Pericles

Athenian statesman

• Born: c. 495 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Athens, Greece
• Died: 429 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Athens, Greece

The Age of Pericles was a crucial period in the history of Athens. Pericles’ transformation of the Delian League into the Athenian Empire provided the financial basis for the flowering of Athenian democracy.

Early Life

Pericles (PEHR-ih-kleez) was born in Athens around 495 b.c.e., the son of Xanthippus and Agariste (the niece of Cleisthenes of Athens). As the son of a wealthy aristocratic family in Athens and possessed of an above-average intelligence, Pericles received an excellent education from private tutors. The two men who had the greatest influence on Pericles’ life were the musician Damon and the philosopher Anaxagoras. Damon taught Pericles the moral and political influence of music, and Anaxagoras taught him political style, effective speech making, and analytical rationalism.

Although Pericles had prepared himself for a political life, he did not openly side with any of the factions in Athens until 463, when he joined in the prosecution of the Athenenian statesman and general Cimon. During this period, various political factions frequently brought charges against their opponents, with the goal of diminishing the prestige of the accused. Cimon, having recently returned from a two-year military campaign against the island of Thasos, which had rebelled against the Delian League, was brought to trial by the democratic faction on charges of bribery. In this instance, Cimon was acquitted.

In 462 Sparta requested military aid from Athens because of a revolt among the helots (serfs). Sparta, a city-state unfamiliar with siege warfare, needed help in trying to dislodge the helots who had fled to and fortified Mount Ithome in Messenia. Cimon urged the Athenians to cooperate with the Spartans, while the democratic faction, led by Ephialtes and Pericles, opposed any form of cooperation. On this occasion, Cimon won popular support and led an Athenian force to Mount Ithome. The Spartans, however, having reconsidered their request, dismissed Cimon and his men when they arrived. Because of this humiliation, Cimon’s influence with the people declined rapidly.

With Cimon in disgrace, the democratic faction now focused its attention on the Areopagus, the council of former archons (magistrates). In 461 Ephialtes and Pericles led the people in stripping the Areopagus of any real power. Cimon, unable to rally the conservative opposition, was ostracized in the same year. Not long after, a member of the conservatives assassinated Ephialtes, and Pericles became the new leader of the democratic faction.

Life’s Work

Pericles’ main achievement as the leader of Athens was the conversion of the Delian League into an Athenian Empire. The Delian League was originally formed in 476 b.c.e. as an offensive and defensive alliance against Persia. Although it was composed predominantly of Ionian maritime city-states individually bound by treaty to Athens, with all member states considered equal, only Athenians were league officials. The league collected annual tribute from its members to maintain a fleet. For all practical purposes, it was an Athenian fleet, built and manned by Athenians but paid for by the allies. Because the allies had been paying tribute every year since 476, the income of the league far exceeded its expenditures. When the league treasury was transferred from Delos to Athens in 454, it contained a vast sum of money that was essentially at the disposal of the Athenians.

Pericles, believing that the Athenians had every right to enjoy the benefits of empire, introduced numerous measures that provided pay to Athenians for their services as soldiers, magistrates, and jurors. An estimated twenty thousand Athenians were on the government payroll. In addition, so that no Athenian would be deprived of the opportunity to attend the plays of the Dionysiac Festival, even the price of admission to the theater was given to the poor.

The city of Athens itself was not to be neglected in Pericles’ plans for the Delian League treasury. Pericles was building commissioner for the Parthenon and many other important building projects in Athens. The Parthenon, Propylaea, Odeum, and Erectheum are merely a few of the many temples and public buildings that were built or planned under the direction of Pericles but financed with league funds.

To increase the power of Athens, Pericles attempted to enlarge the Delian League. When the island of Aegina, located in the Saronic Gulf near Athens, declared war on Athens in 459, Pericles saw an opportunity to expand the league by creating an Athenian land empire that would complement the sea empire already embodied in the league. After the Athenians captured Aegina and forced it to become a member of the Delian League, the Peloponnesian coastal area of Troezen, facing Aegina, joined the league in self-defense. When Sparta tried to counter Athens by helping Thebes to dominate the Boeotian League in 457, Athens sent troops to fight the Spartans in the Battle of Tanagra. Although Athens lost the battle, Sparta soon withdrew its forces, and Athenian troops returned to rally the Boeotian League against Thebes. With the Boeotian League joined to the Delian League, the neighboring areas of Phocis and Locris joined the league, along with Achaea. By 456, the Periclean strategy of creating an Athenian land empire was a success, and the empire had reached its greatest territorial extent.

