Pericles of Athens (48 page)

C
HAPTER
2. T
HE
B
ASES OF
P
ERICLEAN
P
OWER
: T
HE
S
TRATĒGOS

 
1.
Thucydides, 1.139.4.

 
2.
Contra, for example, Jouanna 2007, 17 or 31. According to one circular argument,
the fact that he served as a
stratēgos
proved that Sophocles, the son of a craftsman, “came from a census class that allowed
him to serve as a
stratēgos
” (p. 31). But this involves accepting, without criticism, the a priori assumptions
of the late biography,
The Life of Sophocles
, 1: “For it is unlikely that a man born from a modest father should be judged worthy
of the office of
stratēgos
alongside Pericles and Thucydides, the foremost leaders of the city.” But this in
no way proves the existence of any kind of census-barrier denying access to the post
of a
stratēgos
.

 
3.
Ps.-Aristotle,
Constitution of the Athenians
, 58.
Stratēgoi
also presided over the people’s tribunal for affairs concerning military law and
conflicts between trierarchs.

 
4.
This idea, already present in Grote 1870 (vol. 5), 429, stems from an initial reading
of Thucydides, 2.59.3, in which Pericles seems, on his own initiative, to convene
an assembly. On this matter, see Hansen 1991, 133 and 229.

 
5.
Perlman 1963; and Hamel 1995, 29–31.

 
6.
See Ps.-Aristotle,
Constitution of the Athenians
, 61.1. Five
stratēgoi
were assigned very precise tasks: defending the territory, leading the hoplites,
and overseeing the symmories or guarding the Piraeus. Furthermore, the board of
stratēgoi
as a whole could no longer be sent off on expeditions, as used to happen in the fifth
century.

 
7.
However, this break should not be exaggerated. As is pointed out by Ober 1989, 91–93
and 120, orators (
rhētores
) and
stratēgoi
were considered to be a coherent group of powerful men who stood out from the mass
of ordinary citizens—the
idiōtai
. See, for example, Demosthenes,
On the Crown
(18), 171; Hyperides,
Against Dēmosthenes
(5), fr. 6, col. 24; Dinarchus,
Against Philocles
(3), 19.

 
8.
See Androtion,
FGrHist
324 F 38 (= Strabo, 14.1.18). He was a member of the office of
Hellēnotamiai
—federal treasurers—in 443/2 (
IG
I
³
269). See Develin 1989, 90; and Jouanna 2007, 23–27.

9.
Ion of Chios,
FGrHist
392 F 6 (= Athenaeus, 13.603E–604F).

10.
See later,
chapter 6
. See also Jouanna 2007, 35–36, who emphasizes Pericles’ distrust of the poet’s military
competence at the time of the war against Samos.

11.
Pericles was also elected
stratēgos
three times in succession between 448/7 and 446/5.

12.
Androtion,
FGrHist
324 F 38. In his history of Athens, written in the mid-fourth century, Androtion
provides eleven names. But this passage appears to be corrupt and one of those names
should probably be suppressed, as almost all commentators agree—for example, Develin
1989, 89; and Harding 1994, 143–148. Only Brulé 1994, 85, claims that the people elected
eleven
stratēgoi
: first ten ordinary
stratēgoi
, elected within each tribe, and then Pericles, voted by the whole people to be an
exceptional supernumerary
stratēgos
. But there is no proof to support this.

13.
On this matter, see Ehrenberg 1945.

14.
See Hamel 1998, 86, following Fornara 1971, 71.

15.
See Gomme 1956, 183 (ad loc.).

16.
Pericles
, 13.10. See also Plutarch,
Precepts of Statecraft
, 812C: “Pericles used Menippus to command his armies.”

17.
Lycurgus, [
Against Kephisodotos on the honours allotted to Demades
], fr. 8.2. On these various successes, see later,
chapter 4
.

18.
Pericles
, 8.6; and Aristotle,
Rhetoric,
1.7.1365a32–33. In this speech, Pericles resorted to hyperbole, for he evoked those
who died in Samos not only by associating them with cosmic cycles (“The year has lost
its spring”) but also by comparing them to the immortal gods.

