Pericles of Athens (26 page)

It is true that several anecdotes portray the Athenian leader as an enlightened disciple
of the sophists, stripping the world of its enchanted aspects, the better to mock
all divine omens. In 430, when a fleet of vessels was about to set sail under his
orders, “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?’”
⁵⁰
It is a very nice story, but it has no historical basis since no eclipse of the sun
is attested in that year.
⁵¹

How should we interpret this cobbled-together anecdote? In order to understand it,
we need to replace the story in the context in which it was circulated—that of the
philosophical schools, according to Plutarch (
Pericles
, 35.2). The story was of a moral rather than a historical nature. The point was to
set in contrast, term for term, the enlightened behavior of Pericles and the hidebound
attitude of one of his unfortunate successors, Nicias. In late August 413, while in
command of the Athenian troops massed against Syracuse, Nicias was confronted with
a total eclipse of the moon. Faced with this omen, he dithered helplessly for several
whole days, “spending his time making sacrifices and consulting diviners, right up
until the moment when his enemies attacked.”
⁵²
That long delay had grave consequences, for it led to the rout of the Athenians at
Syracuse and eventually decided the outcome of the war. So these two episodes reflected
two leaders, two different attitudes,
and two moments in Athenian history: the glorious start of the Peloponnesian War and
the ignominious conclusion of the expedition to Sicily, and an implicit contrast was
drawn between them.

Another account relayed by Plutarch tended to represent Pericles as, if not a sophist,
at least a man close to them: “A certain athlete had hit Epitimus the Pharsalian with
a javelin, accidentally, and killed him, and Pericles 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.”
⁵³
Some historians believe that this passage confirms the
stratēgos
’s sympathy for the inflammatory ideas of the sophist Protagoras of Abdera. He had
written a treatise titled
On the Gods
, in which he maintained that “man is the measure of all things” and even defended
a number of agnostic ideas: “As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that
they exist or that they do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge,
both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life.”
⁵⁴

However, this supposed complicity between Pericles and Protagoras remains unverifiable.
First, no source from the classical period even mentions it. The fact that Protagoras
may have played some role in the founding of Thurii—for which he may have drawn up
laws—does not necessarily prove that he was an adviser to the
stratēgos
.
⁵⁵
Besides, even if the anecdote recorded by Plutarch was true, the conversation was
not about the gods but about irrelevant philosophico-juridical considerations. Finally,
even Plutarch himself admits that he is recording biased or even untruthful words,
for it was Xanthippus who was spreading this story, with the explicit intention of
harming his father (36.4).

After examining the sources, we still have found nothing to suggest that Pericles
was a visionary who rejected all forms of superstition. To be sure, the
stratēgos
did keep company with Anaxagoras and was in touch with other sophists who were living
in Athens. But that does not mean to say that he accepted all their beliefs. On the
contrary, Pericles was keen to show that he was not the captive of any doctrine and,
besides, his close acquaintances also included men who held the most traditional of
religious beliefs. Revealingly enough, it was the seer Lampon that the
stratēgos
chose as the founder of Thurii, not Protagoras, although the latter also took part
in the expedition.

Plutarch tells us that the
stratēgos
did sometimes manifest superstitious beliefs. In 429, when struck down by the plague,
he was assailed by “a kind of sluggish distemper that prolonged itself through various
changes, used up his body slowly and undermined the loftiness of his spirit” (
Pericles
, 38.1). At this point, his clear head was supposedly taken over by a weak mind:
“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. [Theophrastus saw this as a sign] that he
was very badly off to put up with such folly as that” (
Pericles
, 38.2). According to Aristotle’s successor, Pericles forwent all control over his
mores, abandoning himself to beliefs that were the more discredited for being associated
with the world of women.
⁵⁶
That demeaning story, which was doing the rounds in the philosophical schools, should
be regarded with the utmost circumspection, since Plutarch, for his part, relates
an alternative version of the death of the
stratēgos
that, on the contrary, transforms his death-throes into a most edifying scene. Although
he missed out on a heroic death on the battlefield, the
stratēgos
is reported to have displayed an unshakeable lucidity right up to his dying breath,
when he delivered one last calm message to his friends gathered about him.
⁵⁷

Pericles is portrayed now as a strong-minded man who pours ridicule on divine omens
and is in communication with the sophists, now as a weak-minded individual abandoning
himself to superstition. The fact is, though, that these contrasting pictures tell
us more about the preoccupations of the philosophers than about Pericles’ personal
beliefs. Among the philosophical schools, Pericles became a stylized ideal type identified
with one of the sharply defined caricatures of figures that Theophrastus sketched
in so cleverly in his
Characters
.
⁵⁸

In
The Life of Pericles
, one passage conveys this tension particularly sharply:

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 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.
⁵⁹

Here too, the story is unreliable, and its elegant symmetry may well arouse legitimate
suspicion in the mind of a reader. All the same, one element in the account does ring
true: Pericles does not himself choose between the two
suggested interpretations. It is the others present who pronounce on the matter, initially
inclining to favor Anaxagoras but then having second thoughts about the matter and
swinging back to rally to Lampon. Throughout this process, the
stratēgos
himself remains obstinately out of view. Does this, once again, testify to the prudence
of Pericles, who never commits himself unless it is absolutely necessary or unless
it is in his precise interest to do so? That is perfectly possible, but there is another
possible hypothesis. If the
stratēgos
refrained from expressing a preference, that may have been because he saw no obvious
contradiction between the two explanations. Plutarch confirms this possibility in
the conclusion to the anecdote: “There is 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.”

