to him and to him alone, by reason of his worth and power. Such,
then, are the reasons which are alleged for his not suffering the people to yield
to the Lacedaemonians; but the truth about it is not clear.
The Lacedaemonians, perceiving that if he were deposed they would
find the Athenians more pliant in their hands, ordered them to drive out the Cylonian
pollution, in which the family of Pericles on his mother's side was involved,
as Thucydides states (Thuc. 1.127.1). But the attempt brought a result the opposite
of what its makers designed, for in place of suspicion and slander, Pericles won
even greater confidence and honor among the citizens than before, because they
saw that their enemies hated and feared him above all other men. Therefore also,
before Archidamus invaded Attica with the Peloponnesians, Pericles made public
proclamation to the Athenians, that in case Archidamus, while ravaging everything
else, should spare his estates, either out of regard for the friendly tie that
existed between them, or with an eye to affording his enemies grounds for slander,
he would make over to the city his lands and the homesteads thereon.
Accordingly, the Lacedaemonians and their allies invaded Attica with a great host
under the leadership of Archidamus the king. And they advanced, ravaging the country
as they went, as far as Acharnae, where they encamped, supposing that the Athenians
would not tolerate it, but would fight with them out of angry pride.Pericles,
however, looked upon it as a terrible thing to join battle with sixty thousand
Peloponnesian and Boeotian hoplites (those who made the first invasion were as
numerous as that), and stake the city itself upon the issue. So he tried to calm
down those who were eager to fight, and who were in distress at what the enemy
was doing, by saying that trees, though cut and lopped, grew quickly, but if men
were destroyed it was not easy to get them again. And he would not call the people
together into an assembly, fearing that he would be constrained against his better
judgement, but, like the helmsman of a ship, who, when a stormy wind swoops down
upon it in the open sea, makes all fast, takes in sail, and exercises his skill,
disregarding the tears and entreaties of the sea-sick and timorous passengers,
so he shut the city up tight, put all parts of it under safe garrison, and exercised
his own judgement, little heeding the brawlers and malcontents. And yet many of
his friends beset him with entreaties, and many of his enemies with threats and
denunciations, and choruses sang songs of scurrilous mockery, railing at his generalship
for its cowardice, and its abandonment of everything to the enemy. Cleon, too,
was already harassing him, taking advantage of the wrath with which the citizens
regarded him to make his own way toward the leadership of the people,as these
anapaestic verses of Hermippus show:
Thou king of the Satyrs, why pray wilt thou not
Take the spear for thy weapon, and stop the dire talk
With the which, until now, thou conductest the war.
While the soul of a Teles is in thee?
If the tiniest knife is but laid on the stone
To give it an edge, thou gnashest thy teeth,
As if bitten by fiery Cleon. Hermippus, Fates (Moirai)
However, Pericles was moved by no such things, but gently and silently underwent
the ignominy and the hatred, and, sending out an armament of a hundred ships against
the Peloponnesus, did not himself sail with it, but remained behind, keeping the
city under watch and ward and well in hand, until the Peloponnesians withdrew.
Then, by way of soothing the multitude, who, in spite of their enemies' departure,
were distressed over the war, he won their favour by distributions of moneys and
proposed allotments of conquered lands; the Aeginetans, for instance, he drove
out entirely, and parcelled out their island among the Athenians by lot. And some
consolation was to be had from what their enemies suffered. For the expedition
around the Peloponnesus ravaged much territory and sacked villages and small cities,
while Pericles himself, by land, invaded the Megarid and razed it all. Wherein
also it was evident that though their enemies did the Athenians much harm by land,
they suffered much too at their hands by sea, and therefore would not have protracted
the war to such a length, but would have speedily given up, just as Pericles prophesied
in the beginning, had not a terrible visitation from heaven thwarted human calculations.
As it was, in the first place, a pestilential destruction fell upon
them (430 B.C. Cf. Thuc. 2.47-54) and devoured clean the prime of their youth
and power. It weakened them in body and in spirit, and made them altogether wild
against Pericles, so that, for all the world as the mad will attack a physician
or a father, so they, in the delirium of the plague, attempted to do him harm,
persuaded thereto by his enemies. These urged that the plague was caused by the
crowding of the rustic multitudes together into the city, where, in the summer
season, many were huddled together in small dwellings and stifling barracks, and
compelled to lead a stay-at-home and inactive life, instead of being in the pure
and open air of heaven as they were wont. They said that Pericles was responsible
for this, who, because of the war, had poured the rabble from the country into
the walled city and then gave that mass of men no employment whatever, but suffered
them, thus penned up like cattle, to fill one another full of corruption, and
provided them no change or respite.
Desiring to heal these evils, and at the same time to inflict some
annoyance upon the enemy, he manned a hundred and fifty ships of war, and, after
embarking many brave hoplites and horsemen, was on the point of putting out to
sea, affording great hope to the citizens, and no less fear to the enemy in consequence
of so great a force. But when the ships were already manned, and Pericles had
gone aboard his own trireme, it chanced that the sun was eclipsed and darkness
came on, and all were thoroughly frightened, looking upon it as a great portent.
Accordingly, seeing that his steersman was timorous and utterly perplexed, Pericles
held up his cloak before the man's eyes, and, thus covering them, asked him if
he thought it anything dreadful, or portentous of anything dreadful. "No",
said the steersman. "How then", said Pericles, "is yonder event
different from this, except that it is something rather larger than my cloak which
has caused the obscurity?" At any rate, this tale is told in the schools
of philosophy. Well, then, on sailing forth, Pericles seems to have accomplished
nothing worthy of his preparations, but after laying siege to sacred Epidaurus,
which awakened a hope that it might he captured, he had no such good fortune,
because of the plague. Its fierce onset destroyed not only the Athenians themselves,
but also those who, in any manner soever, had dealings with their forces. The
Athenians being exasperated against him on this account, he tried to appease and
encourage them. He did not, however, succeed in allaying their wrath, nor yet
in changing their purposes, before they got their hostile ballots into their hands,
became masters of his fate, stripped him of his command, and punished him with
a fine. The amount of this was fifteen talents, according to those who give the
lowest, and fifty, according to those who give the highest figures. The public
prosecutor mentioned in the records of the case was Cleon, as Idomeneus says,
but according to Theophrastus it was Simmias, and Heracleides Ponticus mentions
Lacratides.
So much, then, for his public troubles; they were likely soon to cease,
now that the multitude had stung him, as it were, and left their passion with
their sting; but his domestic affairs were in a sorry plight, since he had lost
not a few of his intimate friends during the pestilence, and had for some time
been rent and torn by a family feud. The eldest of his legitimate sons, Xanthippus,
who was naturally prodigal, and had married a young and extravagant wife, the
daughter of Tisander, the son of Epilycus, was much displeased at his father's
exactitude in making him but a meagre allowance, and that a little at a time.
Accordingly, he sent to one of his father's friends and got money, pretending
that Pericles bade him do it. When the friend afterwards demanded repayment of
the loan, Pericles not only refused it, but brought suit against him to boot.
So the young fellow, Xanthippus, incensed at this, fell to abusing his father,
publishing abroad, to make men laugh, his conduct of affairs at home, and the
discourses which he held with the sophists. For instance, a certain athlete had
hit Epitimus the Pharsalian with a javelin, accidentally, and killed him, and
Pericles, Xanthippus said, squandered an entire day discussing with Protagoras
whether it was the javelin, or rather the one who hurled it, or the judges of
the contests, that ?in the strictest sense? ought to be held responsible for the
disaster. Besides all this, the slanderous charge concerning his own wife Stesimbrotus
says was sown abroad in public by Xanthippus himself, and also that the quarrel
which the young man had with his father remained utterly incurable up to the time
of his death,--for Xanthippus fell sick and died during the plague.
Pericles lost his sister also at that time, and of his relatives and
friends the largest part, and those who were most serviceable to him in his administration
of the city. He did not, however, give up, nor yet abandon his loftiness and grandeur
of spirit because of his calamities, nay, he was not even seen to weep, either
at the funeral rites, or at the grave of any of his connections, until indeed
he lost the very last remaining one of his own legitimate sons, Paralus. Even
though he was bowed down at this stroke, he nevertheless tried to persevere in
his habit and maintain his spiritual greatness, but as he laid a wreath upon the
dead, he was vanquished by his anguish at the sight, so that he broke out into
wailing, and shed a multitude of tears, although he had never done any such thing
in all his life before.
The city made trial of its other generals and counsellors for the
conduct of the war, but since no one appeared to have weight that was adequate
or authority that was competent for such leadership, it yearned for Pericles,
and summoned him back to the bema and the war-office (429 B.C.). He was lying
dejectedly at home because of his sorrow, but was persuaded by Alcibiades and
his other friends to resume his public life. When the people had apologized for
their thankless treatment of him, and he had undertaken again the conduct of the
state, and been elected general, he asked for a suspension of the law concerning
children born out of wedlock,--a law which he himself had formerly introduced,--in
order that the name and lineage of his house might not altogether expire through
lack of succession.
