Pericles of Athens (32 page)

The fact was that the Athenians not only set controls upon the Athenian elite by imposing
numerous laws that affected them. They also did so by circulating rumors about their
behavior that were first given expression in the theater and from there spread throughout
the city. In this way, they exerted strong moral and ideological pressure upon those
responsible for important duties.

Omnipresent Social Controls

The Invectives of the Comic Poets: Pericles on Stage

Comic poetry, which was full of allusions to contemporary political life, fulfilled
a function of social control over the members of the Athenian elite. In the orchestra
of the theater of Dionysus, at the time of the Great Dionysia or the Lenaea, the poets
often directed personal attacks—
onomasti kōmōidein
—against the individuals most deeply involved in civic life. Politicians were directly
named by the actors performing before the entire assembled people. Gibed at or even
ridiculed, they were attacked as much for their public actions as for their lifestyles
and their behavior in private.

Pericles was a particular target of such personal attacks. His relationship with Aspasia
and his supposed sympathies for tyranny were frequently mocked on stage.
⁴⁷
Such accusations peaked at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. Plutarch certainly
testifies to the growing hostility then surrounding the
stratēgos
: “Many of his enemies [beset him] with threats and denunciations and
choruses sang songs of scurrilous mockery, designed to humiliate
[
ephubrizontes
]
him
, railing at his generalship for its cowardice and its abandonment of everything to
the enemy” (
Pericles
, 33.6). In view of all this, it might seem but a small step to assuming that comedy—and,
more generally, simply rumors—played a part in the
stratēgos
’s removal from power in 430/429. But that is a step that should not be taken.

In the first place, there were limits imposed upon the freedom of speech (
parrhēsia
) of the comic poets. The ancient sources even record certain episodes of censure
in which Aristophanes and other comic writers were targeted, at particularly delicate
moments in the history of Athens.
⁴⁸
Although the cases brought against comic poets are by no means all confirmed,
⁴⁹
a decree aiming to ban personal attacks in the theater does appear to have been passed
in 440/439 at the instigation of Pericles; no doubt, the
stratēgos
hoped in this way to put a stop to the most virulent attacks launched against him
while the city was engaged in the lengthy siege of Samos. However, this measure that
had been approved within the context of a crisis was waived less
than three years later;
⁵⁰
in the fifth century, no law restrained the freedom of speech of the comic poets
for very long.
⁵¹

Second, those gibes did not necessarily directly influence the Athenians’ voting in
the Assembly. Even as he was being subjected to constant fire from his critics, Pericles
was reelected without interruption from 443 to 429, and, similarly, Cleon retained
the people’s confidence despite the success, in 424 B.C., of Aristophanes’
Knights
, in which the demagogue was dragged through the mud in the person of an uncouth Paphlagonian.
⁵²
So such invectives seem not to have had much direct effect politically. There was
a strong ritual dimension to those insults and outrageous claims, and their function
was mainly cathartic. The violence of comic language stemmed more from a ritualized
process of verbal abuse than from any clearly articulated political program.
⁵³

All the same, that is not to say that such attacks had no impact at all. They affected
Pericles significantly, leading him to modify his behavior. The reason he decided,
upon entering political life, to adopt a totally transparent way of life was precisely
so as to try to avoid such verbal attacks.
⁵⁴
In order to avoid being attacked on the comic stage, politicians thus had good reason
to keep a check on their own behavior and to adjust it to satisfy popular expectations.
Comedy certainly did affect Athenian political life, not directly—by influencing the
citizens’ votes—but rather indirectly, by reflecting in a magnifying mirror the “ethico-political”
norms with which members of the elite were invited to conform.

The Strength of Rumors: The Goddess with a Thousand Mouths

The criticisms that were amplified in the theater, which acted as a sounding-board,
started off in the Agora, where they circulated in a diffuse manner. As they passed
from mouth to mouth and from ear to ear, rumors swiftly grew into an anomalous and
sometimes disquieting collective phenomenon.
⁵⁵
Pericles was himself a victim of this gossip and these whispers that grew mysteriously
without being associated with anyone in particular.
Legetai
or
legousin
, as the Greek texts put it: “it is said” or “they say.” This is the formula to which
Plutarch resorts in order to convey the rumors surrounding the
stratēgos
, who was said to be transfixed with love for Aspasia, corrupting the wives of other
citizens, and mixing with enemies of the city.
⁵⁶

Through what channels were these rumors spread? The poets would sometimes lend them
their voices, but initially the rumors circulated in informal spaces, as murmurings
in the shops or even in the meetings of phratries and other associations.
⁵⁷
The workplaces of certain craftsmen—barbers, cobblers, and fullers—constituted important
meeting places,
⁵⁸
where information would gather to the point where it would even turn into veritable
waves of opinion.
⁵⁹
Even before rumors became rife in public places, they would sometimes emerge in private
ones. According to Plutarch, Pericles was the target of slander started by members
of his own family, who were indignant at his intransigent attitude where financial
matters were concerned: “Xanthippus, incensed at this, fell to abusing his father
and, to make men laugh, publishing abroad his conduct of affairs at home, and the
discourses that he held with the sophists” (
Pericles
, 36.2). It seems that, later, Pericles’ elder son even increased his attacks to the
point of starting a rumor that his father was sleeping with his own (Xanthippus’s)
wife (
Pericles
, 36.3)!