19.
See, for example, Lycurgus,
Against Leocrates
, 5. On this subject, see Azoulay 2009, 325.

20.
Actually, he simply copied a strategy for glorification introduced by Cimon, following
the victory over the Persians at Eurymedon: see Aeschines,
Against Ctesiphon
(3), 183; and Demosthenes,
Against Leptines
(20), 112.

21.
Pausanias, 1.28.2.

22.
Plutarch alludes to a physical abnormality in Pericles’ skull, which the
stratēgos
apparently concealed by his helmet (
Pericles
, 3.2): this is a late “medical” explanation for a type of statue that was no longer
understood.

23.
Comparison of Pericles and Fabius Maximus
, 1.2.

24.
On the careers of these
stratēgoi
who surrounded Pericles, see Podlecki 1998, 55–76.

25.
Banfi 2003, 69.

26.
Pericles
, 28.4.

27.
Thucydides, 2.41.4.

28.
Pericles
, 10.2.

29.
Pericles
, 29.1–3.

30.
See Thucydides, 1.45.2, and
IG
I
³
364 (= ML 61 = Fornara 126 = Brun 116), which cites the names of three
stratēgoi
dispatched on the mission: Lakedaimonius from the Lakiadai deme, Proteas from the
Erchia deme, and Diotimus from the Euonymon deme. The Corcyraeans, threatened by a
naval expedition of Corinthians, had contracted a defensive military alliance (
epimakhia
) with Athens in 433 B.C.

31.
Pericles
, 18.1.

32.
Pericles may have been inspired by the strategy of Themistocles, at the time of the
Persian Wars: see Krentz 1997, 62.

33.
Thucydides, 1.113.

34.
See later,
chapter 4
.

35.
Thucydides, 1.127.3 (author’s italics).

36.
Aristophanes,
Peace
, 605 ff.: “What started [the war] in the first place was Phidias getting into trouble.
Then Pericles became frightened that he might share Phidias’s fate—for he was afraid
of your character and your hard-biting temper—and before anything terrible could happen
to him, he set the city ablaze by dropping in a tiny spark of a Megarian decree: and
he fanned up so great a war that all the Greeks were in tears, in the smoke, both
those over there and those over here” (trans. Sommerstein 1990).

37.
See Rhodes 2006, 88.

38.
Plutarch,
Cimon
, 13.6–7. The Phaleron wall had been constructed earlier: see Thucydides, 1.107.1.

39.
On this phase of the construction (known as 1b), see Conwell 2008, 77.

40.
These different elements are stressed in Thucydides’ account (1.143.4–1.144.1). See
Conwell 2008, 81.

41.
See later,
chapter 8
.

42.
The “plague” that struck Athens at the beginning of the war was apparently a form
of typhus, although this is still a subject of debate among specialists.

43.
Hermippus,
Moirai
, fr. 47 K.-A. (= Plutarch,
Pericles
, 33.7). The poet Cratinus launched into similar attacks in this same period. See
Tatti 1986, 325–332, and the nuances introduced by Bakola 2010, 181–208.

44.
On these various area sizes, see Bresson 2007, 150.

45.
Ps.-Xenophon,
Constitution of the Athenians
, 2.14.

46.
Thucydides, 2.62.3.

47.
See Ober 1985, 171–188.

48.
See Thucydides, 2.65.

C
HAPTER
3. T
HE
B
ASES OF
P
ERICLEAN
P
OWER
: T
HE
O
RATOR

 
1.
Thucydides, 2.40.2.

 
2.
Aeschines,
Against Ctesiphon
(3), 2.

 
3.
Aeschines, ibid. For an analysis of this democratic tumult, see later,
chapter 10
.

 
4.
The fact that two men proposed the same decree in no way implied that they agreed
on the city’s policies as a whole—as was the case, for example, of Demades and Lycurgus,
in the fourth century. See Brun 2000, 135–136.

 
5.
Gorgias
, 452e. This dialogue, composed in the fourth century by Plato, describes a clash
between Socrates and Gorgias in the late 410s. Although the term “rhetoric,” for a
specific
tekhnē
, was probably invented by Plato, as early as the mid-fifth century the arts of discourse
were not unknown to the Athenians: Schiappa 1990, 457–470.