The circumstances of this law were as follows. Many years before this
(451-450 B.C.), when Pericles was at the height of his political career and had
sons born in wedlock, as I have said, he proposed a law that only those should
he reckoned Athenians whose parents on both sides were Athenians. And so when
the king of Egypt sent a present to the people of forty thousand measures of grain,
and this had to be divided up among the citizens, there was a great crop of prosecutions
against citizens of illegal birth by the law of Pericles, who had up to that time
escaped notice and been overlooked, and many of them also suffered at the hands
of informers. As a result, a little less than five thousand were convicted and
sold into slavery, and those who retained their citizenship and were adjudged
to be Athenians were found, as a result of this scrutiny, to be fourteen thousand
and forty in number. It was, accordingly, a grave matter, that the law which had
been rigorously enforced against so many should now be suspended by the very man
who had introduced it, and yet the calamities which Pericles was then suffering
in his family life, regarded as a kind of penalty which he had paid for his arrogance
and haughtiness of old, broke down the objections of the Athenians. They thought
that what he suffered was by way of retribution, and that what he asked became
a man to ask and men to grant, and so they suffered him to enroll his illegitimate
son in the phratry-lists and to give him his own name. This was the son who afterwards
conquered the Peloponnesians in a naval battle at the Arginusae islands (406 B.C),
and was put to death by the people along with his fellow-generals.
At this time, it would seem, the plague laid hold of Pericles, not
with a violent attack, as in the case of others, nor acute, but one which, with
a kind of sluggish distemper that prolonged itself through varying changes, used
up his body slowly and undermined the loftiness of his spirit. Certain it is that
Theophrastus, in his "Ethics", querying whether one's character follows
the bent of one's fortunes and is forced by bodily sufferings to abandon its high
excellence, records this fact, that Pericles, as he lay sick, showed one of his
friends who was come to see him an amulet that the women had hung round his neck,
as much as to say that he was very badly off to put up with such folly as that.
Being now near his end (He died in the autumn of 429 B.C.), the best
of the citizens and those of his friends who survived were sitting around him
holding discourse of his excellence and power, how great they had been, and estimating
all his achievements and the number of his trophies,--there were nine of these
which he had set up as the city's victorious general. This discourse they were
holding with one another, supposing that he no longer understood them but had
lost consciousness. He had been attending to it all, however, and speaking out
among them said he was amazed at their praising and commemorating that in him
which was due as much to fortune as to himself, and which had fallen to the lot
of many generals besides, instead of mentioning his fairest and greatest title
to their admiration; "for", said he, "no living Athenian ever put
on mourning because of me".
So, then, the man is to be admired not only for his reasonableness
and the gentleness which he maintained in the midst of many responsibilities and
great enmities, but also for his loftiness of spirit, seeing that he regarded
it as the noblest of all his titles to honor that he had never gratified his envy
or his passion in the exercise of his vast power, nor treated any one of his foes
as a foe incurable. And it seems to me that his otherwise puerile and pompous
surname is rendered unobjectionable and becoming by this one circumstance, that
it was so gracious a nature and a life so pure and undefiled in the exercise of
sovereign power which were called Olympian, inasmuch as we do firmly hold that
the divine rulers and kings of the universe are capable only of good, and incapable
of evil. In this we are not like the poets, who confuse us with their ignorant
fancies, and are convicted of inconsistency by their own stories, since they declare
that the place where they say the gods dwell is a secure abode and tranquil, without
experience of winds and clouds, but gleaming through all the unbroken time with
the soft radiance of purest light, --implying that some such a manner of existence
is most becoming to the blessed immortal; and yet they represent the gods themselves
as full of malice and hatred and wrath and other passions which ill become even
men of any sense. But this, perhaps, will be thought matter for discussion elsewhere.
The progress of events wrought in the Athenians a swift appreciation
of Pericles and a keen sense of his loss. For those who, while he lived, were
oppressed by a sense of his power and felt that it kept them in obscurity, straightway
on his removal made trial of other orators and popular leaders, only to be led
to the confession that a character more moderate than his in its solemn dignity,
and more august in its gentleness, had not been created. That objectionable power
of his, which they had used to call monarchy and tyranny, seemed to them now to
have been a saving bulwark of the constitution, so greatly was the state afflicted
by the corruption and manifold baseness which he had kept weak and grovelling,
thereby covering it out of sight and preventing it from becoming incurably powerful.
This extract is from: Plutarch's Lives (ed. Bernadotte Perrin, 1914). Cited June 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.
Aspasia. A celebrated woman, a native of Miletus. She came as an adventuress to
Athens, in the time of Pericles, and, by the combined charms of her person, manners,
and conversation, completely won the affection and esteem of that distinguished
statesman. Her station had freed her from the restraints which custom laid on
the education of the Athenian matron, and she had enriched her mind with accomplishments
which were rare even among men. Her acquaintance with Pericles seems to have begun
while he was still united to a lady of high birth, and we can hardly doubt that
it was Aspasia who first disturbed this union, although it is said to have been
dissolved by mutual consent. But after parting from his wife, who had borne him
two sons, Pericles attached himself to Aspasia by the most intimate relation which
the laws permitted him to contract with a foreign woman; and she acquired an ascendency
over him which soon became notorious, and furnished the comic poets with an inexhaustible
fund of ridicule and his enemies with a ground for serious charges. The Samian
War was ascribed to her interposition on behalf of her birthplace, and rumours
were set afloat which represented her as ministering to the vices of Pericles
by the most odious and degrading of offices. There was, perhaps, as little foundation
for this report as for a similar one in which Phidias was implicated ; though
among all the imputations brought against Pericles, this is that which it is the
most difficult clearly to refute. But we are inclined to believe that it may have
arisen from the peculiar nature of Aspasia's private circles, which, with a bold
neglect of established usage, were composed not only of the most intelligent and
accomplished men to be found at Athens, but also of matrons, who, it is said,
were brought by their husbands to listen to her conversation. This must have been
highly instructive as well as brilliant, since Plato did not hesitate to describe
her as the preceptress of Socrates, and to assert in the Menexenus that she both
formed the rhetoric of Pericles and composed one of his most admired harangues,
the celebrated funeral oration. The innovation, which drew women of free birth
and good standing into her company for such a purpose, must, even where the truth
was understood, have surprised and offended many, and it was liable to the grossest
misconstruction. And if her female friends were sometimes seen watching the progress
of the works of Phidias, it was easy, through his intimacy with Pericles, to connect
this fact with a calumny of the same kind.
There was another rumour still more dangerous, which grew out of the
character of the persons who were admitted to the society of Pericles and Aspasia.
No persons were more welcome at the house of Pericles than such as were distinguished
by philosophical studies, and especially by the profession of new philosophical
tenets. The mere presence of Anaxagoras, Zeno, Protagoras, and other celebrated
men, who were known to hold doctrines very remote from the religious conceptions
of the vulgar, was sufficient to make a circle in which they were familiar pass
for a school of impiety. Such were the materials out of which the comic poet Hermippus
formed a criminal prosecution against Aspasia. His indictment included two heads:
an offence against religion, and that of corrupting Athenian women to gratify
the passions of Pericles. The danger was averted; but it seems that Pericles,
who pleaded her cause, found need of his most strenuous exertions to save Aspasia,
and that he even descended, in her behalf, to tears and entreaties, which no similar
emergency of his own could ever draw from him.
After the death of Pericles, Aspasia attached herself to a young man
of obscure birth, named Lysicles, who rose through her influence in moulding his
character to some of the highest employments in the Republic. (See Plut. Pericl.;
Xen. Mem.ii. 6.)
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited June 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Aspasia. The celebrated Milesian, daughter of Axiochus, came to reside at Athens, and there gained and fixed the affections of Pericles, not more by her beauty than by her high mental accomplishments. With his wife. who was a lady of rank, and by whom he had two sons, he seems to have lived unhappily; and, having parted from her by mutual consent, he attached himself to Aspasia during the rest of his life as closely as was allowed by the law, which forbade marriage with a foreign woman under severe penalties (Plut. Peric. 24; Demosth. c. Neaer.). Nor can there be any doubt that she acquired over him a great ascendancy; though this perhaps comes before us in an exaggerated shape in the statements which ascribe to her influence the war with Samos on behalf of Miletus in B. C. 440, as well as the Peloponnesian war itself (Plut. Peric. l. c.; Aristoph. Acharn. 497; Schol. ad loc.; comp. Aristoph. Pax, 587; Thuc. i. 115). The connexion, indeed, of Pericles with Aspasia appears to have been a favourite subject of attack in Athenian comedy (Aristoph. Acharn. l. c.; Plut. Peric. 24; Schol. ad Plat. Menex.), as also with certain writers of philosophical dialogues, between whom and the comic poets, in respect of their abusive propensities, Athenaeus remarks a strong family likeness (Athen. v. p. 220; Casaub. ad loc.). Nor was their bitterness satisfied with the vent of satire; for it was Hermippus, the comic poet, who brought against Aspasia the double charge of impiety and of infamously pandering to the vices of Pericles; and it required all the personal influence of the latter with the people, and his most earnest entreaties and tears, to procure her acquittal (Plut. Peric. 32; Athen. xiii). The house of Aspasia was the great centre of the highest literary and philosophical society of Athens, nor was the seclusion of the Athenian matrons so strictly preserved, but that many even of them resorted thither with their husbands for the pleasure and improvement of her conversation (Plut. Peric. 24); so that the intellectual influence which she ex ercised was undoubtedly considerable, even though we reject the story of her being the preceptress of Socrates, on the probable ground of the irony of those passages in which such statement is made (Plat. Menex.; Xen. Occon. iii. 14, Memor. ii. 6.36); for Plato certainly was no approver of the administration of Pericles (Gorg), and thought perhaps that the refinement introduced by Aspasia had only added a new temptation to the licentiousness from which it was not disconnected (Athen. xiii). On the death of Pericles, Aspasia is said to have attached herself to one Lysicles, a dealer in cattle, and to have made him by her instructions a first-rate orator (Aesch. ap. Plut. Peric. 24). For an amusing account of a sophistical argument ascribed to her by Aeschines the philosopher, see Cic. de Inxent. i. 31; Quintil. Inst. Orat. v. 11. The son of Pericles by Aspasia was legitimated by a special decree of the people, and took his father's name (Plut. Peric. 37). He was one of the six generals who were put to death after the victory at Arginusae.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited June 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Aspasia
Summary
Aspasia was the mistress of Pericles, the leader of Athens during
the Classical Age. She was a hetaira, a trained and paid companion who accompanied
upper-class men to the symposiums. According to some ancient sources she was skilled
in rhetoric and took part in the intellectual discussions of the leading men in
Athens, including Socrates. As the mistress of Pericles, she suffered attacks
from his political enemies. Aspasia and Pericles had one son, who was later legitimized.
