Pericles the Athenian

by Rex Warner

  This was the Athens which Pericles loved and in which he believed. But he believed in other things as well, notably those principles of justice and moderation on which depend all structure, survival and growth. To him Athens was the best of all things. She must survive and she must row, but both survival and growth must derive from her own nature, which, while it demanded expansion, must be regulated, like the stars themselves, by justice. Anyone who thinks of Pericles as one who sought power for its own sake or who wished to exercise a power based on the lasting subjection of others is not thinking of the Pericles whom I knew.

  It is impossible, however, to deny that Pericles did employ compulsion to secure ends which he regarded as necessary, and those who adopt extreme views will say that this ill itself is evidence that he failed to respect the liberties of others. Pericles himself would never accept an argument so abstracted from the real context of human existence. If all compulsion were to be regarded as an infringement of liberty and every infringement of liberty as a crime, men would have to be either above the level of the gods or below that of the beasts. Obviously, in every organization some restriction, some compulsion, is necessary. This may be regarded as a general law which is followed by everyone. Where Pericles differs from others is that the restrictions which he commended or introduced were designed not for the diminution but for the expansion of liberty.

  So much for the general point of view, and let me repeat that what gave Pericles his extraordinary ascendancy was the fact that people recognized that he always, and with the utmost precision, examined the particular in the light of the general.

  Certainly he believed that in the end the whole Greek world would accept the leadership of Athens and that every city would tend to imitate the Athenian constitution. This, in his view, was the best, and indeed the only, practical means of securing safety against Persia and the free development of individual life. Finally, he believed, the states would voluntarily accept such a solution, influenced by the extent of Athenian power, the brilliance of Athenian example and the clear benefits of peace and prosperity within the Greek world. At the time when Aristides and Xanthippus were organizing the original League, the cities had hurried each one to be the first to join, and in so doing they had known themselves to be acting in their own best interests. Since then the situation had not altered except in the sense that the League could employ greater strength and confer greater benefits. A state which wished to secede from it would therefore not only be weakening the whole organization but also, whether or not this were recognized, acting in a manner contrary to its own interest. The case is exactly parallel with that of a soldier who wishes to desert. Whether his motive for the wish is cowardice or some fancied personal profit, such a soldier would be glad, if he had the power of mature reflection, for the sake of his good name and his real security, to be restrained from his mistake. So Athens, in her own interest and in that of others, had the right and the duty to prevent her alliance from disintegrating.

  Happiness, Pericles used to say, is impossible without freedom and freedom can be won and secured only by courage, enterprise and effort. He understood that in present conditions the freedom of Athens would always be menaced. The danger from Persia was obvious. Already the city had been twice set on fire by the Persians. So far as the war with Persia was concerned, Pericles on the whole agreed with the policies of Kimon, policies for which the League had originally been designed, though he differed from Kimon with regard to the necessary extent and duration of this war. Kimon, in his belief that this war was a great patriotic effort, would have wished it to go on without any definite limit. He even imagined the possibility of a great expedition by land and sea, under the leadership of Athens and Sparta, which would carry the war as far as Phoenicia and into the interior of Asia. The objectives of Pericles were more limited. Like Themistocles he thought of sea power. So long as Persian sea power was neutralized and the cities and islands of the Athenian alliance were secure, he was prepared, at least for the time being, to make peace with Persia, though for the moment it was necessary to make it clear that Athens, in spite of the Egyptian disaster, was invulnerable in her own seas. And, of course, where he differed radically from Kimon was in his estimate of Sparta. He knew that Sparta looked, and would always look, at Athens with extreme fear, distrust and jealousy, this seemed to him natural and inevitable, since the whole spirit and genius of Athens were utterly opposed to the tradition of Sparta, and Sparta, by the nature of her organization, was incapable of being anything but what she was. That Athens and Sparta should cooperate in the leadership of Greece seemed to him a political, even a logical, absurdity. Certainly facts were on his side. Even at the moment of her greatest danger, Sparta had preferred to insult an Athenian army commanded by her greatest Athenian friend rather than to risk political contamination from Athenian troops. For democracy itself was a threat to the existence of Sparta, and the more successful this democracy showed itself in action, the greater the danger would be. Pericles was convinced that the Spartan and the Athenian systems could not both exist and both flourish in the same world. And since, from every point of view, he regarded the Athenian system as incomparably superior, he was determined to resist any and every attempt that Sparta might make to intervene in Athenian affairs. Probably he thought that a final trial of strength was inevitable, though he hoped that by the time the slow-moving Spartans had nerved themselves for the necessary effort, they would have been hopelessly outdistanced by Athenian speed and enterprise. With this final end in view he believed that his policies were necessary. Indeed, he would go further and say that they were not only necessary but just. Injustice, he would say, is not in the use but in the misuse of power, and Athens was the only state in history which gave to her subjects more than she received from them.

