Pericles the Athenian

by Rex Warner

  Books by Rex Warner

  The Young Caesar

  Imperial Caesar

  Pericles the Athenian

  What I would prefer is that you should fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens as she really is, and should fall in love with her.

  PERICLES

  Prologue

  Anaxagoras of Clazomenai, the philosopher, writes to some members of the Town Council of Lampsacus.

  You do me great honor, my friends, in asking me to write down, for the instruction of future ages, some account of the thoughts and actions of Pericles the Athenian, the news of whose death we have just heard. And I have at least two reasons for being delighted to do as you ask. In the first place, Pericles was my pupil and my friend; he saved my life. Had it not been for him I should never have reached this agreeable city of Lampsacus. It is therefore fitting that I should wish to commemorate and, so far as I can, make immortal a man to whom I owe so much, and for whom I feel such regard. But I have other motives, not at all of a personal nature, which impel me to write of this great man. For it is my belief that, of all the Greeks of our time, he will be found to have been the most daring, the most resolute and the most intelligent. Thus, apart altogether from the charm of his nature and the brilliance of his achievements, he is a character of philosophical importance.

  The claims I am making for him are, I admit, great. Obviously, it may be said, Pericles was inferior to Themistocles or to Kimon as a general, to Aeschylus or to Sophocles as a poet, to me or to Parmenides as a philosopher. What then? Facts such as these do not prevent him from being superior to us all. As I have been careful to point out in my philosophical work, there are elements of everything in everything, though one characteristic, if sufficiently emphasized, will determine the appearance of the whole. Thus one may be known and seen in the light of some particular skill or particular enthusiasm, if that skill or enthusiasm is great or brilliant enough. In man, however, all skills, beauties, aspirations and endeavors are in a very special way (which I have explained elsewhere) subject to intelligence. It is intelligence which causes motion and directs the whole. And this it is which in Pericles I most notice and most admire — a general force of intelligence pervading his nature, powerful in so many directions at once, pure, unmixed with the sordid, extending beyond the moment, irresistible.

  All this may be admitted. All this is, indeed, obvious to those who, like myself, have seen the intelligence of the man in action, who have watched him in the Assembly of the Athenians, justifying to these hotheaded, volatile, yet keen-minded and resolute men some unpopular policy or guiding them, as though they were sleepwalkers, in some direction which they had never imagined. If one can control Athenians, one can control anything; and here even Pericles sometimes had his setbacks. Yet on the whole his dominance was complete; and on the whole (though of course there were occasions when he appealed to the people’s greed or ambition) this dominance was exercised by reason clear, vehement and sincere. He shaped the mass separating, combining, putting in order — like that intelligence which, in my philosophy, is the cause of the appearance of everything and of all worlds.

  This in itself may seem to be enough to justify one in describing Pericles as “great.” Yet there are still questions which may be and no doubt will be asked: Was this intelligence used wisely, and in the best and truest interests of his country and of himself? Will his work prove to be lasting or ephemeral? Was the empire that he created really as splendid as he imagined, or was it, as the Spartans and their allies say, a tyranny?

  Athens is now at war, and there is no doubt that Pericles himself led his country into this war, the issue of which remains uncertain. It is possible that in the course, of this Athens will be destroyed. It is also possible that the whole of Greece will be so weakened by this struggle that she will be left an easy prey to Persia or to some other barbarian power as yet unknown. In the boyhood of Pericles, it may be said, Greece was united and glorious; at the time of his death Greece has split into two furiously hostile camps. For this state of affairs he is certainly, in a large measure, responsible. May we not say, therefore, that his admittedly great intelligence was misapplied, that his organization was in the direction of chaos?

  A difficult question, my friends, but not, I think, insolvable. Let us remember that what appears is not the truth of the matter. What appears is, as I have written elsewhere, a mere vision of the unseen. At first impression, our ordinary, unaided senses are too weak to enable us to judge the truth. But this does not mean that truth is inaccessible to us. Reflection and experiment can detect error and discover order. I well remember how, when I was quite a young man and Pericles only a boy, I demonstrated to him, by simple experiment of inflating wineskins with bellows, that air is corporeal. Yet we are accustomed to think of it as mere emptiness. Pericles, with his usual quickness of mind, immediately grasped the general principles involved. I do not mean simply that he recognized the obvious fact that appearances are deceptive. No, his mind ranged further than that. “If,” he asked me, “there is no empty space in the universe, how can one thing be separated from another thing? How can one thing come into existence and another cease to be? How can there be any motion?” I believe that at that time he had had no instruction in philosophy, yet in a flash he saw the essentials of the problem with which Parmenides, Empedocles and I have been chiefly occupied.

  I used to think that I had solved this problem. Now I am not so sure. Yet I remain perfectly convinced of the validity of my method, the scientific method which was discovered, for the first time in human history, in my native country of Ionia. All things are subject to the same laws, though these laws will operate in diverse ways. All perception, for instance, is produced by opposites and all sensation must imply pain. Yet perception, at its best, is clear and distinct; and sensation is often pleasurable. We live in a world of contradictions, and these contradictions are as evident in human affairs as they are in the movements or constitutions of the heavenly bodies. But we Greek philosophers have made the assumption (perhaps the most daring assumption ever made) that all these contradictions are subject to general law and will be found to be in the end capable of explanation.