After the death of Pericles she married Lysicles a man of humble birth who became
a successful politician in Athens through her assistance. Factual information
about Aspasia is difficult to locate in the ancient sources. Playwrights, biographers
and other ancient authors use Aspasia to illustrate their views on philosophy,
rhetoric and Pericles.
Family
Modern scholars agree that the basic facts of Aspasia's life as recorded
by Diodoros the Athenian (FGrHist 372 F 40 ), Plutarch (Plut. Per. 24.3 ) and
the lexicographers are correct. She was born in the city of Miletus between 460-455
B.C., the daughter of Axiochus. Miletus, part of the Athenian empire, was one
of the leading cities in Ionia, an area of Greek settlement located along the
coast of Asia Minor.
It was probably in Ionia, before she left for Athens, that Aspasia
was educated. Women in that part of the Greek world were generally given more
of an education than women in Athens. As a hetaira she would have been trained
in the art of conversation and of musical entertainment including singing, dancing
and playing instruments.
Biography
Arriving in Athens as a free immigrant around 445 B.C., Aspasia worked
as a hetaira. In fact Aspasia, which meant "Gladly Welcomed", was probably
her professional name. Hetairai were much more than just high-class prostitutes.
According to ancient literary sources and scenes from vase paintings, many hetairai
were intelligent, beautiful, well-dressed and had fewer restrictions on their
lives than the respectable, married women in Athens (Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae
583f. ). This description would also apply to Aspasia. As a hetaira, however,
she would not have had financial security or any legal or family protection.
As the paid companion of aristocratic men Aspasia attended symposiums,
drinking parties combined with political and philosophical discourse. At the symposiums
she met the most influential and powerful men in Athens, including Pericles. Sometime
around 445 B.C. Aspasia began to live with Pericles, who at that time was the
leader of Athens. He had been divorced from his wife for five years, with whom
he had two sons. According to Plutarch, it was an amiable divorce because the
marriage was not a happy one (Plut. Per. 24.5).
Plutarch relates more information about Aspasia than any other ancient
author. Unfortunately, Plutarch's Lives are full of distortions and historical
inaccuracies. His purpose in the Lives was to exemplify the virtues and vices
of great men, not to write history. In respect to Aspasia and Pericles he states
that Pericles valued Aspasia's intelligence and political insight, but he emphasizes
that Pericles' feelings for her were primarily erotic. This may be an attempt
on Plutarch's part to remove the stigma from Pericles of having been overly influenced
by a woman.
Plutarch describes the relationship between Aspasia and Pericles as
a very happy one. He states that she was so loved by Pericles that he kissed her
everyday when he left the house and again when he returned (Plut. Per. 24). Plutarch
portrays Aspasia as the influential courtesan. He writes that Aspasia was trying
to emulate Thargelia, a famous Milesian courtesan whose lovers were the most powerful
men in Greece. Using her influence over these men Thargelia helped win Thessaly
over to the Persians at the time of Xerxes' invasion.
Plutarch blames Aspasia for Pericles' decision to start the war against
Samos, a wealthy and powerful member of the empire. The Milesians and the Samians
were involved in a border dispute. The Samians refused to submit the conflict
to Athenian arbitration. Supposedly, Aspasia pressured Pericles to take military
action against Samos (Plut. Per. 25.1). Although it would have been natural for
Aspasia to take the side of her native city, she and Pericles both must have realized
that the loss of Samos to the empire would have meant the rapid end of Athenian
domination of the Aegean.
The exact status of Aspasia's relationship with Pericles and her position
in Pericles' household is disputed. While some say that she was his a pallake
(concubine ), Plutarch (Plut. Per. 24) seems to imply, and Diodorus the Athenian
(FGrHist 372 F 40) says, that she was his akoitis. She and Pericles had one son
also named Pericles. As the mistress of Pericles' household and hostess to his
friends and supporters, Aspasia participated in discussions revolving around politics
and philosophy with the leading men of the Athenian empire. According to several
ancient authors, Socrates respected her opinions (Plut. Per. 24.3; Xen. Ec. 3.15;
Cicero, De Inventione 31.51). As a pallake she would have been outside of the
legal, traditional role of an Athenian wife. Freed from the social restraints
that tied married women to their homes and restricted their behavior, Aspasia
was able to participate more freely in public life.
Strong evidence that Aspasia's role in Athens went beyond that of
mistress to Pericles is given by Plato in the Menexenus. In this dialogue Plato
has Socrates recite a funeral oration composed by Aspasia that glorifies the Athenians
and their history. The Menexenus is a humorous vehicle for Plato to make a serious,
but negative comment on rhetoric and popular opinion in Athens. Everything in
Aspasia's speech is selected, arranged and stated by Plato in order to produce
the greatest possible irony. By satirizing a speech "written" by Aspasia,
Plato acknowledges her role as a leader of rhetoric in the Greek Classical Age.
In Cicero's book on rhetoric he uses as an example of the Socratic
method a dialogue attributed to Aspasia by Aeschines a student of Socrates. In
this dialogue Aspasia skillfully proves to a husband and wife that neither one
of them will ever be truly happy with the other because they each desire the ideal
spouse. Aeschines and another student of Socrates, Antisthenes, both wrote dialogues
titled Aspasia. Unfortunately, only fragments of these works survive (Diogenes
Laertius, Antisthenes 6.16).
Several ancient authors state that Aspasia herself operated a house
of courtesans and trained young women in the necessary skills (Plut. Per. 24.3).
Aristophanes and others refer to "Aspasia's whores" (Aristoph. Ach.
527). Although as Pericles' pallake she was taken care of financially, Aspasia
may have been preparing for her future after the death of Pericles. According
to Plutarch, she was known in Athens as a teacher of rhetoric. Perhaps these women
were her pupils (Plut. Per. 34). Aspasia's hetairai would have had as patrons
the elite men of Athens, especially the supporters of Pericles.
Around 438 B.C. Pericles' political enemies began attacking those
close to him in court and eventually brought charges against Pericles himself.
Soon Aspasia became a target. She was brought to trial on charges of impiety and
of procuring free women. She was acquitted thanks to a passionate and tearful
defense by Pericles (Plut. Per. 32.1-3). Although her political wisdom was valuable
to Pericles, not having an Athenian citizen as a legal wife, but rather living
with a foreign hetaira in an unofficial marriage may have been a political liability
for him.
In the contemporary comedy The Acharnians, Aristophanes parodies the
imputations that Aspasia had undue influence on Pericles' political decisions.
One of his characters blames the start of the Peloponnesian War in 431 B.C. on
the abduction of two of Aspasia's hetairai (Aristoph. Ach. 527-530). The joke
worked because the audience knew that Aspasia had some influence on Pericles,
but not enough to start a war.
The plague in Athens in 430 B.C. killed both of Pericles' sons by his first wife. This led him to ask for an exemption from the citizenship law, which he himself had enacted, for his illegimate son by Aspasia. The citizenship law decreed that only persons whose father and mother were both Athenians could be legal citizens. The people of Athens agreed to Pericles' request. His son was legitimized and made a citizen of Athens. He later became a general, but was executed in 406 B.C.
In 429 B.C. Pericles died from the plague. A year later Aspasia became
involved with a sheep seller named Lysicles in another unofficial marriage. He
was an uneducated man of humble birth who rose to prominence thanks to her guidance.
She taught him how to speak in public and gave him the benefit of her valuable
insights and personal contacts in Athenian politics (Plut. Per. 24.6; Scholia
to Plato, Menexenus 235E). He was one of the new type of political leaders who
came to prominence after the death of Pericles. This was probably the same group
who had led the earlier attacks against Pericles and his friends, including Aspasia
herself. Questions remain regarding Aspasia's decision to marry so quickly after
Pericles' death. She might have been in need of a protector from Pericles' enemies.
The selection of another politician as her husband might also suggest a desire
to remain involved in the politics of Athens.
There is no information about Aspasia's life after this point. Although
the actual extent of her influence on Athenian politics and society during Athens'
most glorious period will never be certain, she did become one of the few women
in the ancient Greek world to be noted and remembered. She became so famous that
Cyrus, a prince of Persia, Athens' most hated enemy, gave the name Aspasia to
his favorite concubine. Through the succeeding centuries ancient authors, including
playwrights and biographers, used Aspasia as a well-known historical figure to
illustrate their views on philosophy, politics, rhetoric, Pericles and Socrates.
The primary sources give little information about Aspasia. Plutarch
relates more than the other ancient authors, but he seems almost wholly dependent
on Athenian comedy and stories from the Socratic circle for his information, all
of which is difficult to verify. The secondary sources tend to discuss Aspasia
in relation to Pericles or Athenian politics and society.
Elizabeth Lynne Beavers, ed.