The Athenian land empire, however, disintegrated almost as quickly as it had been created. In 447 b.c.e., the Boeotian League revolted against Athens. As a result, Athens lost not only control of Boeotia but also the support of Phocis and Locris. When the five-year truce with Sparta expired in 446, Sparta invaded Attica with a Peloponnesian army and encouraged the Athenian allied island of Euboea to revolt. Pericles quickly dealt with the two problems by bribing the Spartan commander of the Peloponnesians to leave Attica and by personally leading the Athenian reconquest of Euboea. While the Athenians were temporarily distracted, Megara broke its alliance with Athens and joined the Peloponnesian League, along with Troezen and Achaea. All that remained now of the Athenian land empire was Aegina, Naupactus, and Plataea. Because Athens was in no position to reverse the situation, Athens and Sparta agreed in 445 to the Thirty Years’ Peace.

Pericles successfully led the democratic faction in its control of Athenian politics from 461 until his death. He was a political genius in that he was able to provide leadership to the Athenian people without being led by them. The only surviving contemporary evidence of the opposition to Pericles is from Attic comedy. In general, the opponents of Pericles resented his oratorical skill, his family’s wealth, and his political successes. Pericles was a very reserved and private individual, and his enemies interpreted these personality traits as signs of haughtiness and arrogance. Having earned the confidence of the people, however, Pericles was frequently elected strategos (general) in the 450’s. When his chief political opponent, Thucydides, son of Melesias, was ostracized in 443, Pericles led the people virtually unopposed and was elected strategos every year until his death in 429 b.c.e.

The Peloponnesian War broke out in 431, when Athens and Sparta found that they could no longer observe the Thirty Years’ Peace. Pericles believed that Athens and the Delian League had strategic advantages over Sparta and the Peloponnesian League. While the Peloponnesians had access to greater numbers of troops than the Athenians and had more agricultural land on which to produce food to support those troops, the Peloponnesians lacked a large fleet and so were more or less restricted to conducting a land war. The plan of Pericles was for the Athenians to abandon their property and homes in Attica and withdraw into the city of Athens. With its long walls assuring access to the port of Piraeus, Athens could withstand a siege of any length. In addition, Athens controlled the Delian League treasury and possessed a large fleet that could be used for hit-and-run raids on the Peloponnesians. As a safety precaution, however, Pericles set aside one thousand talents from the league treasury and reserved one hundred ships to be used only in the extreme emergency of defending Athens itself.

As Pericles predicted, the Peloponnesians invaded Attica in 431 and ravaged the countryside, trying to lure the Athenians from their walled city to fight a pitched battle. The Athenians, however, held firm. Instead of fighting in Attica, the Athenians, under Pericles’ direction, mounted an attack on the Peloponnese. After they ravaged the territory of Epidaurus and Troezen, the Athenians sailed to Laconia to bring the war directly to the Spartans. After the Peloponnesians had withdrawn their troops from Attica, Athens prepared to bury its dead. It was the custom of the Athenians to choose their best speaker to give the funeral oration for the first men who had fallen in a war. As expected, Pericles was chosen for this honor. Pericles’ funeral oration was more a speech extolling the virtues of Athens than a speech of mourning. He clearly wanted to impress on the living Athenians the greatness of their city and the enlightened life they were privileged to lead.

In the second year of the war, the Athenians continued to follow the Periclean strategy. The people withdrew from Attica into Athens when the Peloponnesians returned to ravage the land. Athenian morale, however, was devastated by a plague that broke out in the city, killing many people. In their anger and frustration, the people blamed Pericles for their suffering and drove him from office. Though he was tried for embezzlement, convicted, and fined, he was soon elected strategos once again. Within six months, however, Pericles contracted the plague; he died in 429. The Athenians would have to endure the rest of the Peloponnesian War without the guidance of their greatest leader.

