Pericles of Athens (9 page)

Exceptional though Pericles’ career as a
stratēgos
was, he was never invested with the preeminent position of running the business of
the city on his own, as some historians have claimed. That hypothesis is based on
an overhasty reading of a passage in Thucydides in which the historian mentions Pericles’
return to grace soon after being removed from office in 430 B.C.: at this point the
Athenians elected him
stratēgos
yet again and entrusted him with “all affairs” (
panta ta pragmata
) (2.65.4). Some interpreters have regarded this as proof that Pericles was now designated
stratēgos autokratōr
and have assumed that he had regularly held this special position in the past. However,
there is nothing to support that conjecture. In Athens, “full powers” such as those
were attributed only for a special mission, on a particular occasion. What Thucydides
probably means to say here is nothing more than that “the Athenians had full confidence
in him in all matters.”
¹⁵
One might even say that, in a period of warfare,
panta ta pragmata
would refer only to a city’s “military affairs”—in other words, to precisely the
business for which a
stratēgos
was responsible.

The fact remains that Pericles’ longevity as a
stratēgos
truly was extraordinary, given the brutal events that affected the democratic city
in this period. What can be the explanation for that permanence at the head of Athenian
affairs? Although it is not the only factor involved here, this string of reelections
may be explained in particular by Pericles’ numerous military successes. The fact
is that victory was not only the aim of all
stratēgoi
, who were elected precisely to wage a war and to win it; it was also one of the motors
of their continuing hold on power: victory enveloped a victorious leader in a charisma
that, in return, guaranteed him popular support.

T
HE
V
ICTORIOUS
S
TRATĒGOS
: T
HE
P
ATHS OF
G
LORY

The Charisma of Victory

In the course of his long career at the head of the Athenian armies and navies, Pericles
won many battles. Although not himself a specialist in warfare, as Phormion was, he
took care to surround himself with competent individuals, relying in particular on
the aid of “Menippus, his friend and second-in-command as
stratēgos
[
hupostratēgountos
].”
¹⁶
Thanks to the latter’s skills, Pericles won many victories—no fewer than nine according
to Plutarch: “Being now near his end, the best of the citizens and those of his friends
who survived were sitting around him holding discourse of his excellence and
power, how great they had been, and estimating all his achievements and the number
of his trophies,—there were nine of these which he had set up as the city’s victorious
general” (
Pericles
, 38.3). Among these successes there were three that particularly struck the minds
of his contemporaries. One century later, the orator Lycurgus of Athens recalled that
Pericles “had conquered Samos, Euboea and Aegina,”
¹⁷
all of them victories won over recalcitrant allies in the Delian League.

However, military successes were not enough. News of them needed to spread. Pericles
publicized his own successes with masterly skill. His talent as a propagandist shone
out in the full glare of publicity after the victory over Samos in 440/439. On this
occasion, Pericles was chosen by the Athenians to deliver, in the public cemetery,
the
dēmosion sēma
, the funeral oration for the soldiers who had died for their country. Thanks to his
oratorical skill, this was a chance not only to celebrate the citizens who had fallen
in battle, but at the same time implicitly to convey the part that he himself had
played in the final victory. A number of famous phrases from this speech have been
preserved for us by Plutarch and Aristotle,
¹⁸
and we know that his eulogy aroused so much admiration that “as he came down from
the tribune, … the women clasped his hand and fastened wreaths and fillets on his
head, as though he was some victorious athlete [
hōsper athlēten nikēphoron
]” (
Pericles
, 28.4). Thanks to the charm of his eloquence, Pericles was showered with a glory
that likened him to the victors in athletic games. The comparison is certainly apt:
the athletes who won crowns received extraordinary honours from their city—in particular,
honorific statues that were raised to them in the public squares,
¹⁹
and thanks to the prestige that this bestowed upon them, some became important political
leaders, one being the famous Milo of Croton, at the end of the sixth century.

