Pericles of Athens (21 page)

First, as a connective force:
eros
linked individuals together, as indeed did
philia
, friendship. However, whereas friendship presupposed a form of equality between the
partners,
eros
functioned in a hierarchical and asymmetrical fashion. The erotic link depended on
a form of reciprocity that was structurally inegalitarian, for it always brought together
a free citizen, who was in the dominant position, and a woman or an
erōmenos
—an adolescent—whose status was inferior. When transposed into a political framework,
eros
retained those same characteristics: it encouraged the development of hierarchical
links between on the one hand, the citizens, and on the other, the city.

Next, as a force for disconnection:
eros
possessed a terrifying power capable of turning the normal functioning of social
life upside down. Not content with snapping the very limbs of lovers,
²
it was capable of destabilizing even the best-established forms of social balance.
Eros
could destroy relations of
philia
or lead to adultery or even to treason; it then threatened the very survival of the
city, which is why
eros
and politics often worked together, for better or worse.

Pericles’ life combined those two contradictory aspects of
eros
. First, the power of connection: the
stratēgos
was an ardent defender of a veritable civic eroticism, to the point of urging the
Athenians to cherish their city as a lover cherishes his loved one. According to Pericles,
the citizens should behave themselves as a community of active lovers, linked together
by their common love for their country. Yet, far from leaving the people and their
city to this loving tête-à-tête, the leader came and involved himself in that relationship.
According to the ancient authors, Pericles aroused desire in the crowd both by his
rhetoric and by his behavior, as his protégé Alcibiades was later to do. There was
thus an erotic dimension to his authority. The citizens loved not only their city
but also their leader. Next, a power of disconnection, for Pericles’ story also testifies
to the subversive power of
eros
. The
stratēgos
was accused of having experimented with the entire range of heterosexual unions,
even to the point of placing the city in danger through his multiple and transgressive
love affairs. His opponents denounced him for having not only behaved as a seducer,
perverting the wives of other citizens, but also for being a man seduced and manipulated
by beautiful foreign women.

Aspasia became the target of the barrage of criticisms aimed at Pericles. Presented,
as she was, now as a
hetaira
or even a prostitute, now as a legitimate wife and a skilled mistress of rhetoric,
this enigmatic woman deserved the whole study finally devoted to her in M. M. Henry’s
Prisoner of History: Aspasia of Miletus and Her Biographical Tradition
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1995). The ancient sources often portray her
as a warmonger, a new Helen of Troy, bewitching Pericles and getting him to unleash
the conflict against the Spartans. That biased image needs to be evaluated in the
light of the prejudices that surrounded all women whose legal status was uncertain.

T
HE
D
EMOCRATIC
A
MOROUS
T
RIANGLE
: T
HE
C
ITY, THE
L
EADER, AND THE
P
EOPLE

Athens (not Hiroshima), Mon Amour

In the funeral speech that he delivered, according to Thucydides’ version, Pericles
urged all Athenians to demonstrate their desire for their city. In this case, the
purpose of
eros
was not to link citizens to one another, but to unite them all, collectively, with
their country, the object of all their attentions: “You must daily fix your gaze upon
the power of Athens and become lovers [
erastai
] of her.”
³
This is how the
stratēgos
transposed into the civic register the vocabulary associated with erotic masculine
relationships. The fact is that, in the Greek world, ritualized pederastic links could
connect an older citizen—the
erastēs
—with a young adolescent—the
erōmenos
—who was still in the flower of his youth. The importation of this vocabulary now
used to describe the links between citizens and their city masked a number of implications.
In the first place, this metaphor made it possible to set women radically apart; they
were, of course, already excluded from the political scene. No symbolic compensation
was offered to them in that speech, since what was proposed
for the Athenians to meditate upon was a homoerotic model. Furthermore, that image
presupposed the existence of a link of reciprocity between the two parties present:
in a pederastic relationship, the
erastēs
was expected to educate and protect the
erōmenos
who, in return, offered him his company and favors. As Pericles saw it, the citizens
should take the
erastēs
’ role as guardian of the
city
, the
erōmenos
whom one contemplated with passion.

At first sight, this choice may seem surprising. The city appears to be relegated
to a passive and subordinate role, leaving on the front of the stage the Athenians,
who are described as a “vigorous elite” at the service of their country.
⁴
According to Sara Monoson, the metaphor may even conceal more disturbing implications.
In their capacity as the
erastai
, the citizens may act in a shameful way and take advantage of the city, a naive and
defenseless
erōmenos
.
⁵
That is, in fact, how the more or less declared opponents of democracy unhesitatingly
interpreted the image, profoundly subverting its original meaning. In the first place,
they applied the metaphor not to the links between the Athenians and their city, but
to the relations that obtained between the citizens and their political leaders.
⁶
In the plays of Aristophanes, it is the demagogues who declare their love for the
dēmos
: “I love you, Demos, I am your
erastēs
,”
⁷
declares the Paphlagonian—a transparent caricature of Cleon,
⁸
in
The Knights
. Later, the comic poets portrayed those
erastai
as dangerous corrupters: with their self-interested love, the demagogues did nothing
but debase the people, which, for its part, was portrayed as an aging
erōmenos
, at once capricious and depraved.
⁹
According to those ironical criticisms, Athens’s leaders were guiding the city to
its downfall, skillfully manipulating feelings and reactions.