This text is cited June 2005 from
Perseus Project URL bellow, which contains interesting hyperlinks
In the same winter the Athenians gave a funeral at the public cost to those who
had first fallen in this war. It was a custom of their ancestors, and the manner
of it is as follows. Three days before the ceremony, the bones of the dead are
laid out in a tent which has been erected; and their friends bring to their relatives
such offerings as they please. [3] In the funeral procession cypress coffins are
borne in cars, one for each tribe; the bones of the deceased being placed in the
coffin of their tribe. Among these is carried one empty bier decked for the missing,
that is, for those whose bodies could not be recovered. Any citizen or stranger
who pleases, joins in the procession: and the female relatives are there to wail
at the burial. The dead are laid in the public sepulchre in the most beautiful
suburb of the city, in which those who fall in war are always buried; with the
exception of those slain at Marathon, who for their singular and extraordinary
valor were interred on the spot where they fell. After the bodies have been laid
in the earth, a man chosen by the state, of approved wisdom and eminent reputation,
pronounces over them an appropriate panegyric; after which all retire. Such is
the manner of the burying; and throughout the whole of the war, whenever the occasion
arose, the established custom was observed. Meanwhile these were the first that
had fallen, and Pericles, son of Xanthippus, was chosen to pronounce their eulogium.
When the proper time arrived, he advanced from the sepulchre to an elevated platform
in order to be heard by as many of the crowd as possible, and spoke as follows:
'Most of my predecessors in this place have commended him who made this speech
part of the law, telling us that it is well that it should be delivered at the
burial of those who fall in battle. For myself, I should have thought that the
worth which had displayed itself in deeds, would be sufficiently rewarded by honors
also shown by deeds; such as you now see in this funeral prepared at the people's
cost. And I could have wished that the reputations of many brave men were not
to be imperilled in the mouth of a single individual, to stand or fall according
as he spoke well or ill. For it is hard to speak properly upon a subject where
it is even difficult to convince your hearers that you are speaking the truth.
On the one hand, the friend who is familiar with every fact of the story, may
think that some point has not been set forth with that fulness which he wishes
and knows it to deserve; on the other, he who is a stranger to the matter may
be led by envy to suspect exaggeration if he hears anything above his own nature.
For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade
themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point
is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity. However, since our ancestors
have stamped this custom with their approval, it becomes my duty to obey the law
and to try to satisfy your several wishes and opinions as best I may.
I shall begin with our ancestors: it is both just and proper that
they should have the honor of the first mention on an occasion like the present.
They dwelt in the country without break in the succession from generation to generation,
and handed it down free to the present time by their valor. And if our more remote
ancestors deserve praise, much more do our own fathers, who added to their inheritance
the empire which we now possess, and spared no pains to be able to leave their
acquisitions to us of the present generation. Lastly, there are few parts of our
dominions that have not been augmented by those of us here, who are still more
or less in the vigor of life; while the mother country has been furnished by us
with everything that can enable her to depend on her own resources whether for
war or for peace. That part of our history which tells of the military achievements
which gave us our several possessions, or of the ready valor with which either
we or our fathers stemmed the tide of Hellenic or foreign aggression, is a theme
too familiar to my hearers for me to dilate on, and I shall therefore pass it
by. But what was the road by which we reached our position, what the form of government
under which our greatness grew, what the national habits out of which it sprang;
these are questions which I may try to solve before I proceed to my panegyric
upon these men; since I think this to be a subject upon which on the present occasion
a speaker may properly dwell, and to which the whole assemblage, whether citizens
or foreigners, may listen with advantage.
Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we
are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favors
the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look
to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if
to social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity,
class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does
poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by
the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends
also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over
each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbor for doing
what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to
be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in
our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear
is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly
such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the
statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be
broken without acknowledged disgrace.
Further, we provide plenty of means for the mind to refresh itself
from business. We celebrate games and sacrifices all the year round, and the elegance
of our private establishments forms a daily source of pleasure and helps to banish
the spleen; while the magnitude of our city draws the produce of the world into
our harbor, so that to the Athenian the fruits of other countries are as familiar
a luxury as those of his own.
If we turn to our military policy, there also we differ from antagonists.
We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners
from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may
occasionally profit by our liberality; trusting less in system and policy than
to the native spirit of our citizens; while in education, where our rivals from
their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we
live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate
danger. In proof of this it may be noticed that the Lacedaemonians do not invade
our country alone, but bring with them all their confederates; while we Athenians
advance unsupported into the territory of a neighbor, and fighting upon a foreign
soil usually vanquish with ease men who are defending their homes. Our united
force was never yet encountered by any enemy, because we have at once to attend
to our marine and to despatch our citizens by land upon a hundred different services;
so that, wherever they engage with some such fraction of our strength, a success
against a detachment is magnified into a victory over the nation, and a defeat
into a reverse suffered at the hands of our entire people. And yet if with habits
not of labor but of ease, and courage not of art but of nature, we are still willing
to encounter danger, we have the double advantage of escaping the experience of
hardships in anticipation and of facing them in the hour of need as fearlessly
as those who are never free from them.
Nor are these the only points in which our city is worthy of admiration.
We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without
effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace
of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it.
Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and
our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still
fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who
takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians
are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and instead of looking
on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable
preliminary to any wise action at all. Again, in our enterprises we present the
singular spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to its highest point,
and both united in the same persons; although usually decision is the fruit of
ignorance, hesitation of reflection. But the palm of courage will surely be adjudged
most justly to those, who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure
and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger. [4] In generosity we are equally
singular, acquiring our friends by conferring not by receiving favors. Yet, of
course, the doer of the favor is the firmer friend of the two, in order by continued
kindness to keep the recipient in his debt; while the debtor feels less keenly
from the very consciousness that the return he makes will be a payment, not a
free gift. And it is only the Athenians who, fearless of consequences, confer
their benefits not from calculations of expediency, but in the confidence of liberality.
In short, I say that as a city we are the school of Hellas; while
I doubt if the world can produce a man, who where he has only himself to depend
upon, is equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility as
the Athenian. And that this is no mere boast thrown out for the occasion, but
plain matter of fact, the power of the state acquired by these habits proves.
For Athens alone of her contemporaries is found when tested to be greater than
her reputation, and alone gives no occasion to her assailants to blush at the
antagonist by whom they have been worsted, or to her subjects to question her
title by merit to rule. Rather, the admiration of the present and succeeding ages
will be ours, since we have not left our power without witness, but have shown
it by mighty proofs; and far from needing a Homer for our panegyrist, or other
of his craft whose verses might charm for the moment only for the impression which
they gave to melt at the touch of fact, we have forced every sea and land to be
the highway of our daring, and everywhere, whether for evil or for good, have
left imperishable monuments behind us. Such is the Athens for which these men,
in the assertion of their resolve not to lose her, nobly fought and died; and
well may well every one of their survivors be ready to suffer in her cause.
Indeed if I have dwelt at some length upon the character of our country,
it has been to show that our stake in the struggle is not the same as theirs who
have no such blessings to lose, and also that the panegyric of the men over whom
I am now speaking might be by definite proofs established. That panegyric is now
in a great measure complete; for the Athens that I have celebrated is only what
the heroism of these and their like have made her, men whose fame, unlike at of
most Hellenes, will be found to be only commensurate with their deserts. And if
a test of worth be wanted, it is to be found in their closing scene, and this
not only in the cases in which it set the final seal upon their merit, but also
in those in which it gave the first intimation of their having any. For there
is justice in the claim that steadfastness in his country's battles should be
as a cloak to cover a man's other imperfections; since the good action has blotted
out the bad, and his merit as a citizen more than outweighed his demerits as an
individual. But none of these allowed either wealth with its prospect of future
enjoyment to unnerve his spirit, or poverty with its hope of a day of freedom
and riches to tempt him to shrink from danger. No, holding that vengeance upon
their enemies was more to be desired than any personal blessings, and reckoning
this to be the most glorious of hazards, they joyfully determined to accept the
risk, to make sure of their vengeance and to let their wishes wait; and while
committing to hope the uncertainty of final success, in the business before them
they thought fit to act boldly and trust in themselves. Thus choosing to die resisting,
rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonor, but met danger face
to face, and after one brief moment, while at the summit of their fortune, escaped,
not from their fear, but from their glory.
So died these men as became Athenians. You, their survivors, must
determine to have as unaltering a resolution in the field, though you may pray
that it may have a happier issue. And not contented with ideas derived only from
words of the advantages which are bound up with the defence of your country, though
these would furnish a valuable text to a speaker even before an audience so alive
to them as the present, you must yourselves realize the power of Athens, and feed
your eyes upon her from day to day, till love of her fills your hearts; and then
when all her greatness shall break upon you, you must reflect that it was by courage,
sense of duty, and a keen feeling of honor in action that men were enabled to
win all this, and that no personal failure in an enterprise could make them consent
to deprive their country of their valor, but they laid it at her feet as the most
glorious contribution that they could offer. For this offering of their lives
made in common by them all they each of them individually received that renown
which never grows old, and for a sepulchre, not so much that in which their bones
have been deposited, but that noblest of shrines wherein their glory is laid up
to be eternally remembered upon every occasion on which deed or story shall fall
for its commemoration. For heroes have the whole earth for their tomb; and in
lands far from their own, where the column with its epitaph declares it, there
is enshrined in every breast a record unwritten with no tablet to preserve it,
except that of the heart. These take as your model, and judging happiness to be
the fruit of freedom and freedom of valor, never decline the dangers of war. For
it is not the miserable that would most justly be unsparing of their lives; these
have nothing to hope for: it is rather they to whom continued life may bring reverses
as yet unknown, and to whom a fall, if it came, would be most tremendous in its
consequences. And surely, to a man of spirit, the degradation of cowardice must
be immeasurably more grievous than the unfelt death which strikes him in the midst
of his strength and patriotism!