  Now, with regard to history and social organization, our knowledge, our speculation and our practice are less advanced and much less precise than in the cases of, say, mathematics or physics. Moreover, there is an important difference between the former and the latter subjects. The life of man must be not only studied, but lived. And to be lived adequately, it must be consciously shaped towards certain ends. Not all ends are possible. Man, for example, cannot live the life of a reptile or a bird. He is subject, too, to various pressures of external nature. He must find food to keep himself alive. He must fortify himself against his enemies. These and other essentials for survival have often been regarded as of such importance that the whole of human endeavor has been devoted to securing them. Many men, in all states, think of nothing, from the cradle to the grave, except how to acquire the money which will ensure them food, shelter, and safety. Great powers, such as Sparta, have been organized entirely on the basis of military domination over neighbors who, unless terrified, would revolt. Nor can one say that these limited ways of life are without virtue. The Spartan is certainly brave; the hardworking businessman contributes grain, oil and other necessities to his countrymen. But the businessman, occupied entirely with his own affairs, is seldom a good judge of music, literature or philosophy; and the Spartan, as I have often observed, loses all his virtue as soon as he is removed from the familiar environment of his armed camp. These limited, restricted lives, lived without reference to the more numerous and engaging aspects of human nature, have never appealed greatly to any of us Ionians. But it must
be owned that often, when confronted with what has seemed a solid stupidity, we, with our greater daring, initiative, variety and intelligence, have somehow, because of a central weakness, collapsed.

  Pericles, as he was the greatest Athenian, was also the greatest Ionian. He was never, as Kimon was, deluded into the sentimental belief that brute force and discipline are in themselves superior to intelligence and versatility. Hence his lifelong opposition to Sparta. Yet he would never belittle the qualities that are known, rather incorrectly, as specifically Dorian. His aim was rather to incorporate these qualities (and to intensify them) in a character which would be, for this time and for all times, specifically Athenian. In the Athens which he loved, the soldier would be as brave on the field of battle as any Spartan; but his courage would spring from reflection, knowledge of what was at stake, a natural and self-imposed discipline rather than from the doggedness that comes from years of arduous training or the emulation that is a form of self-regard. Pericles did not hold the view that one virtue is incompatible with another. His ideal Athenian would possess all the virtues and he would carry them with a peculiar grace and a peculiar versatility. The Athenian was to be like a god — only a god with a city and with work to do.

  Athens, of course, was not the creation of Pericles. The qualities which Pericles admired and sought to intensify were in existence before his birth and had triumphantly revealed themselves in action during his boyhood. For the disciplined enterprise of Athens had more to do with the defeat of the Persians than had the selfish and unenterprising courage of Sparta. What Pericles did was deliberately to accelerate a process that had already begun. The greatness of his intelligence is shown in the facts that he was, more than all others, conscious of this process and that, in advancing it, he chose (within the limits which must bound any human action) precisely the best and most appropriate means. It is scarcely too much to say that he was in Athens producing something which almost amounted to a new race of men. How successful he was, it will be for posterity to judge. For myself, if I might hazard a guess, I should say that future ages will wonder at Athens as we wonder at her now; and whatever the result of the present war, I should maintain this view. And if I am asked, “Did Pericles disrupt Greece?” I shall answer, “No. Greece was already disrupted. The mind of man has always been disrupted. What Pericles did was to make a choice; and in doing so, he acted like a creator.”

  These assertions of mine, my friends, may possibly surprise you, as they seem to lack evidence for their support. I shall attempt in what I write to provide the evidence in the way that seems to me most honest and most satisfactory. I shall relate the facts, so far as they are known to me, and I shall not attempt to conceal anything which may conflict with an easy or personal or short-cutting explanation. Things are not cut off short with a hatchet; and those of you who have any experience of my philosophy will know that in any assessment of any event or situation I expect contradiction. But I search for and I adore truth.

  And now in approaching my subject I ask myself how best the truth be discovered and imparted. Obviously I must narrate all those significant events in the life of Pericles which are known to me either from personal experience or from the trustworthy accounts of others. But I must also, I think, do rather more than this. None of us is wholly free from prejudice and partiality; and I, in this case, should at least indicate the angle from which my observations are being made. More important still, I must not treat Pericles as an isolated object in space. He is as connected with the past as he is with the future. I must at least make some reference to the old history out of which he created the new.

  Now my viewpoint is that of an Ionian who has spent most of his life in Athens. And it so happens that I played a small part in some of those great events which were the background to the boyhood of Pericles. I accompanied the Persian expedition to Greece and was an eyewitness of some of the actions of the war. If, therefore, I begin my account of Pericles in what may be described as an autobiographical manner, you will not, I hope, my friends, consider that I am doing this from vanity. I am merely adopting what seems to me to be the most scientific method for my purpose, which is an investigation, not of myself, but of Pericles. As I approach the period when Pericles began to enter upon political life, I shall try to write in such a way that you will scarcely know that I exist.