To celebrate his victory over the Samians, Pericles also made the most of another
comparison that was equally flattering to him. Ion of Chios tells us that he compared
this success of his to Agamemnon’s capture of Troy, even going so far as to proclaim
himself superior to the
Iliad
’s king: “he had the most astonishingly great thoughts of himself for having subjected
the Samians; whereas Agamemnon was all of ten years in taking a barbarian city, he
had in nine months’ time reduced the foremost and most powerful people of Ionia” (Plutarch,
Pericles
, 28.5). In this brief summary, Pericles presented himself in the guise of an epic
hero, thereby appropriating the aura associated with the Homeric poems.
²⁰

This strategy of heroization involved not only words but also images. Even though
it may not have been consecrated until after his death, in 429, the bronze effigy
of Pericles set up on the Acropolis glorified his function
of
stratēgos
far more emphatically than his own true features would have. Placed among the sanctuary’s
most prominent monuments,
²¹
this standing statue corresponded to a well-known type of representation of a
stratēgos
: it featured both nudity and a raised Corinthian helmet placed on the statue’s head.
²²
The helmet evoked Pericles’ function as
stratēgos
—namely, military strategy—while the nudity likened him to the heroes, or even the
gods, in accordance with the iconographic conventions of the day. The effigy thus
celebrated the memory of Pericles as a great man who had defended his country.

However, such forms of self-glorification attracted virulent criticism from his political
opponents, who were bent on minimizing the extent of his military successes and condemning
the shameless publicity that he bestowed upon them.

A Disputed Military Reputation

At a strictly military level, Pericles was in no way an exceptional
stratēgos
. In fact, he came off badly in comparison with certain of his predecessors and colleagues,
so much so that Plutarch even presents him as living off the military successes of
others: “The victories of Cimon and the trophies of Myronides and Leocrates, and the
many successes of Tolmides, made it the privilege of Pericles, during his administration,
to enrich the city with holidays and public festivals, rather than to enlarge and
protect her dominion by war.”
²³
So was Pericles really a mediocre
stratēgos
who exploited the victories achieved by his colleagues? Although that would probably
be an exaggerated conclusion to draw, his merits certainly were less dazzling than
those of other
stratēgoi
who were more familiar with military manoeuvres.
²⁴

His opponents belittled him not only for his modest warrior talents but also for the
way that he publicized his own rare victories. After the war against Samos and the
funerary speech that he delivered, he fell victim to the biting irony of Elpinike,
Cimon’s sister. According to a report probably made by Ion of Chios,
²⁵
she criticized him for having “lost us many brave citizens, not in a war with Phoenicians
or Medes, like my brother Cimon, but in the subversion of an allied and kindred [
suggenē
] city.”
²⁶
Pericles appears to have learned his lesson from those bitter criticisms. In the
funerary speech that he delivered in 431, after the first campaigning season of the
Peloponnesian War, he certainly refrained from launching into pompous praises for
his own actions. According to Thucydides, he explicitly refused to appeal to Homer—as
he had at the time of the war against Samos, in order to exalt the Athenian dead:
“We shall need no Homer to sing our praise nor any other
poet whose verses may perhaps delight for the moment but whose presentation of the
facts will be discredited by the truth.”
²⁷
Perhaps this was also his way of confirming that Athens no longer needed to invoke
the glorious precedents of the past in order to celebrate the battles of the present:
in a kind of prefiguration of the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns, the
city now presented itself as a model for others to follow, not simply an imitator.