  In the four or five years that followed the Egyptian disaster Sparta could, in fact, have done much damage to Athens. It was true, as Pericles had pointed out, that the defenses of Athens by land were impregnable, and that so long as her fleets remained in being she could never be decisively defeated. But both fleet and army had been seriously weakened. In my opinion (and, I think, in that of Pericles) if the Spartans had made a determined advance into the Megarid, they could have won successes which, if not conclusive, would certainly be important. Pericles, during this critical period, contrived to keep Sparta inactive, firstly by his bold initiative by sea, and secondly by giving all the support possible to Argos. There was indeed an inconclusive battle between the Spartans and an Argive army which had been reinforced by a detachment of Athenian troops. But all these operations were regarded by Pericles as preventive rather than aggressive. His fundamental concern was with the strengthening of the organization of the empire. He was ready to make peace at any time with Sparta, so long as Sparta demanded no concessions, since he knew that in peacetime the power and resources of Athens continued to grow while those of Sparta remained more or less static. He had rightly calculated that Sparta also was feeling the effect of her losses at Tanagra and would hesitate until too late to accept her present opportunity.

  But Spartan pride was as powerful as Spartan caution and was peculiarly susceptible to the opinion of others. To make a peace which would recognize, overtly or tacitly, Athenian control over Aegina, the Megarid, Boeotia and both coasts of the Gulf of Corinth would be regarded by the allies of Sparta as nothing less than an abject surrender. It says much for the resolution of Pericles that in the end, with only one concession from Athens, this surrender was made. After nearly five years Kimon, who, of course, had always been in favor of peace, was able to reach an agreement with the Spartan authorities. The peace was for a limited period of five years, but Kimon hoped that in this interval a more lasting treaty would be signed. Sparta had made no territorial claims of any kind against Athens. All she gained was a cessation of Athenian raids and quiet on her eastern frontier; for Athens undertook to raise no objections to a thirty-year treaty of peace between Argos and Sparta. In Athens it was rightl
y believed that the settlement negotiated by Kimon was one which five years previously Sparta would have been ashamed to make, and even the most ardent supporters of friendship with Sparta were prepared to admit that in securing this great diplomatic success the resolution and daring of Pericles had played at least as great a part as the good offices of Kimon.

  No sooner was the peace signed than the Athenians and their allies, again with a fleet of two hundred ships, set sail against Cyprus and Phoenicia. The expedition was under the command of Kimon. Thus quickly did Athens recover from the greatest disaster in her history.

  10

  Peace with Persia and with Sparta

  For this very short time there was a considerable degree of cooperation between Pericles and Kimon. There was no secret of the divergence of their views about Sparta, and Pericles was more ready than Kimon to conclude an honorable and safe peace with Persia. There was a great difference in age between the two men, Pericles being now in his forty-fifth year while Kimon was nearly sixty. Nor was there any fundamental agreement on home policy. Kimon looked back to the days when every political leader except Themistocles had come from a noble family, and though Pericles certainly was no exception to this rule, his leadership, in Kimon’s view, had been all in the opposite direction. However, Kimon was capable of accepting at least some facts. He realized that, contrary to his expectations, the general effect of Pericles’s policies had been to strengthen rather than weaken the morale of the fighting forces, and he approved on the whole of Pericles’s plans for increasing the military and economic efficiency of the empire. He had more than an uneasy suspicion that in domestic politics he was less well equipped than the younger man, and since throughout his life his main effort and ambition had been concentrated on the war with Persia, he was willing enough to leave home affairs to Pericles so long as he himself was entrusted with what still seemed to him the most important of all commands.

  In the reaching of this understanding a great part was played by Kimon’s elderly sister Elpinice and by her still more elderly husband Kallias, who was not only the richest but one of the most respected men in Athens. He was one of the few leading statesmen left who had fought at Marathon; he had won the chariot race at Olympia on three occasions; it had been by his money and influence that Kimon had been rescued from poverty and given those opportunities of which he had made such brilliant use. In the past Kallias had been, as was natural, closely associated with the policies of Kimon and, like most of his class, opposed to the aims and methods of Ephialtes and Pericles. But, unlike many of the rich, Kallias had a mind that was both intelligent and flexible. He saw that whether he liked them or not, the policies of Pericles had proved amazingly successful. Like Kimon, he was in favor of peace with Sparta, but he recognized that it was because of the resolution which Pericles had shown that this peace had been on terms so favorable to Athens. He was able too, I think, to sense that Pericles, once he felt Athens to be completely secure in the Aegean, was perfectly prepared to negotiate a peace with Persia, and though he was aware that his brother-in-law would oppose such a move, he was inclined agree with the general estimate of Pericles — that Athens, so long as she was prepared for war, would extend her power and influence more quickly and easily in a period of peace.