But, in truth, was Pericles a freethinker or of a traditionalist cast of mind? He
may have been both, either alternately or simultaneously. The two attitudes were not
as contradictory as is suggested by some of the public pronouncements made by either
the sophists or the Hippocratic doctors; the latter were prone to emphasize such a
contradiction the better to justify their own practices before an audience that they
had to convince.
⁶⁰
In reality, in the Greek world, there was no clear dividing line between rationality
and “superstition”; in the fifth century, Hippocratic medicine and healing rituals
functioned in parallel and for most of the time cohabited without clashing.
⁶¹
Making offerings, taking part in festivals, believing in prophetic dreams, trying
out experimental remedies, and observing natural phenomena without any reference to
any other world were all modes of behavior or interpretation that could coexist perfectly
well, not only in Greek society generally but also within a single individual who,
depending on the context, would turn to the experiences that seemed most appropriate
in the prevailing circumstances.

However, even if Pericles did not see these different beliefs as contradictions, that
was not necessarily the case for all his fellow-citizens. There is evidence to suggest
a certain hardening in religious matters in the 430s, as the political and diplomatic
climate became progressively more difficult. According to certain sources, this was
when several of those close to the
stratēgos
were charged with impiety in the lawcourts.

The Problem of Impiety

The increase in the number of impiety trials in Pericles’ time is a matter of historiographical
debate. The fact is that this question involves adopting a definite position on the
very nature of Athenian democracy. To accept their
existence is to believe that this “Age of Enlightenment” was also a time of religious
persecution, even before the Peloponnesian War brought about a hardening of attitudes.
To reject it is to defend the irenic version of a tolerant and open democratic Athens.
Depending on the view adopted, the trial of Socrates in 399 becomes either the climax
of a series of attacks launched by the democracy against “freethinkers” or else an
altogether exceptional case that can be explained by the philosopher’s provocative
behavior in a context of political tension.
⁶²

The documentation is fraught with pitfalls, but along with many question marks, some
things are clear. The first certainty is that Pericles’ reputation was murky on account
of his maternal ancestors. As a member of the Alcmaeonid family, the
stratēgos
was sullied by the pollution of ancestors who had dared to massacre suppliants who
had taken refuge on the Acropolis.
⁶³
Shortly before the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans had seized the opportunity to
reactivate the memory of this embarrassing episode:

It was this “curse” that the Lacedaemonians now bade the Athenians drive out, principally,
as they pretended, to avenge the honour of the gods, but in fact because they knew
that Pericles, son of Xanthippus, was implicated in the curse on his mother’s side,
and thinking that, if he were banished, they would find it easier to get from the
Athenians the concessions they hoped for. They did not, however, so much expect that
he would suffer banishment, as that they would discredit him with his fellow-citizens,
who would feel that to some extent his misfortune would be the cause of the war.
⁶⁴

That inherited pollution was clearly at the origin of all the accusations made in
Athens against the
stratēgos
.

The second certainty: Spartan propaganda never succeeded in harming him directly.
No lawsuit was ever brought against him and, according to the orator Lysias, Pericles
was even passed down to posterity as a model of piety: “Pericles, they say, advised
you once that in dealing with impious persons you should enforce against them not
only the written but also the unwritten laws … which no-one has yet had the authority
to abolish or the audacity to gainsay—laws whose very author is unknown; he judged
that they would thus pay the penalty not merely to men, but also to the gods.”
⁶⁵
So Pericles was represented as promoting a strict, even intransigent view of piety,
and urging his fellow-citizens to punish offenders even more severely than was prescribed
by law. That astonishing excessiveness should probably be ascribed to the very suspicion
of impiety that surrounded him.

According to the ancient sources, his opponents, foiled in their attempts to damage
Pericles in person, resorted to bringing charges of impiety (
asebeia
) against several of those close to him: the sculptor Phidias, Pericles’ partner,
Aspasia, and his teacher, Anaxagoras. It is at this point that a historian is obliged
to abandon the solid ground of certainties and venture into the fogs of speculation
and hypothesis.

Let us start with the misadventures of the sculptor Phidias. In
The Life of Pericles
(31.4), Plutarch reports that “when he wrought the battle of the Amazons on the shield
of the goddess [belonging to the statue of Athena
Parthenos
], 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.” Having discovered
this subterfuge, citizens were apparently revolted by this transgressive action that
“raised the memory of men to the level of the celebration of heroes and of gods.”
⁶⁶
Plutarch claims that the sculptor was thrown into prison, where he died, and meanwhile
Meno, who had denounced him, was honored by the city.