Pericles of Athens (14 page)

The first episode was recorded in the fourth century by Douris of Samos, who was well
placed to know of the affair since he was a native of the rebel island.
²²
In the course of the conflict, some Athenian prisoners were captured by the Samian
rebels, who tattooed their faces with an owl. Gratuitous cruelty? Not at all. The
rebels were simply paying back the Athenians who, earlier, had marked the faces of
enemy prisoners with the prow of a Samian ship, the
Samaina
.
²³
By recording this incident, Douris clearly intended to underline the Athenians’ initial
responsibility in this unleashing of violence. However, the episode took on another,
less immediate significance. By tattooing their prisoners in this way, both groups
of belligerents turned them into monetary symbols and consequently into interchangeable
merchandise—for, just as the owl was the monetary symbol of Athens, the
Samaina
was that of Samos (
figure 3
).
²⁴

Furthermore, this story may reveal the true cause of this bloody conflict. Over and
above the reasons alleged by the ancient sources, the main objective of the repression
led by Pericles may have been to impose upon Samos the use of Athenian coins. The
Samians appear to have refused to apply Clearchus’s decree, which was probably passed
in the early 440s and imposed upon all the allies the use of Athenian weights and
measures and silver currency.

However that may be, the Samos affair shows us a Pericles who resorted to unbridled
violence, as the outcome of the conflict testifies. After the Athenians’ victory,
the Samians “were reduced by siege and agreed to a capitulation,
pulling down their walls, giving hostages and consenting to pay back by instalments
the money spent upon the siege” (Thucydides 1.117.3). All this was altogether normal;
Athens applied victors’ rights and deprived the Samians of all attributes of sovereign
power: its ramparts, its fleet, and its currency. What was less normal though was
the cruelty that, again according to Douris of Samos, Pericles inflicted upon the
Samian elite: “To these details, Douris the Samian adds stuff for tragedy, accusing
the Athenians and Pericles of great cruelty. But he appears not to speak the truth
when he says that Pericles had the Samian trierarchs and marines brought into the
marketplace 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 funeral rites.”
²⁵
In Douris’s version, the horror of the tortures—inflicted in Miletus, not in Athens—had
been intended to serve as a lesson addressed to the entire empire. But this account
aimed above all to emphasize not only the cruelty of Pericles, but his impiety: to
deprive bodies of the funeral rites was a grave transgression, the full implications
of which are revealed in Sophocles’
Antigone
. It may be that Douris is overdramatizing (
epitragoidein
) the events, as Plutarch, being concerned to protect the reputation of the Athenian
stratēgos
, claims; but in any case, Douris’s testimony underlines the existence of a tradition
hostile to Pericles that deliberately emphasizes his intolerable cruelty.
²⁶

In fact, such a sinister reputation already surrounded Pericles’ father, Xanthippus.
Right at the end of the
Histories
, at a strategic point in his text, Herodotus produces an equivocal image of Pericles’
father: guided by vengeance, Xanthippus had the Persian governor Artaÿctes crucified
at Sestos, after having his son stoned to death before his eyes.
²⁷
Perhaps this was a way for the historian, himself a native of Halicarnassus, implicitly
to cast blame upon the actions of the son by means of an account of his father’s behavior.
Herodotus presented Xanthippus as the initiator of a strategy of terror that reached
its zenith under Pericles.
²⁸

Such cruelty was further amplified with the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431,
as is shown by the expulsion of the Aeginetans in the first year of the conflict.
Here too, it was probably Pericles who initiated that repression.

The Expulsion of the Aeginetans

Within a context of exacerbated tensions, the
stratēgos
decided to punish the Aeginetans even though they had not, in fact, revolted against
Athens. That, at least, is the version favored by Plutarch: “By way of soothing the
multitude who … were distressed over the war, he won their favor by distributions
of
moneys and proposed allotments (
kai klēroukhias egraphen
) of conquered lands; the Aeginetans, for instance, he drove out entirely and parcelled
out their island among the Athenians by lot.”
²⁹
There were, in truth, several reasons why Aegina was punished in this way. In the
first place, it had always been an undisciplined ally that had been late in joining
the league (in around 459 B.C.), and it was, furthermore an ancient naval power that
was a longstanding rival of the Athenians.
³⁰
Second, the Athenians accused the Aeginetans of having provoked the war and encouraged
the Spartans’ hatred of Athens (Thucydides, 2.27.1); and last, the Athenians were
in need of a sure base for themselves, within reach of the Peloponnese.