However, that polemical view corresponded to a deliberately biased reading of the
metaphor used by Pericles. When he resorted to that image, the orator had no intention
of depicting a passive Athens, forced to accept whatever its citizens wanted; there
is nothing to suggest that the metaphor had to be understood to the advantage of its
citizens-
erastai
. As Mark Golden has shown, the supposed subordination of the
erōmenos
to the
erastēs
is not at all obvious if, without any preconceptions, one considers the texts and
images that have come down to us.
¹⁰
In plenty of cases, the
erōmenos
seems to possess virtues characteristic of dominant personalities, while, in contrast,
the
erastēs
, gripped by desire, frequently adopts a submissive or even miserable position. He
finds himself at the mercy of his
erōmenos
, who is perfectly free to deny him his favors. Some authors even portray the youth
as a tyrant, ruling harshly over his helpless lover.
¹¹
Figurative codes repeatedly proclaim the paradoxical superiority of the
erōmenos
. On vases, instead of being represented as submissive, the adolescent is often facing
up to his partner. He
stands erect while the
erastēs
bends his knees and, in some cases, bows his head.
¹²
Sometimes, the latter is even presented in the traditional position of a suppliant,
attempting to touch the youth’s chin.
¹³

In this context, the Periclean metaphor takes on a quite different meaning. By resorting
to the language of pederastic love, the orator was in reality urging the citizens
to offer their city extraordinary gifts, in the way that
erastai
were accustomed to shower their
erōmenos
with presents. Quite simply, instead of proffering hares or goblets, the citizens
ought to offer the city their time, their money, even their lives, by performing many
public services of both a financial and a military nature.

The role played by such a metaphor in Athenian democratic ideology no doubt needs
to be qualified. This pederastic image is never directly repeated in the other funeral
speeches that have come down to us. Generally, these mobilize a different if equally
asymmetrical image, representing the city as the father of the citizens: the citizens
are urged to sacrifice themselves for the “country,” the land of their fathers.
¹⁴
So how should we explain why Pericles chose to resort to this erotic vocabulary?
Perhaps it was because he wanted to become the object of desire of his fellow-citizens,
so charmed were they by his rhetoric and his behavior.

In Love with Pericles

In his
Memorabilia
, Xenophon evokes the memory of Socrates, the master who taught him to think, by recording
a number of dialogues that Socrates is said to have engaged in with his fellow-citizens.
In one of these conversations, the philosopher produces a polemical rewriting of the
image used by Pericles in his funeral oration. The philosopher is intrigued by the
mechanisms by which one acquires friends.
¹⁵
He considers Pericles to have been a specialist in this domain, for he “knew many
[spells] and put them on the city [
epaidon tēi polei
] and so made it love him.”
¹⁶
By using the vocabulary of magical enchantment, Socrates ironically relates Periclean
rhetoric to a kind of homosexual courtship.
¹⁷
At a deeper level, what he says constitutes an implicit response to the civic ideology
expressed in the funeral speech. He turns Pericles’ phrase inside out, like a glove:
according to Socrates, it is the city that is in love with the famous
stratēgos
, rather than the other way round.

Xenophon’s Socrates was not alone in drawing attention to the erotic dimension of
Pericles’ authority. The comic poets had already emphasized the power of attraction
of his language: they considered that Pericles’ speeches could sting his listeners,
implanting in their ears their prick (
kentron
), the usual comic metaphor for a phallus.
¹⁸
The suggestion was that the orator
wielded a veritable amorous constraint over those who heard him. The implication is
clear: by arousing their desire, the leader obtained their consent and their vote.
And this erotic seduction had lasting effects. It left its imprint on the souls of
the Athenians to the point of arousing a nostalgic regret when Pericles was forced
to step down from the political stage. After his deposition and condemnation in 430,
the withdrawal of the
stratēgos
was believed to have aroused in his fellow-citizens the very same type of regret
that haunted a lover once his beloved had disappeared—an emotion that the Greeks called
pothos
.
¹⁹
According to Plutarch, the city “missed him [
pothousēs d’ekeinōn
]”
²⁰
and the Athenians decided to recall him to the tribune. When, a few months later,
the
stratēgos
died, that emotion was exacerbated: “the progress of events wrought in the Athenians
a swift appreciation of Pericles and a keen sense of his loss [
pothos
].”
²¹
The death of the
stratēgos
unleashed a love-struck grief that the Athenians never were able to surmount in a
dignified fashion; according to Aristophanes, they abandoned themselves to the seduction
of corrupting demagogues, dragging the city into a downward and catastrophic spiral.

If Pericles bewitched his fellow-citizens in the manner of a seductive
erōmenos
, it was not only on account of his words, but also because of his behavior, which
bore the mark of
gravitas
, if not frigidity. It seems that Pericles was all the more attractive because, whatever
the circumstances, he maintained a solemn distance and great self-control. Even as
he invited the citizens to behave as lovers of their city, it was certainly not so
that they could form real erotic relationships among themselves. On the contrary,
military leaders were, as he saw it, supposed to observe the most absolute chastity
while on duty: “Once, when Sophocles, who was general with him on a certain naval
expedition, praised a lovely boy, he said: ‘It is not his hands only, Sophocles, that
a general must keep clean, but his eyes as well.’”
²²
The message intended for the tragic poet is clear: a
stratēgos
must not be distracted from his duties either by money—and the bribes that one accepts
with one’s hands—or by erotic pleasures—and the boys that one desires with one’s eyes.

If a leader must demonstrate his self-control in all circumstances, it is not only
out of fear of seeming to be corrupt and ready to sell his country. By repressing
his libido, he also acquires a certain charisma, as does a monk who owes his aura
in part to his ostensible rejection of sexuality. As Socrates’ disciples would theorize,
a few years later,
eros
is the more intense the more it remains chaste, and erotic attraction is all the
more powerful when it implies the impossibility of moving into action.
²³