Pericles of Athens (29 page)

A Long-Term Evolution: The Establishment of “Tyranny” by the People

In the
Gorgias
, Plato targeted not just Pericles, but included in his critique all the leaders of
Athens from Themistocles onward. According to him, not one of them had succeeded in
the slightest degree in checking the desires of the people: “In persuading or compelling
her people to what would help them to be better—
they were scarcely, if at all, superior to their successors
” (
Gorgias
, 517b). All things considered, Pericles was neither better nor worse than the rest
of them: he behaved toward the Athenians “as to children, trying merely to gratify
them, not caring a jot whether they would be better or worse in consequence.”
²³
In this respect, Plato agrees with the severe judgment passed on the Athenian politicians
in this period by Theopompus of Chios. This pupil of Isocrates laid charges of demagogy
against not only Pericles but also Cimon, despite the fact that the latter supported
the aristocratic status quo.
²⁴
According to Theopompus, the generosity of the former differed in no way at all from
that of the latter. Both were nothing but sordid flatterers.

Unlike Theopompus, Plato did not stop at this bitter conclusion. Far from abusing
the Athenian leaders, he exonerated them, with a certain degree of slyness, of all
serious responsibility for the decline of the city. For even had they wished to do
so, the leaders of the people were powerless when it came to opposing the whims of
the masses. In Plato’s view, it was always the people who held the whip-hand over
the politicians, not the reverse. Contrary to the tradition favored by Aristotle and
Xenophon, that proclaimed that the
dēmos
simply reflected its leaders, Plato held that the people were in truth responsible
for the corruption of the Athenian elite groups: “What private teaching do you think
will hold out and not rather be swept away by the torrent of censure and applause,
and borne off on its current, so that he will affirm the same things that they [that
is, the people] do to be honourable and base, and will adopt the same habits [
epitēdeusein
], and be even such as they?”
²⁵

According to Plato, the members of the elite were totally incapable of resisting the
democratic “torrent” that swept away everything in its path. Unlike most of his fellows,
this philosopher took the democracy that he so detested extremely seriously: far from
the people being a mere puppet, it held terrifying power over its leaders, forcing
them to align their behavior with the lowest common denominator. Faced with this tyrant-people,
the leaders had to adjust their wishes to the expectations of the crowd or otherwise
risk discredit, ostracism or even death. As Plato asserted in another context, in
order to live in safety under the reign of a despot, it was best to agree with all
that he said and resemble him as closely as possible.
²⁶

Within such an interpretative framework, Pericles’ behavior takes on a new meaning.
Despite his attempts at resistance, the life of the
stratēgos
testifies to the establishment of democratic conventions that became ever more intrusive.
In the face of increasing public pressure, Pericles was obliged to show that his behavior
was above suspicion and to reject all overostentatious forms of distinction. His rejection
of sumptuary expenses, his avoidance of his friends (
philoi
), his manner of behavior in the Assembly, and his way of favoring the fleet’s oarsmen,
rather than the hoplite phalanx, all reflected the establishment of a new balance
between the people and the Athenian elite. From this point onward, in both their public
behavior and their private attitudes, the demagogues needed constantly to strive to
diminish the social distance that separated them from ordinary citizens.

Once their polemical thrust is neutralized, the Platonic analyses make it possible
to view relations between the “great man” and the democracy in a new light. Far from
embodying a break, the Periclean moment fits into a long-term evolution that involved
the people’s taming of the Athenian elite. It was precisely the process of leveling
that the Athenian oligarchs regarded
as insupportable, being quick to interpret it as a sign of irremediable political
and moral decline.

Pericles himself was at once an actor in and a witness to this progressive swing.
Although a major player in it, he did not initiate the process nor did he bestow upon
it its final form. At the time of his death, the people’s ideological domination was
still far from unchallenged, as the story of Alcibiades, the
stratēgos
’s ward, clearly shows. The munificence of this young Athenian and his disorderly
behavior did not prevent him from fascinating the
dēmos
nor, despite all his transgressions, did it stop him being elected
stratēgos
several times in the 420s and 410s.
²⁷
It was not until the fourth century and the lasting trauma created by the Peloponnesian
War that the democratic system became stabilized and the compromise between the elite
and the people found its definitive formulation.

CHAPTER 10

The Individual and Democracy: The Place of the “Great Man”

N
ow, at the end of this biographical odyssey, let us return, if not to the shores of
Ithaca, at least to the question that served as its starting point. Was Pericles an
all-powerful figure or an evanescent one? How, exactly, did the actions of the
stratēgos
and the will of the people interact? Can we settle for the forthright conclusion
expressed by Thucydides in his final panegyric for
stratēgos
: “Athens, though in name a democracy, gradually became in fact a government ruled
by its foremost citizen” (2.65.9)? According to the ancient authors, there seemed
to be no doubt about it. Pericles’ monarchy, theorized by the historian of the Peloponnesian
War, was also a favorite theme of the comic poets, who were always ready to represent
the
stratēgos
as an unscrupulous tyrant. In truth, Pericles’ admirers and detractors were all perfectly
happy to agree on one point—namely, the predominance of the
stratēgos
’s position in the city of Athens. Some—Thucydides for one—depict him as a beneficent
sovereign; others, as a dangerous and corrupting tyrant. Either way, the
dēmos
appears as a mere puppet manipulated by Pericles. Thanks to his establishing the
misthos
and launching his policy of major building works, the
stratēgos
is depicted as a monarch showering benefits upon his passive or even apathetic subjects.