Those were not the only criticisms leveled at Pericles where military matters were
concerned. His opponents also blamed him for having sometimes prevented his political
rivals from fighting in the best of conditions, even to the point of endangering the
whole city. For example, he was said to have forbidden Cimon to take part in the battle
of Tanagra, in 457, in order to prevent this troublesome rival from returning to favor.
Cimon, the hero of Eurymedon, who had been living in exile for five years, had on
this occasion hoped to reintegrate himself into the Athenian forces and thereby prove
his devotion to his country, which was then at war with the Spartans. Having obstructed
him, Pericles was obliged to show exceptional heroism himself, so as to wipe out the
memory of the services offered by his rival: “For which reason, it is thought, Pericles
fought most sturdily in that battle and was the most conspicuous of all in exposing
himself to danger.”
²⁸

In similar fashion, Pericles is said to have done his utmost to prevent Cimon’s son,
Lakedaimonius, from covering himself with glory in battle. According to Stesimbrotus
of Thasos, in 433 B.C. Pericles sent Lakedaimonius to assist Corcyra, which was then
in difficulty, facing Corinthian interference, but Pericles provided him with only
10 triremes, thereby rendering his task impossible.
²⁹

So was Pericles simply a sordid manipulator, striving to belittle the merits of his
rivals in order to magnify his own and to be the only one to tread the paths of glory?
We should beware of drawing overhasty conclusions that are based solely on a reading
of Plutarch. In the first place, Lakedaimonius was not the only
stratēgos
sent on this mission to Corcyra: Cimon’s son was accompanied by two of his colleagues,
as is attested both by Thucydides and by an inscription recording the expenses devoted
to this venture.
³⁰
Furthermore, it was the people of Athens who decided on the despatch of these
stratēgoi
, not Pericles himself. The fact nevertheless remains that, in a context of perpetual
rivalry between political and military leaders such as this, it was in each leader’s
interest to see that his rivals basked in as little glory as possible on the battlefields.

There was yet another, even more radical criticism that Pericles had to face. Throughout
his career, the
stratēgos
favored a way of waging war that broke radically with the traditional customs and
codes. Whenever possible, he tried
to avoid fighting, thereby sometimes attracting accusations of cowardice or even treachery
from opponents who found themselves short of arguments.

A R
EFLECTIVE
S
TRATĒGOS
: A D
ELIBERATE
R
EJECTION OF
H
EROISM

Pericles
Cunctator
?

In military matters, Pericles was inevitably bound not to benefit from more than a
limited degree of charisma, by reason of the proverbial circumspection that caused
Plutarch to compare him to Fabius Maximus, the
Cunctator
(delayer), the Roman consul who obstinately refused to confront the Carthaginians
following the defeat at Trasimene in 217 B.C., in order to give the Romans time to
reorganize their forces.

Nothing was more alien to Pericles than the kind of rashness displayed by military
leaders who were in quest of glory, even at the risk of imperiling the city: “nor
did he envy and imitate those who took great risks, enjoyed brilliant good fortune
and so were admired as great generals.”
³¹
In this respect, he deliberately turned his back on the heroic ideal that favored
combat in all circumstances, even if it meant paying the ultimate price, in accordance
with the ambivalent model set by Achilles.
³²

Pericles stood in opposition to one other
stratēgos
in particular. This was Tolmides, the son of Tolmaeus (whose very name sets out its
own agenda, since
tolmē
means “rashness” in Greek). Tolmides was keen to invade Boeotia in 447, and at this
point he was well placed to win over the people “on account of his previous good fortune
and of the exceeding great honour bestowed upon him for his wars [
dia to timasthai … ek tōn polemikōn
]” (
Pericles
, 18.2). It was a frantic quest for glory that eventually ended in disaster, for the
battle of Coronea was a serious defeat for Athens, in the course of which Cleinias,
the father of the handsome Alcibiades, was killed.
³³

Pericles adopted the same prudent behavior in 440, at the time of the war against
Samos. He preferred to embark on a lengthy siege rather than throw himself into an
ill-prepared attack. As Plutarch explains, he wished to conquer the town “at the price
of money and time, rather than of the wounds and deadly perils of his fellow-citizens”
(
Pericles
, 27.1–2). However, such circumspection greatly aggravated the Athenians “in their
impatience of delay and eagerness to fight” (ibid.). Eventually, the
stratēgos
was obliged to devise a stratagem to distract their impatience.