 
6.
Euripides,
Suppliant Women
, 425.

 
7.
These speeches, constructed with great care, contain numerous allusions to the works
of the sophists and the tragic authors. To mention but one example,
Pericles, in one of the speeches ascribed to him by Thucydides (2.61.2), uses a metric
trimeter that probably came from a tragedy well-known to the Athenians. See Haslam
1990, 33.

 
8.
Thucydides, 1.22.1.

 
9.
See, for example, Thucydides, 2.61.2: “For my part, I stand where I stood before
and do not recede from my position; but it is you who have changed. For it has happened,
now you are suffering, that you repent of the consent that you gave me when you were
still unscathed, and in your infirmity of purpose my advice to you now appears wrong.”

10.
“By instruction and reason, Pericles tries to discourage all mistaken popular action
and to transform the crowd into a collection of responsible individuals”: Tsakmakis
2006, 168.

11.
Plutarch,
Pericles
, 8.5. See earlier,
chapter 1
.

12.
Kentron
often denotes the masculine phallus. See Henderson 1975, 122. See also Xenophon,
Memorabilia
, 1.3.12, where Socrates compares a kiss to the sting of a spider: “Don’t you know
that the scorpion, though smaller than a farthing, if it but fasten on the tongue,
inflicts excruciating and maddening pain?” Speech, like beauty, can produce a sting
from a distance.

13.
Pericles
, 8.3. See also Aristophanes,
Acharnians
, 530–531.

14.
See Detienne and Vernant 1991, 75–79.

15.
Cratinus, fr. 171 K.-A., I, 18–22. See Bakola 2010, 49–53 and 317 (the passage is
unfortunately very mutilated and the sense is not certain). On the implications of
this identification with Zeus, see later,
chapter 8
.

16.
In Athens, this way of distinguishing oneself was very ambivalent: although the Athenians
were fascinated by the power of language, they also deeply distrusted it. In the fourth
century, the speeches of Attic orators even testify to the existence of “an anti-rhetoric
rhetoric,” the aim of which was to criticize the excessive skill of their opponents
in such a way as to make the people mistrust them. See Hesk 1999, 208–218.

17.
Pericles
, 5.1.

18.
Ps.-Aristotle,
Constitution of the Athenians
, 28.3.

19.
Respectively, Thucydides, 3.36.6, and Aristophanes,
Knights
, 137.

20.
Aeschines,
Against Timarchus
(1), 25–26.

21.
Plutarch,
Pericles
, 34.1. See earlier, Thucydides, 2.60.1.

22.
Plutarch,
Pericles
, 5.2–3. It was this singular ability to tolerate insults that prompted Plutarch to
compare Pericles to Fabius Maximus, who was himself expert at doing this: see Plutarch,
Pericles
, 2.4. See Bloomer 2005, 224.

23.
Demosthenes,
Against Midias
(21), 32–33.

24.
As Aristotle states, in
Nicomachean Ethics
, 1126a6–8, “it is considered servile [
andrapodōdes
] to put up with an insult or to suffer one’s friends to be insulted.”

25.
Tanner 2006, 128–129.

26.
Ion of Chios,
FGrHist
392 F 15 (= Plutarch,
Pericles
, 5.3).

27.
In
Hippolytus
, 91–96, Euripides explicitly underlines the risks of a solemnity that may soon be
taken for arrogance.

28.
Cratinus, fr. 348 K.-A.:
anelktais ophrusi semnon
. See Banfi 2003, 41.

29.
Demosthenes,
On the Embassy
(19), 314 (author’s italics). See Tanner 2006, 129–130.

30.
Frowning brows such as these characterize both tragic kings in South Italian fourth-century
painting and the effigy of Philip of Macedon, exhibited in the Copenhagen Glyptotek
(a Roman bust, a copy of an original of the late-fourth century).

31.
Precepts of Statecraft
, 812C–D. See also
Pericles
, 7.7: “the rest of his policy, he carried out by commissioning his friends and other
public speakers.”