  So, while Kimon set out for the east, Pericles continued to give his attention to the organization of the empire and the democracy. One measure which he took at this time has aroused a certain amount of criticism from different points of view. This was his proposal to limit the citizenship to those born from Athenian parents on both sides. Some blamed Pericles for this measure on the ground that it was a step away from the long Athenian tradition of encouraging immigration to the city and making use of all human material that came to her; others accused him of irresponsible demagogy: he was once more, they said, bribing his own supporters — first he distributed lavish sums of money in state pay for the poorer classes, and now he was gaining further popularity by confirming these classes in their privileged position; others objected that this complete discrimination between the citizens of Athens and members of the alliance would lead to discontent among the allies.

  It seems to me that none of these criticisms can be justified. If Pericles had wanted more supporters, he would have gained them by increasing rather than restricting the citizenship; as it was, his popularity was already great enough. Like all the measures which he took at this time, this one was determined by the needs of efficiency. It was simply a question of limiting the numbers of those eligible for state pay to the point where the machinery of government would work smoothly and economically. This pay had to come out of taxation and, in Pericles’s view, the taxation of the allies was already high enough. He had no wish to restrict the influx of foreigners into Athens and would constantly refer to his pride in the fact that Athens could offer to her resident aliens more security, profit and pleasure than any other state. Athens was to lead the world not only in economic power and in all the manifestations of the intellect, but also in liberality and ease of living. He would always speak with contempt of the Spartan system of periodic deportation of aliens, contrasting it with the Athenian way of making every stranger welcome.

  Most of the criticism, therefore, of this measure seems to spring from mistaken ideas about its motives and its effects. It is a fact that after it was passed more foreigners flowed into Athens, finding work and happiness there, than ever before. Indeed, the next fifteen years may be considered as the greatest age of construction that the world has ever seen. There are, I know, larger buildings in Egypt in Babylon, but the Egyptian pyramids took several generations of men to construct and there is, so I am led to believe, something heavy and graceless in the architecture of Babylon. But Athens during these few years seemed to grow in grace and splendor every day. Not only on the Acropolis but in every quarter of the city, new buildings were to be seen in every stage of construction, new works of painting and sculpture delighted the eye. There was an endless and happy activity in which everyone in the city — citizens, foreigners and slaves — took part. And Piraeus was as busy as Athens herself. The work begun by Themistocles and continued by Kimon was being brought to completion by Pericles.

  This work not only was dear to his intellect and imagination but served to give employment to every trade and art. And there was a real necessity for employment, for now came a short period of complete peace, and the city was lull of soldiers and sailors released from their military duties. Kimon’s long career was over and for the first time in forty years no Athenian fleet was operating against Persia. In his last campaign Kimon seems to have shown all his old skill and daring, but he was confronted by a large Persian army and Phoenician fleet under the command of the Persian general who had annihilated the Athenian force in Egypt. Kimon was able to take part in the preliminary actions of the campaign and to give the orders which led to its conclusion. Once more, as at the Eurymedon, the Athenians defeated a great Persian army by land and a great Persian fleet at sea. The action took place at Salamis in Cyprus, but before battle was joined Kimon was dead. For some weeks he had been prostrated by fever. Knowing that he could not live, he gave instructions that his death should be kept secret until the battle had been won or lost. He may be said to have served Athens equally well by his death and by his victory. His victory had made it clear that Athenian power was as formidable as ever; his death removed the last obstacle to the making of peace.

  The opportunity was soon taken. The fleet and army returned to Athens with the body of the great general. People remembered the time long ago when Kimon, in his early and brilliant youth, had brought back (or claimed to have brought back) the bones of Theseus from Skyros, and now they honored him almost as a second Theseus. It was a fine end for Kimon, though he himself would not have approved the use to which his last victory was put. For immediately after the funeral Kallias led an embassy to the court of Persia and after very brief negotiations agreed on terms for a peace which is still in operation to thi
s day. By this treaty Athens abandoned her claims to Cyprus and Egypt (where indeed the Persians had already crushed nearly all resistance), and the Great King recognized the dominant position of Athens in the Aegean. He agreed to send no warships into what was now a sea controlled by Athens and her allies and not to move armed forces within three days’ march of the Asiatic coast. The terms of this peace would seem to indicate that all, or very nearly all, the aims for which the Athenian League had first been founded had been fully attained. Persia had accepted as final her withdrawal not only from Europe but also from the Greek seaboard of Asia and from the route to the Black Sea. It is doubtful whether Xanthippus and Aristides had ever hoped to gain so much. But even if Athenians have everything, they tend to want more, and at this time there were many of them who, in spite of the losses in Egypt, still thought that the Great King had got off lightly. Kimon, if he had lived, would certainly have been among these, and now many of his friends could be found who deplored what they described as the surrender of Greek rights in Cyprus. Some of these still held Kimon’s views about the desirability of cooperation with Sparta and more aware that Pericles himself intended to use the peace with Persia to so strengthen the position of Athens in Greece that Sparta would become a secondary power. But on the whole the peace was, if not welcomed, accepted. The Athenians did not boast of it, but they were glad to have it.