Although Thucydides does not accuse Pericles directly, there can be no doubt that
he was implicated in this business. One of the only statements actually attributed
to Pericles—for he left no writings of his own—refers precisely to the fate of the
island, “urging the removal of Aegina as ‘the eye-sore of the Piraeus,’”
³¹
and evoking the sticky substance that gathers on the lids of an infected eye. In
this way, Pericles assimilated the island of Aegina to a bodily secretion that the
Athenians were invited to suppress by means of an appropriate treatment. The metaphorical
scorn reflected the real violence to which the Aeginetans were subjected at the beginning
of the Peloponnesian War.

Pericles’ career, from the Euboean affair in 446 down to the expulsion of the Aeginetans,
definitely suggests an unchanging attitude toward the allies. However, in this respect,
the
stratēgos
was no better and no worse than anyone else and was by no means original. He was
simply continuing a policy that was initiated before him—
pace
the admirers of Cimon such as Ion of Chios and Stesimbrotus of Thasos—a policy that
was also continued after him, whatever the critics of Cleon, such as Thucydides, have
to say.
³²
But what distinguished Pericles was the lucidity that he acquired from this experience
of warfare punctuated by brutal episodes. The
stratēgos
developed a deep line of thought on the empire and the necessity of maintaining it.
It was a choice that he theorized in words and materialized in grandiose monuments.

The Spectacle of Force and Pericles’ Presentation of It

The Theorization of Imperialism: A Necessary Injustice

If there is one original aspect to Pericles’ attitude to imperialism, it lies not
so much in his practice as in the way that he represented the empire both to others
and to himself. In the speech that he made in 430, faced with the anger of the Athenian
people, the
stratēgos
set out a particularly lucid analysis of the Delian League and the way that it worked:

You may reasonably be expected, moreover, to support the dignity which the city has
attained through empire—a dignity in which you all take pride—and not to avoid its
burdens, unless you resign its honours also. Nor must you think that you are fighting
for the simple issue of slavery or freedom; on the contrary,
loss of empire is also involved and danger from the hatred incurred in your sway
. From this empire, however, it is too late for you ever to withdraw, if any one at
the present crisis, through fear and shrinking from action does indeed seek thus to
play the honest man;
for by this time the empire you hold is like a tyranny, which it may seem wrong to
have assumed, but which, certainly, it is dangerous to let go
. Men like these would soon ruin a city if they should win others to their views,
or if they should settle in some other land and have an independent city all to themselves
(Thucydides, 2.63.1–3).

The
stratēgos
conceded that it was perhaps unjust to change the Delian League into an empire at
the service of Athens. However, there could be no question of reversing the decision,
for to do so would be to accept slavery,
douleia
.
³³
His reasoning is subtle: it is necessary to defend an empire, even one that is acquired
by coercion, for it would be too dangerous to give it up. If the allies cease to be
in thrall to Athens, they will not remain neutral but will switch over to the enemy
in order to wreak vengeance for the tribulations that they have suffered. In his speech,
Pericles, rather then retreating on the subject of imperialism, goes into the attack.
However unjust it was, the people must continue to act tyrannically toward the members
of the League.
³⁴
There can be no question of dismounting once one’s steed is already charging.

Convinced of the necessity of the empire, Pericles furthermore undertook to lend legitimacy
to the power of Athens by means of monuments that, over and above their proclaimed
purpose, gave material expression to the city’s new imperial status.

The Odeon and Xerxes’ Tent: From One Empire to Another

The Odeon, constructed between 446 and 430 B.C., was associated so closely with Pericles
that Cratinus, the comic poet, had one of his characters declare: “The squill-head
Zeus! Lo! Here he comes, the Odeon like a cap upon his cranium, now that for good
and all the ostracism is o’er.”
³⁵
The Odeon as headgear: what better way of expressing the link that bound the monument
and the
stratēgos
together?

Today, this building is little known, for the archaeological excavations were never
completed. But in Antiquity, it was considered one of the most impressive monuments
in a city that was rich in architectural marvels (
figure 4
). The precinct in which it stood could accommodate huge crowds: this Odeon, flanking
the theater of Dionysus, which was at that time built of wood, appeared as an immense
hypostyle construction—with multiple colonnades—of 4,000 square meters in area (around
43,000 square feet). It was the largest public building in Athens and the first theater
in Antiquity ever provided with a roof.

At an architectural level, the Odeon was freely inspired by Xerxes’ tent, which had
been brought back to Athens, as booty, after the victory at Plataea, which the Greeks
won over the Persians in 479 B.C.
³⁶
According to Plutarch: “The Odeon, 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” (
Pericles
, 13.5). One should, incidentally, not be misled by the vocabulary, Xerxes’ “pavilion”
or “tent” resembled a real palace that could be dismantled and transported elsewhere
and that adopted the form of the imperial residences of Persepolis. Its true model
was the Apadana and the palace of a hundred columns, a reception hall built by Xerxes
himself.
³⁷
In adopting such an architectural style, Pericles was modeling his Odeon on the great
imperial architecture of the Achaemenids.