Comfort, therefore, not condolence, is what I have to offer to the
parents of the dead who may be here. Numberless are the chances to which, as they
know, the life of man is subject; but fortunate indeed are they who draw for their
lot a death so glorious as that which has caused your mourning, and to whom life
has been so exactly measured as to terminate in the happiness in which it has
been passed. Still I know that this is a hard saying, especially when those are
in question of whom you will constantly be reminded by seeing in the homes of
others blessings of which once you also boasted: for grief is felt not so much
for the want of what we have never known, as for the loss of that to which we
have been long accustomed. Yet you who are still of an age to beget children must
bear up in the hope of having others in their stead; not only will they help you
to forget those whom you have lost, but will be to the state at once a reinforcement
and a security; for never can a fair or just policy be expected of the citizen
who does not, like his fellows, bring to the decision the interests and apprehensions
of a father. While those of you who have passed your prime must congratulate yourselves
with the thought that the best part of your life was fortunate, and that the brief
span that remains will be cheered by the fame of the departed. For it is only
the love of honor that never grows old; and honor it is, not gain, as some would
have it, that rejoices the heart of age and helplessness.
Turning to the sons or brothers of the dead, I see an arduous struggle
before you. When a man is gone, all are wont to praise him, and should your merit
be ever so transcendent, you will still find it difficult not merely to overtake,
but even to approach their renown. The living have envy to contend with, while
those who are no longer in our path are honored with a goodwill into which rivalry
does not enter. On the other hand if I must say anything on the subject of female
excellence to those of you who will now be in widowhood, it will be all comprised
in this brief exhortation. Great will be your glory in not falling short of your
natural character; and greatest will be hers who is least talked of among the
men whether for good or for bad.
My task is now finished. I have performed it to the best of my ability,
and in words, at least, the requirements of the law are now satisfied. If deeds
be in question, those who are here interred have received part of their honors
already, and I for the rest, their children will be brought up till manhood at
the public expense: the state thus offers a valuable prize, as the garland of
victory in this race of valor, for the reward both of those who have fallen and
their survivors. And where the rewards for merit are greatest, there are found
the best citizens.
And now that you have brought to a close your lamentations for your
relatives, you may depart.'
Such was the funeral that took place during this winter, with which the first
year of the war came to an end. (Thuc. 2.34.1-47.1) : Perseus Encyclopedia
This extract is from: Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War (ed. Richard Crawley, 1910). Cited June 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.
The idea that democracy was best served by involving a cross-section
of the male citizenry received further backing in the 450s B.C. from the measures
proposed to the assembly by a wealthy aristocract named Pericles (c. 495-429 B.C.),
whose mother had been the niece of the famous democratic reformer Cleisthenes.
Pericles successfully proposed that state revenues be used to pay a daily
stipend to men who served on juries, in the Council of the Five Hundred,
and in other public offices filled by lot. The stipend was modest, in fact less
than a skilled worker could have made on a good day. Without the stipend, however,
poorer men would have found it virtually impossible to leave their regular work
to serve in these positions, which required much of a man's time. By contrast,
the board of ten annually elected generals--the most influential public officials,
who had broad responsibilities for the city-state's military, civil, and financial
affairs--were to receive no stipends despite the heavy demands of their post.
Mainly rich men like Pericles won election as generals because they were supposed
to have been able to afford the education and training required to handle this
top job and to have the personal wealth to serve without financial compensation.
They were compensated by the prestige conferred by election to their office. Like
Cleisthenes before him, Pericles was an aristocrat who became the most influential
leader in the Athens of his era by devising innovations to strengthen the egalitarian
tendencies of Athenian democracy. Pericles and others of his economic status had
inherited enough wealth to spend their time in politics without worrying about
money, but remuneration for poorer men serving in public offices was an essential
foundation of Athenian democracy, if it was truly going to be open to the majority
of men, who, along with their wives and children, had to work to support themselves
and their families. Above all, Pericles' proposal that jurors receive state stipends
made him overwhelmingly popular with the mass of ordinary male citizens. Consequently,
he was able to introduce dramatic changes in Athenian domestic and foreign policy
beginning in the 450s B.C.
The Citizenship Law of Pericles
In 451 B.C. Pericles introduced one of most striking proposals with
his sponsorship of a law stating that henceforth citizenship would be
conferred only on children whose mother and father both were Athenians.
Previously, the offspring of Athenian men who married non-Athenian women were
granted citizenship. Aristocratic men in particular had tended to marry rich foreign
women, as Pericles' own maternal grandfather had done. Pericles' new law enhanced
the status of Athenian mothers and made Athenian citizenship a more exclusive
category, definitively setting Athenians off from all others. Not long thereafter,
a review of the citizenship rolls was conducted to expel any who had claimed citizenship
fraudulently. Together these actions served to limit the number of citizens and
thus limit dilution of the advantages which citizenship in Athens' radical democracy
conveyed on those included in the citizenry. Those advantages included, for men,
the freedom to participate in politics and juries, to influence decisions that
directly affected their lives, to have equal protection under the law, and to
own land and houses in Athenian territory. Citizen women had
less rights because they were excluded from politics, had to have a male
legal guardian (kurios), who, for example, spoke for them in court, and
were not legally entitled to make large financial transactions on their own. They
could, however, control property and have their financial interests protected
in law suits. Like men, they were entitled to the protection of the law regardless
of their wealth. Both female and male citizens experienced the advantage of belonging
to a city-state that was enjoying unparalleled material prosperity. Citizens clearly
saw themselves as the elite residents of Athens.
Periclean Foreign Policy
Once he had gained political prominence in the 450s at Athens, Pericles
devoted his attention to foreign policy as well as domestic proposals. His intial
foreign policy encompassed dual goals: 1) continuing military action against the
Persian presence in Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean and 2) greater attention
to Athenian relations and disputes with other Greek states. This latter part of
his policy reflected above all the growing hostility between Athens and Sparta.
Hostilities with Sparta and its allies had become more and more frequent following
the rebuff of Cimon's expedition to Sparta in 462 B.C. The former part of the
policy suffered a severe setback when a campaign to liberate Egypt from Persian
control ended with the catastrophic loss of over two hundred ships and their crews
in 454 B.C. The Delian League treasury was thereupon transferred to Athens from
Delos to move it farther away from a potential Persian raid. The decision to move
the alliance's funds, apparently taken unilaterally, confirmed Athens' absolute
superiority over the other allies. Even after the Egyptian disaster the Athenian
assembly did not immediately renounce further action against the Persians. Cimon,
now returned from the exile imposed by his ostracism, was in fact sent out in
charge of a major naval expedition to the eastern Mediterranean to try to pry
the large island of Cyprus from Persian control. When he was killed on this campaign
in 450 B.C., however, the assembly apparently decided not to send out any further
overseas expeditions against Persian territory. Rather, Athens would focus its
military efforts on containing Spartan power in Greece and preventing the Delian
League from disintegrating through revolts of allies. When neither Sparta nor
Athens was able to achieve a clear-cut dominance in Greece in the battles that
followed in the early 440s, Pericles in 445 engineered a peace treaty with Sparta
designed to freeze the current balance of power in Greece for thirty years and
thus preserve Athenian dominance in the Delian League.
The Breakdown of Peace
After making peace with Sparta in 445, Pericles was free to turn his
attention to his political rivals at Athens, who were jealous of his dominant
influence over the board of ten annually elected generals, the highest magistrates
of Athenian democracy. When the voters in 443 expressed their approval of Pericles'
policies by choosing to ostracize not him but rather his chief political rival,
Thucydides (not the same man as the historian of the same name), Pericles' overwhelming
political prominence was confirmed. He was thereafter elected general fifteen
years in a row. His ascendency was again challenged, however, on the grounds that
he mishandled the revolt in 441-439 of Samos, a valuable and consistently loyal
Athenian ally in the Delian League. Instead of seeking a diplomatic solution to
the dispute, Pericles quickly opted for a military response. A brutal struggle
ensued that extended over three campaigning seasons and inflicted bloody losses
on both sides before the Samians were forced to capitulate. With his judgment
under attack for this incident, Pericles soon faced an even greater challenge
as relations with Sparta worsened in the mid-430s. When the Spartans finally threatened
war unless the Athenians ceased their support of some rebellious Spartan allies,
Pericles prevailed upon the assembly to refuse all compromises. His critics claimed
he was sticking to his hard line against Sparta and insisting on provoking a war
in order to revive his fading popularity by whipping up a jingoistic furor in
the assembly. Pericles retorted that no accommodation to Spartan demands was possible
because Athens' freedom of action was at stake. By 431 B.C. the Thirty Years'
Peace made in 445 B.C. had been shattered beyond repair. The protracted Peloponnesian
War (as modern historians call it) began in that year, not to end until 404 B.C.,
and ultimately put an end to the Athenian Golden Age.