Significance

Pericles was the dominant political figure during the most important period in Athenian history. Rather than being a demagogue who flattered the people and pandered to their base instincts, Pericles won the people over to his policies by his forceful and energetic oratory. While some politicians sought to win a following by agreeing with whatever was currently popular, Pericles used his oratorical skill to lead the people to decisions that he thought were correct. Possessing an incorruptible character, Pericles gained the confidence of the people and knew how to keep it. By respecting their liberties and by offering the Athenians a consistent policy, Pericles prevented the people from making what he considered grave errors in judgment. What Pericles failed to understand, however, was that personal government was, in the long run, harmful to the state because it limited the ability of the people to govern themselves. In addition, while Athens enjoyed its democracy, the Athenians refused to recognize that it was based on the political, military, and financial oppression of others in the empire.

Although Athens and Sparta did go to war in 431, Pericles had worked for peace twenty years before. In 451, Sparta and Athens agreed to a five-year truce; in 449, Persia and Athens reached an understanding in the Peace of Callias. With Athens assured of peace, Pericles called for a meeting of all Greek city-states to consider the issue of peace throughout the Greek world. According to Pericles, representatives at the proposed meeting were to discuss the rebuilding of all temples destroyed during the Persian Wars, the elimination of piracy, and the promotion of trade and commerce between and among all Greek city-states. Although because of Spartan opposition such a meeting was never held, Pericles’ proposal showed that the Athenians were content with the territories they had and that they wanted peace.

Bibliography

Andrewes, A. “The Opposition to Pericles.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 98 (1978): 1-8. While Plutarch is the main source of information on the struggle between Pericles and Thucydides, son of Melesias, Andrewes shows that he is unreliable because of his anti-imperialist bias. Although there were opponents to Pericles’ building program, the argument that it was wrong to use league funds would not have been made, for Athenians viewed the empire as theirs to be enjoyed.

Bloedow, Edmund F. “Pericles’ Powers in the Counter-Strategy of 431.” Historia 36 (1987): 9-27. Bloedow tries to discover the constitutional basis for the power of Pericles through a close study of Thucydides. Although Pericles was only one of ten generals (strategoi) who led the state, he wielded authority that went far beyond that of a general.

Cawkwell, George. “Thucydides’ Judgment of Periclean Strategy.” Yale Classical Studies 24 (1975): 53-70. Cawkwell examines Thucydides’ belief that the Athenians brought ruin on themselves when they strayed from Periclean strategy after the death of Pericles.

Ehrenberg, Victor. Sophocles and Pericles. Oxford: Blackwell, 1954. More than a third of this work directly concerns Pericles and his leadership role in Athens. The author provides an excellent analysis of all the dramatic and comedic references to Pericles and the politics of his time. The comments of the author on Plutarch’s use of sources are invaluable.

Hignett, C. A History of the Athenian Constitution to the End of the Fifth Century b.c.. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1975. Contains three chapters that cover the Athenian democracy from the revolution of 462 to the fall of the Athenian Empire. The author covers all Periclean laws and their impact on the Athenian constitution. Although a very specialized study, this work is seminal.

Kagan, Donald. The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989. The author discusses the position taken by Thucydides that the Peloponnesian War was inevitable. Kagan reexamines the foreign and domestic decisions made by Pericles and the Athenians and concludes that the war was not inevitable, but was the result of poor judgment and bad decisions.

Kagan, Donald. Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy. New York: Free Press, 1998. Biography chronicles the years leading into the great war between the Athenians and Spartans. Kagan argues that Pericles was a visionary political leader whose great mistake was to expect everyone to think and behave as rationally as he did.

Meiggs, Russell. The Athenian Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. This is an attempt to bring together all the available evidence for the Athenian Empire and to evaluate it in the light of archaeological and epigraphic evidence. The coverage is comprehensive. Seventeen appendices cover controversial points of interpretation.

Plutarch. The Rise and Fall of Athens. Translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1975. Contains a chapter on Pericles, together with other chapters on some of his political rivals. Plutarch preserves much material regarding Pericles’ time; the interpretations, however, are often biased. Still, the work is useful in showing the opinion of the opposition.

Ste. Croix, G. E. M. de. The Origins of the Peloponnesian War. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1972. An in-depth study of the reasons for the Peloponnesian War, based on a detailed reexamination and reevaluation of the primary sources. Includes forty-seven appendices and an extensive bibliography.

Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Translated by Charles Forster Smith. 4 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977. Books 1 and 2 of the first volume of Thucydides constitute the primary source on Pericles’ background, his political career, and his strategy for the transformation of the Delian League into the Athenian Empire. While historians may interpret and reinterpret Thucydides, he remains the indispensable beginning point for any study of Pericles.