Pericles the Athenian

by Rex Warner

  This view is, to some extent at least, common to all civilized Greeks. We would all agree that a city must be organized to form a unity. But Pericles went much further than this. He was aware of the principles of organization in nature, in architecture, in music and in human affairs. In our discussions of philosophy we frequently dwelt upon the fact that it often requires only an apparently minor alteration in structure to transform one thing into another. So, when Kimon would argue that fundamentally Athens and Sparta were alike, the only differences being in variations of emphasis on elements in the political structure, Pericles could see clearly the fallacy in the argument. To him Athens and Sparta were utterly and irrevocably opposed. Each was organized to produce a different type of human being, and to Pericles there was no comparison in value between the two types. He knew from the beginning of his career that these types were irreconcilable, and his estimate of the needs of Athenian security necessarily influenced, or even shaped, much of his policy. Here again his ideas developed logically and with precision. In the first place the growth of the Athenian democracy would be impossible if Athens were subject, as she had been in the past, to Spartan interference. Themistocles had taken the first steps to give Athens the complete independence which she required by fortifying the city and by increasing the navy. Xanthippus, Aristides and Kimon (though Kimon scarcely realized what he was doing) had carried the process further, and by their organization and leadership of the Athenian confederacy had in a few years doubled or trebled the resources in manpower, money and shipping available to Athens. From the time when Pericles began to exercise his long predominant influence on affairs he proceeded, more consciously than any of the statesmen before him, to make Athens first invulnerable and then superior to Sparta.

  By the time of which I am writing the first object was attained and the second seemed to be within reach. There were some (notably the young general Tolmides) who believed that the moment had come to challenge Sparta in the Peloponnese. Already, in the year after Tanagra, he had circumnavigated the Peloponnesian coast with a large fleet, landing troops wherever he wished. He had burned the Spartan dockyards at Gythion and had gone on to find new allies in the western islands, to demonstrate Athenian supremacy and to fortify new naval bases in the Gulf of Corinth. It was his belief that the moment had come to finish with Sparta once and for all by means of seaborne invasions combined with Argos and with the serf population of Sparta herself. Pericles could see just as well as Tolmides the possibilities of such a plan. Had he considered bloodshed necessary he would no doubt have supported it. But he was both more cautious and more confident than Tolmides. He believed, rightly, that at the moment Athens had nothing whatever to fear from Sparta, and he was confident that so long as Athens preserved her system of alliances and retained a firm grip on her allies, she would grow stronger and Sparta weaker with every year that passed. In particular he was averse to losing Athenian lives. Kimon and Tolmides used to encourage their men by reminding them of the glory of death in battle. Pericles, who was at least as aware as they of the glory in dying for one’s country and who commanded equal loyalty and enthusiasm, used to say to his men, “I am commanding free men and Athenians. You know that if it depended on me, each one of you would be immortal.” He had reason to believe that time and, one might almost say, history were on the side of Athens. Sparta was shrinking into herself while Athens was advancing in every direction. New alliances were made as far west as Sicily; new colonies were established at points with strategic or commercial advantages throughout the Aegean. These colonies strengthened the position of Athens abroad and gave useful and profitable employment for the surplus home population.

  During this time a Persian agent was in Sparta, spending large sums of money in an attempt to bribe the authorities to invade Attica again. That Pericles’s estimate of the situation was correct may be shown by the fact that the Spartans, though they took the bribes, made no move at all. They could not afford another battle like Tanagra; they feared their own subjects; and they were bewildered by Athenian enterprise.

  It should be added that Pericles, like Themistocles, while ready to take risks where risks were necessary, was fully aware of the part played in affairs by what is unpredictable. It soon appeared that his comparative caution was fully justified; for while Tolmides was raiding the Peloponnese, the news arrived of an unexpected and what must have seemed to many an irreparable disaster in Egypt.

  9

  The Egyptian Disaster and Athenian Countermeasures

  Since the days of Kimon’s victories on the Eurymedon, Persia’s sea power had appeared negligible and her land power incapable of concentration. The very fact that the Great King had attempted to secure the intervention of Sparta seemed an indication of his weakness. It was natural, therefore, that when the news reached Athens that her whole fleet and army had been destroyed, people were first unable to believe the story and, when finally convinced of its truth, stunned by the enormity of the disaster.