This text is from: Thomas Martin's An Overview of Classical Greek History from Homer to Alexander, Yale University Press. Cited June 2005 from Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
The Peloponnesian War put a stop to the most spectacular demonstration of the
confidence and pride that Pericles and his fellow citizens felt in their city-state
during the height of the Golden Age in the 440s and 430s B.C. In the early 440s
B.C. the assembly accepted Pericles' recommendation to initiate a public building
program of temples and other structures in public religious sanctuaries on a scale
seldom before seen in a Greek city-state. The new buildings seemed spectacular
not only because they were expensive but also because their large scale, decoration,
and surrounding open spaces contrasted so vividly with the private architecture
of Athens in the fifth century B.C.
Athenian Private Dwellings
Athenians lived in a variety of different kinds of private dwellings
in the city proper, in its densely populated suburb around the main harbor of
Piraeus, in villages of varying sizes scattered throughout the countryside of
Attica, and, occasionally, in isolated farmsteads. The majority of city and suburban
dwellers lived in apartment buildings, which could be several stories high. Most
apartment dwellers probably crowded themselves and their families into no more
space than a room or two, which they rented from the building's owner, because
they could not afford a very high rent. Wealthier people in the city owned individual
homes, but they frequently had a house and land in the countryside, too. Dwellers
in the countryside owned or rented houses that varied in size from tiny bungalows
to larger structures perhaps on the scale of a small modern house that might be
accompanied by other farm buildings such as sheds. Indeed, Athenian private houses
in both in the city and the country were generally modest in size.
City Houses
Archaeology has not been able to reveal much detail about the homes
of residents of Athens because the modern city covers the remains of almost all
the residential districts of the ancient city and thus inhibits excavation. Nevertheless,
we know that homes in ancient Athens were wedged haphazardly against one another
along narrow, winding streets. Even the residences of rich people followed the
same basic design of bedrooms, storerooms, and dining rooms grouped around open-air
courtyards. Some houses had more than one story. The women and men of the household
usually had rooms set apart for their separate use, especially if there were infants
or small children in the family. These youngsters would be looked after in the
women's quarters, but all members of the household would see each other frequently
despite the notional division of the interior space of the home by gender and
age. The architectural tradition of grouping the house's rooms around a courtyard
facilitated contact among all the members of the household, who included the slaves
of the family. Wall paintings or works of art were as yet uncommon as decoration
in private homes. Sparse furnishings and simple furniture were the rule. Water
for household needs had to be fetched from public fountains. This onerous and
constant work was performed by women and the household's slaves. Sanitary facilities
usually consisted of a pit dug just outside the front door. The pits were emptied
by collectors paid to dump manure outside the city at a distance set by law.
Liturgies and Benefactions
The rich citizens of Athens were expected to benefit the public as
a whole by spending their own money to increase the amenities of life for all.
In the case of the civic duties called liturgies ("work for the people; public
service"), the wealthy were legally obligated to provide financial benefits
to the city-state. Especially costly liturgies included duties such as paying
the costs of putting on drama in the annual public festivals of Athens or financing
and serving as an officer on a warship in the city-state's fleet. In other cases
the wealthy provided benefactions that were not obligatory but nevertheless also
displayed their civic mindedness and generosity toward their fellow citizens.
Such benefactions included providing animals for public sacrifices and the feasting
on their roasted meat that followed and constructing public buildings and other
architectural improvements in the city. Although the costs of liturgies and benefactions,
which could be heavy, obviously were a drain on the resources of a family as a
whole, they were normally peformed in the name of the male head of the household.
Spending generously to provide benefits for the common good was regarded as a
primary component of male aristocratic virtue. Generous benefactors of the public
earned increased social eminence as their reward and perhaps greater favor with
their fellow male citizens when they ran for elective office, such as that of
general. Liturgies and benefactions performed by the rich in the interest of the
city compensated to a certain extent for the lack of any regular income or property
taxes.
Benefactions by Cimon and his family
Cimon, an aristocratic and wealthy man, gained great fame for his
costly benefactions to his fellow citizens. He was renowned, for example, for
opening his orchards to let others pick whatever they wanted, but his most famous
benefactions were architectural. He paid to have landscaping with shade trees
and running tracks installed in open areas of Athens, and he also footed the enormous
bill for the construction of footings for defensive walls to link the urban center
of Athens and the harbor at Piraeus some seven kilometers away. Cimon's brother-in-law
also participated in the family tradition of benefiting Athens by paying for highly-visible
public building projects. He had built as a gift to the city the renowned Painted
Stoa. Stoas were narrow, colonnaded buildings open along one side, whose purpose
was to provide shelter from sun or rain for these conversations. The Painted Stoa
stood on the edge of the central open area, the agora, at the center of the city.
The agora served both as a market area where merchants could set up small stalls
and as a gathering place for Athenian men to discuss politics and every other
issue affecting their lives in the city-state. It was the commercial and social
heart of Athens. The crowds of men who came to the agora daily for conversation
would cluster inside the Painted Stoa, whose walls were decorated with paintings
of great moments in Greek history commissioned from the most famous painters of
the time, Polygnotus and Mikon. That one of the stoa's paintings portrayed the
battle of Marathon in which Cimon's father, Miltiades, had won glory was only
appropriate, since the building had been paid for by the husband of Cimon's sister,
probably with financial assistance from Cimon himself.
Public Funding of Buildings
Although rich Athenians sometimes personally financed the construction
of buildings for the use of the public in classical Athens in keeping with the
tradition that the wealthy should benefit their city-state, the most conspicuous
and ultimately most famous architectural monuments of the fifth century were paid
for by public revenues. Athens received revenues from many indirect taxes such
as harbor fees and sales taxes. The extent to which Athens may have benefited
from the tribute paid by the allies in the Delian League remains controversial
because the ancient sources offer no detailed picture of the ways in which the
tribute was expended. Some scholars think that Athens used part of the League
funds, which were stored on the acropolis after the League's treasury was moved
to Athens from the island of Delos in 454, to help finance the massive public
building program initiated by Pericles in 447. Others argue, however, that the
ancient evidence does not support this view.
The Scale of Athenian Public Buildings
The scale of Athenian public buildings varied according to the amount
and kind of space required to fulfill their function. The complex of buildings
on the agora's southwestern edge, for instance, consisted of modest-sized structures
such as that in which the city-state's council of 500 held its frequent meetings
and the public archives were kept. The larger meetings of the assembly, for which
6,000 attendees seems to have represented a quorum, did not take place in a building
at all but rather convened in the open air on a hillside above the agora. There
the architectural modifications were minimal: a speaker's platform hewn from the
rock of the hillside, a retaining wall built up at the rear of the meeting area,
and, eventually, a portico along the sides of the open area.
Pericles' Acropolis
In 447 Pericles instigated a building project in Athens whose scale,
cost, and magnificence provoked comment and controversy in its own time and has
contributed enormously in later ages to the reputation of the Golden Age of Greece.
The focus of the project's construction was the Athenian acropolis. The acropolis
("upper city" or "city-height") was the massive, mesa-like
promontory that rose abruptly from the plain on which the city was built and towered
over its center, the agora below. Here the original settlers of Athens had made
their homes, and only slowly had the city expanded onto the plain at the foot
of the looming citadel. A single access road, the "Sacred Way", wound
up the slope from the agora to the acropolis and passed through a gate near the
top at its western end. The two most conspicuous monuments constructed on the
acropolis under Pericles' program were a huge marble temple of Athena (called
the Parthenon) and a mammoth gate building (called the propylaia) straddling the
western entrance to the acropolis. The purpose of the Parthenon was to house a
costly new image of the goddess, over thirty feet high and made of gold and ivory.
Elaborate carved sculptures decorated the outside of the Parthenon, which was
surrounded by a colonnade of fluted columns. The propylaia, too, had columns,
and one of its rooms apparently housed paintings, rather like a modern museum.
The Controversial Cost of the Periclean Program
The Parthenon and the propylaia alone easily cost more than the equivalent
of a billion dollars in contemporary terms, a phenomenal sum for an ancient Greek
city-state. The finances for the program perhaps came in part from the tribute
paid by the members of the Delian League, although scholars debate to what extent
allied funds were used. Funds certainly came from the financial reserves of the
goddess, whose sanctuaries, like those of the other gods throughout Greece, received
both private donations and public support. Pericles' program was so expensive,
however, that his political enemies among the aristocrats railed at him for squandering
public funds and ruining the city-state's budget. In response to the criticism,
Pericles brought the issue before the assembly of male citizens: "Do you
think I have spent too much?" he reportedly asked. "Entirely too much",
they shouted back. "Fine", he retorted, "I will pay for the buildings
myself and put my name on them instead of the people's". Shamed by the implication
that they lacked pride in their city-state, the men in the assembly immediately
changed their minds. In an uproar they authorized Pericles to spare no expense
in spending public funds to finish the project.
The Parthenon
The new temple built for Athena on the acropolis became known as the
Parthenon, meaning "the house of the virgin goddess", from the Greek
word for a virginal female, parthenos. As the patron godddess of Athens, Athena
had long possessed another sanctuary on the acropolis. Its focus was an olive
tree regarded as the sacred symbol of the goddess, who was believed to provide
for the economic health of the Athenians. Athena's temple in this earlier sanctuary
had largely been destroyed by the Persians in the invasion of 480 B.C. For thirty
years, the Athenians purposely left the Acropolis in ruins as a memorial to the
sacrifice of their homeland in that war. When Pericles urged the rebuilding of
the Acropolis' temples, the assembly turned not to reconstruction of the olive-tree
sanctuary, but rather to construction of the Parthenon. The Parthenon honored
Athena not in her capacity as the provider of economic prosperity but as a warrior
serving as the divine champion of Athenian military power. Inside the Parthenon,
the gold and ivory statue, over thirty feet high, portrayed the goddess in battle
armor and holding in her outstretched hand a six-foot statue of the figure of
Victory (Nike in Greek).