Even if these rumors were groundless, they were certainly not harmless. They forged
collective beliefs that could not simply be swept aside by their victims. The fourth-century
orators were even ready to recognize a degree of truth in them. According to Aeschines,
“In the case of the life and conduct of men, a common rumor which is unerring does
of itself spread abroad throughout the city,”
⁶⁰
which was why, probably at the time of Cimon and Pericles, the Athenians had devoted
a cult to it, “as the most powerful of goddesses” (
hōs theou megistēs
).
⁶¹
The philosopher Plato was likewise astonished at the amazing power of rumor
⁶²
that, praising some and denigrating others, defined norms of behavior that were all
the more influential because they were not formalized.
Phēmē
thus acted upon the very heart of reality, as “a great subterranean power, an essential
part of what is held to be true.”
⁶³
It oriented the actions of the Athenian leaders, who were often enough obliged to
dance to the tune of slander, in order to save their very lives: rumor, “the eternal
accuser” (
katēgoron athanaton
),
⁶⁴
dogged the steps of the politicians who, as a result, were forced to adjust their
behavior.
⁶⁵

Chatter and malicious gossip formalized the fears and expectations of the
dēmos
, structured public opinion, and surreptitiously defined the behavior that the people
expected from the Athenian elite. Rumors, although informal, undeniably affected the
behavior of the political actors just as much as or even more than legal procedures
did. We should not regard social pressure and institutional controls as radically
opposite. The fact was that the people exercised a kind of informal control at the
very heart of the city institutions: speaking in the Assembly, orators had to cope
with reactions from the
dēmos
that were sometimes brutal and unpredictable, as Pericles well knew, often in glorious
circumstances, but sometimes in bitter ones.

Heckling in the Assembly: Orators under Pressure

Even in the
Ekklēsia
, which is where the ancient authors ascribe the most influence to him, Pericles’
speeches were always controlled by the crowd. The people did not hesitate to express
their disapproval noisily or even
to heckle the orators despite—or because of—all their rhetorical skills.
⁶⁶
Even though most citizens did not, themselves, dare to speak, that does not mean
that they remained passive, silently gaping as they listened to the speeches delivered
from the tribune. Time and again, the orators had to contend with great bursts of
noisy applause, protests, whistles. and laughter and were even faced with heckling
(
thorubos
), as many speeches of the Attic orators testify.
⁶⁷
“Vocal interruptions and heckling in court and Assembly undermined the speaker’s
structural advantage as the focus of the group’s attention and reminded him that his
right to speak depended on the audience’s power and patience.”
⁶⁸
The heckling stemmed from the normal Athenian exercise of freedom of speech, and
its effect was to regulate the functioning of collective institutions while, in contrast,
religious silence on the part of the masses was characteristic of peoples that were
subjected to authoritarian regimes.
⁶⁹

Pericles was on several occasions forced to confront a restless, even hostile, crowd
that was perfectly prepared to interrupt him in the Assembly. According to Plutarch,
the
stratēgos
was initially the target of violent criticism at the time when his ambitious building
projects were discussed. Led by his political opponent Thucydides and his followers,
the revolt broke out right in the middle of the discussions held on the Pnyx: “They
slandered him [
dieballon
] 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.’”
(
Pericles
, 12.1). Nor did the hostility aroused by the great construction works abate. In the
course of another
Ekklēsia
meeting, Pericles had to render an account of the money provided for this vast building
program. Faced with the people’s violent recriminations, right there in the Assembly,
the
stratēgos
offered to complete the constructions using his own funds, on condition that all
the merit would then go solely to him. But the Athenians rejected that solution and
even “cried out with a loud voice [
anekragon
] and bade him take freely from the public funds for his outlays and to spare naught
whatsoever.”
⁷⁰
While this episode certainly draws attention to Pericles’ persuasive powers, it also
indicates the limits of his influence. Placed in danger on the tribune, the
stratēgos
could defuse the hostility of the people only by persuading it of how useful his
project would be for the whole community; it was because these constructions increased
the prestige of their city that the Athenians now noisily approved of the
stratēgos
and his building policy.

When the conflict against the Peloponnesians began, that public pressure became more
alarming. In 430, the
stratēgos
needed all his skills to calm down the anger of the people that now found itself
enclosed within
the city walls and infected by the plague: “After the second invasion of the Peloponnesians
the Athenians underwent a change of feeling, now that their land had been ravaged
a second time while the plague and the war combined lay heavily upon them. They blamed
Pericles for having persuaded them to go to war and held him responsible for the misfortunes
which had befallen them, and were eager to come to an agreement with the Lacedaemonians.
They even sent envoys to them, but accomplished nothing. And now, being altogether
at their wits’ end, they assailed Pericles” (Thucydides, 2.59.1–2). It was, according
to Thucydides, only with great difficulty that he eventually managed to swing his
audience round in his favor.
⁷¹
As Arnold Gomme remarks: “Perhaps nothing makes more clear the reality of democracy
in Athens, of the control of policy by the ekklesia, than this incident: the ekklesia
rejects the advice of its most powerful statesman and most persuasive orator, but
the latter remains in office, subordinate to the people’s will, till the people choose
to get rid of him.”
⁷²

A few months later, even the magic of his oratory was no longer enough. Thucydides
does not dwell on this episode, which does not reflect well on his hero, but he does
record that Pericles was relieved of his responsibilities as
stratēgos
at an Assembly session, probably following an
epikheirotonia tōn arkhōn
procedure. “They did not give over their resentment against him until they had imposed
a fine upon him” (Thucydides, 2.65.3). Dismissed from the tribune and brutally stripped
of his magistracy, Pericles retired to his
oikos
until a little later, when the remorseful Athenians summoned him back.