  A large Persian army under a most competent commander had invaded Egypt, utterly defeated the Egyptian rebels in battle, and then marched unopposed up the Nile to Memphis. They had reoccupied the city and relieved the siege, which had now lasted six years, of the White Castle. The Athenians and their allies, with their land and sea forces intact, had withdrawn to a defensive position on an island in the Nile. They were prepared to stand a siege in their turn, and though their position had certainly worsened, it seemed by no means desperate. But they had failed to take account of the possibilities of this low-lying country with its interconnected system of waterways and canals. Before the Athenians had had time to build adequate defenses, the Persians had diverted the main current of the river. The ships were left high and dry and the army, attacked and surrounded by greatly superior forces, was cut to pieces. Only a very few had succeeded in fighting their way through, and many of them had died from thirst or exhaustion on the desert march which at length gave some of them refuge in the Greek city of Cyrene. Another Athenian force of fifty ships had sailed up one of the branches of the Nile with the intention of relieving their comrades who had been fighting so long at Memphis. They knew nothing of the battle or of the subsequent disaster or of the presence of a large Phoenician fleet, which now followed them up the river, cutting off all possibility of retreat, while both banks of the Nile were occupied by the Persian army. These ships too were destroyed or captured, and the crews and soldiers aboard were either killed or taken prisoner. So, in a few days, Athens had lost two hundred ships (a number equivalent to their whole fleet at Salamis), some thirty thousand sailors and about eight thousand heavily armed marines. It is true that more than half of these losses were from the naval and land contingents of the allies, but there was little comfort for the Athenians in this, apart from a certain diminution in the extent of merely personal loss. Already many of the allies had shown reluctance in carrying out their naval and financial commitments, and the news of their heavy losses in Egypt would certainly encourage all those who were waiting for an opportunity to secede from the alliance. In fact, within a month, news came that at Miletus the anti-Athenian party had massacred the democratic government and proclaimed an independent state.

  In Athens the feeling was of bewilderment and of anguish. No comparable disaster had ever been suffered. Even when the Persians had occupied Athens herself, the fleet had remained intact, the losses in battle had not been considerable, and the war had ended with Athens far stronger than when it began. Now it appeared that the work of years had gone for nothing. Not only power but security was slipping away. With her diminished manpower Athens was in no position to engage once more a Spartan army, and it seemed doubtful whether her naval resources were strong enough to deal with any widespread revolt among the allies. Some were for making peace on almost any terms with Sparta or with Persia or with both. Some, as was natural, blamed the generals for their too ambitious policies; but these were few, since ambition is never regarded for long as a crime by the Athenians;
such malcontents also were without leadership, since Kimon had been more committed to the Persian war than anyone else.

  The fact that at this dreadful moment the people almost unanimously looked to Pericles for reassurance and for guidance is, I consider, one of the most notable examples of the extraordinary courage and intelligence of the Athenians. For Pericles had already the reputation that he was to bear for the rest of his life. It was known that he would not speak in a manner calculated to please, that he would not minimize difficulties, that he would be likely to demand sacrifices and unlikely to offer easy solutions for difficult problems. But it was also known that he would speak with the confidence of one who has examined his subject from every aspect and would have made up his mind on what should be done first, what next and what last; that he would express himself with the kind of logic that would make what was confused clear; that in what he said there would be no self-interest, since his unique aim was the preservation and the glory of Athens. On such occasions the people looked up to Pericles almost as to a god, but to my mind what does them the greatest credit is that they expected from him qualities which are not always apparent in divinity. They expected to have their minds set at rest not by miracle or emotion but by the cogency of reason and the example of a consistent resolution.

  Pericles did not disappoint them. He spoke with reverence and deep feeling of those who had given their lives for Athens and went on to say that unless under the most extreme compulsion it would be disgraceful to allow them to have laid down their lives in vain. Peace now was neither honorable, nor wise, nor necessary. At the moment the enemies of Athens believed her to be weaker than she was. They would therefore demand more than they had the right to have or the power to take. Athens had certainly suffered a reverse, but she was still the greatest city in Greece. She must show herself as such. Her land defenses were impregnable; her fleet, even after the losses in Egypt, was still the most powerful and experienced in the world. She had the resources and the skill to build in a few years double the number of ships that had been lost. As for the dangers of the present moment, they should be neither minimized nor exaggerated. People were inclined to think that they had most to fear from Persia and from Sparta. This view was mistaken. The Persians had been able to concentrate a large army and a powerful Phoenician fleet in Egypt. But so long as Athens held every important naval station in the Aegean, these forces could never advance farther north than Cyprus. As for Sparta, she might indeed do damage if she were to invade; but the risk involved would be a great one and Sparta had never shown herself willing to take a risk. Athens now had bases on the Gulf of Corinth and still sufficient ships to prevent a seaborne invasion, and she had defenses by land which would make any invasion by any force extremely hazardous. Moreover, Sparta had as good reasons as Athens herself to conserve her manpower. At Tanagra she had lost as many men as Athens And she had been further weakened by the earthquake and the revolt of the serfs.

  The dangers immediately threatening Athens were neither from Sparta nor from Persia. But there were other dangers much more considerable, and the chief of these was the possibility of disaffection among the allies. This real peril must be dealt with first. Miletus must immediately be forced to submit and to punish those who had murdered the friends of Athens. There must be no relaxation anywhere in the empire. New colonies should be sent out, new allies should be acquired. In the interests of greater efficiency the treasury of the League should be moved from Delos to Athens. This was, in any case, a desirable step to take and it could be justified in the eyes of the allies by the possibility (admittedly remote) that the Phoenician fleet might make a surprise attack on Delos.