The Parthenon's design
Like all Greek temples, the Parthenon itself was meant as a house
for its deity, not as a gathering place for worshippers. In its general design,
the Parthenon was representative of the standard architecture of Greek temples:
a rectangular box on a raised platform, a plan that the Greeks probably derived
from the stone temples of Egypt. The box, which had only one relatively small
door at the front, was fenced in columns all around. Normally only priests and
priestesses could enter the boxlike interior of the temple; public religious ceremonies
took place around the open-air altar, which was located outside the east end of
the temple. The soaring columns of the Parthenon were carved in the simple style
called Doric, in contrast to the more elaborately decorative Ionic or Corinthian
styles that have often been imitated in modern buildings. The facade of the United
States Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C., for example, is built in the
Corinthian-style.
The Parthenon's special architecture
The Parthenon was special in its great size and elaborate decoration.
Constructed from 20,000 tons of Attic marble, it stretched nearly 230 feet in
length and a hundred feet wide, with eight columns across the ends instead of
the six normally employed in Doric style, and seventeen instead of thirteen along
the sides. These dimensions gave it a massive look conveying an impression of
power. Since perfectly rectilinear architecture appears curved to the human eye,
the Parthenon's architects ingeniously designed subtle curves and inclines in
its architecture to produce an optical illusion of completely straight lines:
the columns were given a slight bulge in their middles; the corner columns on
the corners of the temple's raised platform were installed at a slight incline
and closer together; the platform itself was made slightly convex. These technical
refinements made the Parthenon appear ordered and regular in a way a building
built entirely on straight lines would not. By overcoming the distortions of nature,
the Parthenon's sophisticated architecture made a confident statement about human
ability to construct order out of the entropic disorder of the natural world.
Sculpture on the Parthenon
The sculptural decoration of the Parthenon also proclaimed Athenian
confidence about their city-state's relationship with the gods, whom the citizens
regarded as their helpers and supporters. The Parthenon had sculptured panels
along its exterior above the columns and tableaux of sculptures in the triangular
spaces (pediments) underneath the roof line at both ends of the building. These
decorations were part of the Doric architectural style, but the Parthenon also
presented a unique sculptural feature. Carved in relief around the top of the
walls inside the porch formed by the columns along the edges of the building's
platform was a continuous band of figures. This sort of continuous frieze was
usually put only on Ionic-style buildings. Adding an Ionic frieze to a Doric temple
was a striking change meant to attract notice to its subject. The Parthenon's
frieze depicted the Athenian religious ritual in which a procession of citizens
paraded to the Acropolis to present to Athena in her olive-tree sanctuary a new
robe woven by specially selected Athenian girls (the Panathenaic festival). Depicting
the procession in motion, like a filmstrip in stone, the frieze showed men riding
spirited horses, women walking along carrying sacred implements, and the gods
gathering together at the head of the parade to observe their human worshippers.
As usual in the sculptural decoration on Greek temples, the Parthenon frieze sparkled
with brightly colored paint enlivening the figures and the background. Shiny metal
attachments also brightened the picture, serving, for example, as the horsemen's
reins.
The Significance of the Parthenon Frieze
No other city-state had ever before gone beyond the traditional function
of temples in paying honor and glorifying its special deities by adorning, as
the Athenians did on the Parthenon, a temple with representations of its citizens.
Previously, the closest temples had come to a reference of such local significance
had been to place sculptures in their pediments that depicted mythological scenes
with particular meaning for the people of the locale in which temple had been
built. The Parthenon, indeed, had such scenes in its pediments. The sculptures
of the east pediment portrayed the birth of Athena, the patron deity of the Athenians,
while the west pediment portrayed Athena and Poseidon, god of the sea, engaged
in a contest to see who would become the patron deity of the Athenians by bestowing
on them the greater blessing. The Parthenon frieze, however, achieved a new level
of local reference. It made a unique statement about the relationship between
Athens and the gods by showing its citizens in the company of the gods, even if
the assembled deities carved in the frieze at the temple's eastern end were understood
to be separated from and perhaps invisible to the humans in the procession depicted
in the frieze. A temple adorned with pictures of citizens, albeit idealized citizens
of perfect physique and beauty, amounted to a claim of special intimacy between
the city-state and the gods, a statement of confidence that these honored deities
favored the Athenians. Presumably this claim reflected the Athenian interpretation
of their success in helping to turn back the Persians, in achieving leadership
of a powerful naval alliance, and in controlling, from their silver mines and
the allies' dues, an amount of revenue which made Athens richer than all its neighbors
in mainland Greece. The Parthenon, like the rest of the Periclean building program,
paid honor to the gods with whom the city-state was identified and expressed the
Athenian view that the gods looked favorably on their empire. Their success, the
Athenians would have said, proved that the gods were on their side.
Colonia.
...Colonies of Conquest, such as Alexander's various colonies in the East. There
are none that are distinctly of this class in early Greek times. A subdivision
of this class are Military Colonies, such as were to a great extent the
colonies planted by Pericles in Thrace and the cleruchies...
The Athenian Colonies.
These belong to a later period than the greater mass of the other
Greek colonies, and differ in the intention with which they were founded. They
were more of the nature of cleruchies; but differ from cleruchies in the strict
sense in that they were not planted on Hellenic land from which the inhabitants
had been expelled, but were settlements effected on the territory of barbarian
tribes. They were, however, similar to the cleruchies in the whole arrangement
of their planting being directed by the state. We have remaining part of a charter
directing the foundation of one of these colonies, that of Brea (cf. Plut. Pericl.
11) in Thrace, which was pre-eminently the country in which such colonies were
founded, owing to its great wealth in wood and metals. Such a charter was called
apoikia (Harpocr. s. v.). By the charter referred to a certain Democlides is appointed
as leader of the colony (oikistes). A rider to the charter confined participation
in the colony to the Zeugitae and Thetes, which shows one of the main purposes
of the colonising policy of Pericles, viz. to free the city of the idle and so
turbulent mob (Plut. l. c.). Sundry provisions as regards the religious duties
to be observed by the colonists towards the mother-city were further stated, such
as sending an ox for sacrifice at the Panathenaea: and a very strict proviso was
enacted that this charter was to be final, so that the colonists should have fixity
of tenure, and not be liable to be dispossessed by any vote of the easily-moved
democracy at home. Orders were given to be ready to depart within thirty days.
The state supplied arms and money for the colonists. When the colonists arrived,
the lands were distributed to the colonists by geonomoi, which had been previously
divided by geometrai. The oekist of such a colony received all the honours which
the oekist of the colonies of earlier days had received (cf. Hagnon at Amphipolis,
Thuc. v. 11). The great national Hellenic colony founded at Thurii under the superintendence
of Athens, in 443 B.C., was established with the greatest method and completeness.
There were very few Athenians among the colonists. It was connected with Athens
by but a very slender tie, and was not mentioned as one of her allies in Thucydides'
enumeration (ii. 9). A full account is given in Grote (v. 277) and Curtius (ii.
488). The colony of Amphipolis, founded about the same time, 437 B.C., was also
of a very mixed population. It differed from Thurii, as it was founded partly
because it was a convenient centre for getting ship timber from, and also for
working the gold and silver mines in the neighbourhood; but principally it served
military purposes, as being close to the bridge over the Strymon (Thuc. iv. 102).
Hence it always remained a regular Athenian dependency. This forms a transition
to
The Athenian Cleruchies.
All colonies in their relation to the mother-city may be divided into
apoikiai and klerouchiai, i. e. are independent or dependent. But the ancients
did not observe this distinction. Strabo calls all colonies without exception
apoikiai. Thucydides (ii. 27, 70; v. 102) calls epoikoi those whom Diodorus and
Plutarch, in relating the same events, call klerouchoi. However, Herodotus (v.
77; vi. 100) applies the term klerouchoi to those who were settled on the land
of the hippobatae at Chalcis. Thucydides uses it (iii. 50) with reference to the
Lesbian colonists, and Aristophanes (Nub. 205) shows that it was a term frequently
used. Roscher lays it down as a law that the system of apoikiai gives place to
that of klerouchiai, according as a state advances to a higher stage of development.
The main characteristics of the Athenian cleruchies were that they
consisted solely of Athenians, were settled on Hellenic land, and were dependent.
There were doubtless cleruchies sent out by other states, e. g. the Lerii from
Miletus (Boeckh, Staatshaushaltung der Athener, ii. 457, ed. 3); but it is of
the Athenian cleruchies that we alone have any detailed information.
The objects were to relieve the city of the idle and troublesome mob,
to alleviate the distress of the poorer classes, to inspire fear into the allies,
and keep watch that they should not take any hostile steps against Athens (Plut.
Pericl. 11). An additional reason was sometimes to secure a supply of corn, as
in the case of the colony to Hadria, which colony also served to protect the surrounding
seas from pirates. The sending out of cleruchies formed one of the recognised
portions of the democratic programme (Aristoph. Nub. 205). In their military aspect
they corresponded to the Roman colonies. The Greek writers often call the Roman
colonists klerouchoi (Dion. H. viii. 14; Plut. Flam. 2), and conversely Cicero
(de Nat. Deor. i. 26, 72) calls the Athenian cleruchs sent to Samos landgrabbers
(agripetae). The first cleruchs were those sent to occupy the land of the hippobatae
at Chalcis, about 510 B.C., the first Hellenic town against which the right of
the conqueror was enforced with harsh severity (Curtius, ii. 484). Gilbert gives
a list of the cleruchs sent out between 460 and 427; and, even where the numbers
are given, they amount to 9,450, and this does not reckon the cleruchs sent to
Lemnos, Imbros, or Aegina.