Although that view is purveyed on every side by the ancient authors, it needs to be
criticized and replaced in context. It fails to take into account the various control-mechanisms
that surrounded the power of Athenian magistrates, Pericles first and foremost. Not
only did he always have to negotiate with the other
stratēgoi
, which, de facto, limited his influence, but, like any other member of the elite,
he was subject to many forms of supervision on the part of the people. At an institutional
level, his authority was frequently the object of scrutiny; accounts had to be submitted,
and there was always a real threat of ostracism or of an accusation of high treason.
At the social and ritual level, Pericles was forced to withstand numerous attacks
from the comic dramatists, justify himself in the face of insistent rumors about his
behavior, both private and public, and suffer noisy abuse from the crowds in the Assembly.
Although his influence over the city’s destiny was undeniable, the
stratēgos
was obliged to take popular expectations into account and, accordingly, adopt an
attitude in conformity with the democratic ethos. Far from ruling Athens as a monarch,
Pericles lived constantly under tension in a context in which the power of the demos
was relentlessly increasing.

“P
ERICLES THE
O
LYMPIAN
”: T
HE
P
OWER OF A
S
INGLE
M
AN
?

Monarch and Tyrant

When addressing the Athenians right at the beginning of the fourth century, the orator
Lysias, showing no concern for historical accuracy, declared “our ancestors chose
as nomothetae [that is, lawgivers] Solon, Themistocles and Pericles.”
¹
There was no mention of Cleisthenes or Ephialtes in this idealized evocation of the
ancestral constitution, the
patrios politeia
. That omission was in no way surprising. “The fact is that, in Athenian minds, there
had been no institutional innovations except in great periods that could be identified
with a single man known and recognized by the whole community.”
²
In accordance with a mechanism well charted in the Greek world, as elsewhere, important
changes were always associated with one great man in particular. As recollection of
events faded, the collective memory effected a simplification and stylization that
tended to associate the introduction of a variety of measures with certain leading
figures. The Spartans thus attributed a whole collection of economic, social, and
institutional reforms to one single semimythical lawgiver, Lycurgus, despite the fact
that the Spartan
kosmos
was set in place only gradually; and in just the same way, the Athenians associated
the creation of their city as a political community—the famous synoecism—solely with
the name Theseus—even though the process had clearly taken place only gradually in
the course of a considerable period of time.

The ancient authors tended to attribute to certain men far more than they had, in
truth, accomplished, thereby eclipsing other historical actors who were just as important.
Cleisthenes the lawgiver remained in the shadow of Solon, who was considered to be
more consensual, just as Ephialtes was reduced to a mere puppet manipulated by Pericles:
³
that process of compression initiated in the fourth century found its fullest expression
in Plutarch’s
Life
, which turned Pericles into the man of providence for the entire
pentēkontaetia
.

Does this mean that we should submit to a radical revision the image of an all-powerful
Pericles, on the grounds that it resulted from a biased
functioning of the collective memory that had been further amplified by the preconceptions
of the ancient authors? To do so would, to say the least, be overhasty. In truth,
that personal cult was not a purely a posteriori reconstruction, but instead was a
theme that had already been elaborated in the fifth century, as several sources of
evidence show. Even then, Thucydides was presenting the
stratēgos
as “the first of the Athenians” (1.139), who, unchallenged, dominated the city’s
whole political life. According to this historian’s account, Pericles seems hardly
even to belong to the civic community, so outrageously does he dominate it: he alone
confronts the anger of
all
the Athenians, who form a homogeneous block facing him, before obliging the
entire city
(
xumpasa tēn polin
), purely by the force of his oratory, to recognize his superiority, his
arkhē
(2.65.1–2). According to Thucydides, the
stratēgos
even managed to subjugate the people with its own consent: “he restrained the multitude
while respecting their liberties [
kateikhe to plēthos eleutherōs
], and led them rather than was led by them” (2.65.8).
⁴

Nor was the historian Thucydides alone in expressing that opinion. In Pericles’ lifetime,
already, the comic poets had delighted in setting the omnipotence of the
stratēgos
on stage, but in their case, did so in order to stigmatize it. They even went so
far as to compare Pericles to the king of the gods, Zeus, although there was nothing
complimentary about the assimilation, for, by calling him an Olympian, they were drawing
attention to his hubris.
⁵
Moreover, as well as describing him with that insolent label, the comic authors depicted
him as a man who held quasi-absolute power. According to Telekleides, a contemporary
of Pericles, 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.”
⁶
So it would seem that it was not just in foreign policies that Pericles did as he
pleased, but also within the city; according to this poet, the citizens had abdicated
their own sovereignty in his favor.

More alarming still, one deeply rooted tradition linked Pericles with the tyrants
of Athens, the Pisistratids. This dark legend can already be detected, reading between
the lines, in the ambiguous account of the birth of the
stratēgos
recorded by Herodotus. Just before giving birth to Pericles, his mother was said
to have dreamed that she produced a lion.
⁷
Although the analogy has certain heroic resonances,
⁸
in a democratic context it is, to say the least, equivocal. For it links Pericles
with Cypselus, the tyrant of Corinth, whose mother had a similar dream. Above all,
however, it linked him with Hipparchus, the son of the tyrant Pisistratus who, also
in a dream, had been compared to a lion and was destined to suffer a dire fate.
⁹

As his opponents saw it, that was not the only link that bound Pericles to the tyrants
of Athens. The very features of his face rendered him suspect. According to Plutarch,
“it was thought that in feature he was like the tyrant Pisistratus; 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” (
Pericles
, 7.1). Moreover, quite apart from his physical appearance, his network of friends
evoked the memory of tyrants and those close to him were described as “the new Pisistratids”
(
Pericles
, 16.1).