  Almost unanimously the Athenians accepted Pericles’s analysis of the situation. An expedition was immediately sent out to Miletus and before long the city was forced to submit, to pay an increased tribute and to accept a government friendly to and dependent upon Athens. At the same time Pericles himself sailed from Pagae, on the Corinthian Gulf, with a fleet and an army. His object was to demonstrate the existence and renewal of Athenian power and enterprise. Sailing unopposed up the Gulf, he made landings wherever he chose, enrolled more troops from allies on the southern shore, strengthened the Athenian posts in the north and advanced as far as the Corinthian colonies outside the Gulf in the northwest. All his operations were successful and were achieved almost without loss. This campaign, carried out at such a time, did more than anything else to restore Athenian confidence and to discourage those of her enemies who had believed her to be, after the Egyptian disaster, incapable of a quick recovery.

  With this important object attained, Pericles now gave all his attention to the reorganization of the empire and to the rebuilding of Athenian strength. By this time the only members of the alliance who supplied ships were the large islands of Chios, Lesbos and Samos. All the rest provided money payments instead. Athenian commissioners were sent out to reassess the amounts to be paid by individual states, and in most cases the tribute was reduced. But in return for these concessions the cities were expected to make some sacrifices in the interests of the economic and military efficiency of the empire as a whole. It was in these years that the use of Athenian currency, weights and measures was introduced everywhere in the Athenian alliance. This was, quite obviously, from the point of view of the general interest, a wise step to take. But, as we all know, every city is jealous of its own individuality, and there were many who, in spite of the economic advantages to be gained, resented the loss of their own particular systems of coinage and measurement, however antiquated and unwieldy these might be shown to be. More unpopular still was the policy initiated by Pericles of planting settlements of Athenian citizens, called “shareholders,” at strategic points. Tolmides established one of these colonies as occupiers of the best land on the island of Naxos. Others were placed along the vital route to the Black Sea at Andros and Euboea, and it was Pericles himself who founded the colony across the sea from Lampsacus on the narrow straits leading to the Propontis in the country once governed by Kimon’s father, Miltiades. Also there was more political interference than before in the affairs of the cities. It would be untrue to say that democratic governments were installed everywhere, but the tendency was certainly in this direction. In most cities it was the party of the few rather than that of the many who resented the extension of Athenian control, and it was natural for Athens to support her friends rather than her enemies.

  Now it is chiefly with regard to these policies and others like them that Pericles has been attacked by his enemies at home and abroad; criticism was intensified a few years later when he initiated the great building projects on the Acropolis and employed on these buildings, which are now, and will remain, the wonder of the world, money contributed by the allies to what was originally a fund for mutual defense against Persia. And at the present time, now that war has broken out on a really great scale between Athens and Sparta, the Spartans justify their action by maintaining that the war is for the liberation of Greece from a tyranny imposed by Pericles on unwilling subjects.

  Of course for Sparta to put forward such an argument is plainly absurd. They have never been interested in the liberty of anyone, except that of a small minority among themselves, and even this minority receives an education too narrow and too mechanical to admit of either enterprise, thought or imagination, without which the word “liberty” is nearly meaningless. What the Spartans are fighting for is survival.

  However, because an argument is used hypocritically it does not necessarily follow that it is untrue; and no one who wishes, as I do, to present Pericles as he was can avoid considering it. It is certainly an argument of which Pericles himself understood the full force. If we attempt to follow the course of his thinking on this subject we shall find, I think, evidence of the keenest intellectual power applied with objectivity and moderation to the practical consideration of what is desirable and what is possible.

  Behind everything that Pericles said and did lay his passionate an
d reasoned faith in the genius of the Athenian people and in the unique expression of this in the Athenian democracy. If we decide that he was, for whatever reason, mistaken in this faith, then much in his thought and action will be found to be indefensible. But I myself find it difficult not to recognize that Athens has been and still is what Pericles described it, “an education to Greece.” We must first judge her by her achievements. After that it is possible to inquire whether these achievements could have been carried out by any different or better means than those employed by Pericles.

  Now very briefly, and without exaggeration, it may be stated that it was Athenian enterprise and ability which were the decisive factors in winning the Persian wars and in liberating not only our cities on the Asiatic coast and on the islands but the whole of Greece. Within the Athenian democracy each man has a greater opportunity to develop each one of his abilities than exists in any other political organization. The result is a spirit of confidence, initiative and versatility which is in itself unique and which has shown itself in every field of human activity, military, political, artistic and intellectual, superior to anything else in existence. No one would question the fact that the greatest practitioners of every art and science of which we know have been either Athenians or dwellers in Athens during the present century.