The procedure adopted in sending out a cleruchy was doubtless similar
to that of state-directed colonies, viz. by ordinary bill brought by the senate
before the people, which defined the principal conditions on which the cleruchy
was founded. The poorer classes of all the ten tribes were invited to send in
their names, and the lot decided who were to get the lands, which were doubtless
measured out prior to the departure of the colonists. They were led by an apoikistes
or strategos (Arg. to Dem. de Chers.), and to be such a leader was esteemed a
great honour (Pans. i. 27, 5). All the prayers and sacrifices for the success
of the cleruchy were made on behalf of the state and at state expense, whereas
in the apoikiai the consulting of the oracle and all religious duties were left
to the initiative of the colonists and their leader.
As to the relations of the cleruchs to Athens:
(1) they remained Athenian citizens, as may be seen from inscriptions from the
fifth century B.C., e. g. from Melos, Eponphes Athenaios Pandionidos phules Kutherrios,
down to Roman times. The Lemnian and Imbrian cleruchs were Athenian citizens (Dem.
Phil. i.34). In a list of killed we have Lemnion eg Murines, names with the Athenian
tribes they belonged to added to them (C. I. A. i. 443). The official titles for
the cleruchs were such as ho demos ho en Hephaistiai (Hyperid. pro Lycophr.13;
cf. C. I. A. ii. 284), Athenaion hoi en Potidaiai katoikountes (Dem. de Halon.10),
hoi en Murinei politai (C. I. A. ii. 593).
(2) There seems no definite proof that the state retained the supreme ownership
of the lands; for in the inscription of 377 B.C. (C. I. A. ii. 17, 1. 29, 37)
which Foucart refers to, and which speaks of private and public possessions in
the land of the allies, the public possessions refer to mines and other such state
property.
(3) That the cleruchs paid tribute, though maintained by Boeckh, has been completely
disproved by Kirchhoff. He divides the Athenian cleruchies into, on the one hand,
those settled on lands entirely conquered, from which the inhabitants were driven
out, and those acquired by capitulation; and, on the other, those acquired in
an amicable manner. In the former of these (e. g. Histiaea, Aegina, Potidaea,
Scione, Torone) he proves that the lists which set down the amount of tribute
to be paid do not refer to the time when the cleruchies held the land, but to
a preceding time: for example, Hestiaea pays a tribute according to two lists;
but these lists belong to 454 B.C., not to 446, as Boeckh says; and the Hestiaeans
never appear on the lists after 446, the time cleruchs were sent to occupy their
lands. As regards the second class of cleruchies (e. g. the Chersonesitae, Andros,
Naxos, &c.), the sudden lowerings of the tribute appear inexplicable, unless we
suppose it to be a compensation for the cession of their lands to Athenian cleruchs:
for example, Andros had its tribute lowered between 427 and 425 from 12 to 6 talents,
Imbros from 2 to 1 talent between 444 and 442; cf. Naxos, Lemnos.
(4) There is no evidence as to whether or not the cleruchi could alienate their
lands: but their military functions render such a supposition unlikely. For a
similar reason, as a general rule the cleruchi had to reside on their land. That
the cleruchi of Lesbos were allowed to let the lands to the original owners for
a rent and reside themselves at Athens (Thuc. iii. 50) is highly exceptional.
(5) The cleruchi certainly paid taxes for their property to their own cleruchic
community (Aristot. Oec. ii. 6). For such property as some few may have retained
in Attica, it is most likely that they had to pay eisphorai when such were required;
but from muntera personalia, such as the various liturgies, they were of course
exempt, as being absent from Athens on state service (cf. Dem. de Symm.16).
(6) As we have seen from the list of killed, the cleruchi served in the Athenian
army on certain occasions (cf. Herod. viii. 46; Thuc. vii. 57); and, even when
in their cleruchy, they had to obey strictly whatever orders for military service
arrived from Athens (Herod. vi. 100; Dem. Epist. Phil. 16). Beside the cleruchi,
there was generally a cavalry force, commanded in the case of Lemnos by an iPparchos
(Dem. Phil. i. 27), which was supported by the cleruchi, and that as it seems
sometimes grudgingly (Hyperid. pro Lycophr. 13).
(7) There appear to have been civil magistrates, too, occasionally sent by Athens
to the cleruchies. Such are the archontes at Lesbos (Antiphon. de Caed. Herodis,
47), which are no doubt the same as the episkopoi (cf. Aristoph. Av. 1050). In
later times we find epimeletai sent from Athens, as e. g. to Delos (C. I. G. 2286),
Haliartos and Paros.
(8) As regards jurisdiction, as far as we can judge from the very fragmentary
inscription in reference to the cleruchi of Hestiaea (C. I. A. i. 28, 29), some
cases had to be tried within thirty days (dikai emmenoi) before the Nautodicae
at Athens; others before judges chosen by lot out of the cleruchi themselves.
The really important cases were tried at Athens: e. g. the murder of Herodes.
(9) Touching religion, a certain portion, generally a tenth of cleruchic lands,
was set apart for the gods (Thuc. iii. 50). The cleruchi appear to have worshipped
Athenian gods generally, though sometimes the native gods also. Each cleruchy
sent an ox to be sacrificed at the Panathenaea (Schol. on Aristoph. Nub. 386;
cf. C. I. A. i. 31). The Athenians also associated the cleruchies in their sacrifices.
But the cleruchi possessed a certain independence. They had the right
of coining money, though only copper: e. g. the coins of Hephaestia and Myrina
in Lemnos reproduce Attic emblems (Pallas and the owl), after the Athenian cleruchi
had gone there in 387, while the coins prior to this have the attributes of Hermes
and the Dioscuri. Towards the natives, who often, as in the case of Imbros and
Lemnos, were reduced to the state of metics (Foucart, p. 393), the Attic cleruchi
appear to have formed a strictly closed body, neither intermarrying (such indeed
was not allowed by Attic law, Dem. Neaer. 17) nor having more intercourse than
was absolutely necessary. The constitution of the cleruchic state was a miniature
Athens, and Foucart (p. 373 ff.) has shown how their political procedure, and
even the very names of their officers, changed with the changes at Athens.
Thus we find senate and people at Lemnos (C. I. A. ii. 592) and Imbros
(Conze, Reise auf den lnseln des Thrakischen Meeres, p. 88), and a prytaneum at
Hephaestia in Lemnos (C. I. A. l. c.). Ordinary political procedure consisted
of preliminary discussion by the senate, and afterwards debate in the assembly,
e. g. at Salamis (C. I. A. ii. 470, 1. 56: cf. 469, 1. 79; 594, 1. 22). We have
some decrees of cleruchi already mentioned, though of rather late date (C. I.
A. ii. 591-595; C. I. G. 2270). The date is given by archons both of the cleruchy
and of Athens (C. I. A. ii. 594). In the Roman era the strategos epi tous hoplitas
takes the place of the archon: so in Myrina (ib. 593). A grammateus tou demou
first appears at Athens in 308 B.C. A similar grammateus is found in two contemporary
inscriptions of Lemnos and Imbros (ib. 592; Conze, op. cit. p. 88). In the third
century an agonothetes is first found under that name: at the same time we find
one at Hephaestia (C. I. A. ii. 592).
The system of cleruchies, not unreasonable in itself, but prosecuted
by the Athenian democracy with exceedingly great tyranny, and yet with no consistency
and completeness as the Romans did their colonial system, was the most hated feature
of the Athenian empire. Grote indeed does not think that it was looked on as a
grievance, as it is not mentioned as such in Xenophon's Resp. Ath., nor in any
of the anti-Athenian orations of Thucydides; and that the outcry raised against
them at the time of the second confederacy was due to the islands fearing the
return of the Athenian cleruchi, who, after the Peloponnesian war, had been driven
away and deprived of their property, which had reverted to the insular proprietors
(cf. Xen. Mem. ii. 8, 1; Symp. 4, 31). Isocrates (Paneg. 107) felt called upon
to defend the system, and did so by asserting that it maintained peace and peopled
depopulated lands. But the cities had been depopulated by the Athenians; they
made a solitude and called it peace. So when Athens strove to re-organise her
allied confederacy a second time in 377 B.C., she distinctly agreed to discontinue
the system, and the convention (C. I. A. ii. 17, 11. 27, 36) declares that no
land is to be held by Athens or an Athenian citizen within the territories of
the allies. Yet in 366 B.C., on the conquest of Samos, she renewed the system
in that island, which Demades (Athen. iii. 99 d) called the city's drain (tes
poleos aporux). The Samians became exiles from their country (Paus. vi. 13, 5),
and it is with reference to this occupation of Samos and the gradual absorption
of the lands by the Athenian settlers that Craterus explains the proverb )*attiko\s
pa/roikos of a neighbour who, called in to help you, finally ousts you of your
possessions. There was no doubt a bitter feeling, not only on the part of the
Samians, but of others who had been dispossessed by Athenian cleruchs. There is
an interesting inscription in which we perceive the intrigues of the Samian exiles
at the Macedonian court, and how Alexander promised to give back Samos to the
Samians. He, however, did not do so; but it was effected by Perdiccas, according
to the convention which followed the defeat of the Athenians in the Lamian War,
322 B.C.
This text is from: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) (eds. William Smith, LLD, William Wayte, G. E. Marindin). Cited June 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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