  1

  From Clazomenai to Salamis

  They say, “Each man his city,” but I have had three cities and for all of them I feel loyalty and affection. Now I am privileged in enjoying the citizenship here at Lampsacus and here I hope that I shall spend my declining years. At Athens, of course, I never was a full citizen. This was a right most jealously guarded by the Athenians and not least by Pericles himself. Yet still I felt that Athens was my city, the city of all Ionians, the city of all Hellenes. And this is what Pericles wished us to feel.

  I was born at Clazomenai, on the Greek coast of Asia, in sight of the sea, the long headlands, the immensely varying sky. Clazomenai, as you know, is one of the twelve Ionian cities, and my father, a man of some wealth, often undertook official duties at our temple, the Panionion, to the south of us, opposite Samos. He played his part too in the great Ionian revolt against Persia which took place soon after my birth. Naturally I remember nothing of this revolt, but in my childhood nurses, relatives and friends would constantly be telling me stories of it — of how the Ionian army had made a daring march inland and had burned the Persian capital of Sardis and of how the news of this brilliant success had roused up the Greek cities from the far south of Asia Minor as far as the Dardanelles to fight for their liberty and for the great days before the coming of the Persians. Even before the attack on Sardis — indeed, at the very beginning of the revolt — Athens, though engaged at the time in war with the neighboring island of Aegina, had boldly sent to us, her kinsmen, a large proportion of her fleet and a considerable force of infantry. Sparta had done nothing to help us. I heard many stories of the heroism displayed by the Ionians in the four or five years of active resistance which ended in the great naval battle off Miletus, where our fleet of triremes numbered no less than three hundred and fifty — the largest Greek fleet that had ever put to sea. In the stories which I heard I was encouraged to admire the performances of my people, and indeed, as boys will, I did admire anything worthy which had any connection with myself. But on closer reflection I found little to admire except individual actions. I could discover no guiding intelligence in the affair. It struck me as remarkable that the Athenians, after having helped us in the opening and most dangerous stages of the revolt, subsequently withdrew their support, and it occurred to me that they might have correctly estimated the situation — a situation in which many states were more interested in securing advantages over their neighbors than in defeating the enemy. There was no unity of command and, after the beginning, little initiative was shown. On the other hand, the Persian armies on land operated, evidently, with great intelligence, and in the naval battle at Lade it was the Persians, not the Greeks, who attacked. Indeed, most of the great Greek fleet dispersed even before battle was joined. This was not because we lacked courage, but because we were not infused with that guiding intelligence which promotes resolution and achieves results. How different it was in that sea battle, fought near the same place some fifteen years later, when Pericles’s father Xanthippus, leading an Athenian fleet, recovered our liberty at Mycale!

  For failing to show a sufficiently patriotic enthusiasm for the Ionian revolt, I was later accused before the Athenian courts of being pro-Persian, though of course the really serious charge against me was that of impiety. Needless to say, both charges were false. I sympathized with those of my fellow countrymen who had died bravely, though on investigation, it seemed to me certain that they had died aimlessly or, at any rate, with an aim not sufficiently defined. It was indeed a tragedy, but a tragedy that was not entirely worthy. I was much moved when I heard of what had happened in Athens at a dramatic festival just after the coll
apse of the revolt and the capture of Miletus. The playwright Phrynichus had put on a play describing these final events and the whole audience had been moved to tears. They had then fined Phrynichus a large sum of money and had passed a decree forbidding any future performance of his play.

  I myself was lucky to have been so young at this time, as in the cities recaptured by the Persians many of the boys not greatly older than myself were castrated and sent back to serve as eunuchs at the king’s court or in the palaces of Persian noblemen. Many of the girls also were sent away, but their fate may at least be described as being in accordance with nature.

  At Clazomenai, however, which was one of the first of the cities to be reoccupied by the Persians, the reprisals were not heavy and did not last long. I myself can remember no inconvenience of any kind. In general, I believe that the Persian policy towards the Greek cities was wise and tolerant. In most of these cities democratic governments were established with the aid of Persian influence; the taxes were not excessive; and many Greeks found positions of trust and honor at the Persian court. Indeed King Darius, who was by all accounts not only an admirable administrator but a good and honorable man, welcomed and protected Greeks from the mainland as well as from the Ionian cities. He had with him, of course, from Athens the sons of Pisistratus, the great dictator, and from Sparta the exiled King Demaratus, an extremely intelligent man for a Spartan, and the only Spartan king who had ever won the chariot race at Olympia. And there were others too who, without being exiled, still chose to serve the Great King. It is not surprising, then, that to most of us during my childhood and early youth, it seemed natural and inevitable that the vast and, on the whole, beneficent power of Persia should overwhelm the world. We were wrong, but there was at that time little evidence to prove us wrong.