impossible for armies; they can sail past hostile territory safely, while
armies must fight their way through; they need not fear crop failure,
for they can import what they need. In the Greek world, besides, all
their enemies were vulnerable: “every mainland state has either a pro-
jecting headland or an offshore island or a narrow strait where it is
possible for those who control the sea to put in and harm those who
dwell there.”25
Thucydides admired sea power no less and depicted its importance
more profoundly. His reconstruction of early Greek history, describing
the ascent of civilization, makes naval power the dynamic, vital element.
First comes a navy, then suppression of piracy and safety for commerce.
The resulting security permits the accumulation of wealth, which al-
lows the emergence of wal ed cities. This in turn al ows the acquisition
of greater wealth and the growth of empire, as the weaker cities trade
independence for security and prosperity. The wealth and power so ob-
tained permit the expansion of the imperial city’s power. This paradigm
perfectly describes the rise of the Athenian Empire. Yet Thucydides
presents it as a natural development, inherent in the character of naval
power and realized for the first time in the Athens of his day.26
Pericles himself fully understood the unique character of the naval
empire as the instrument of Athenian greatness, and on the eve of the
great Peloponnesian War he encouraged the Athenians with an analy-
sis of its advantages. The war would be won by reserves of money
and control of the sea, where the empire gave Athens unquestioned
superiority.
If they march against our land with an army, we shall sail against
theirs; and the damage we do to the Peloponnesus will be some-
thing very different from their devastation of Attica. For they can
not get other land in its place without fighting, while we have
Pericles and the Defense of Empire 51
plenty of land on the islands and the mainland; yes, command of
the sea is a great thing.27
In the second year of the war, Pericles made the point even more
strongly, as he tried to restore the fighting spirit of the discouraged
Athenians:
I want to explain this point to you, which I think you have never
yet thought about; it is about the greatness of your empire. I have
not mentioned it in my previous speeches, nor would I speak of
it now, since it sounds rather like boasting, if I did not see that
you are discouraged beyond reason. You think you rule only over
your allies, but I assert that of the two spheres that are open to
man’s use, the land and the sea, you are the absolute master of all
of one, not only of as much as you now control but of as much
more as you like. And there is no one who can prevent you from
sailing where you like with the naval force you now have, neither
the Great King, nor any nation on earth.28
This unprecedented power, however, could be threatened by two
weaknesses. The first resulted from an intractable geographic fact: the
home of this great naval empire was a city located on the mainland and
subject to attacks from land armies. Since they were not islanders, their
location was a point of vulnerability, for the landed classes are reluctant
to see their houses and estates destroyed.
Pericles made the same point: “Command of the sea is a great
thing,” he said. “Just think; if we were islanders, who could be less
exposed to conquest?”29 But Pericles was not one to allow problems
presented by nature to stand in the way of his goals. Since the Athe-
nians would be invulnerable as islanders, they must become islanders.
Accordingly, he asked the Athenians to abandon their fields and homes
in the country and move into the city. In the space between the Long
Walls they could be fed and supplied from the empire, and could deny
a land battle to the enemy. In a particularly stirring speech, Pericles
said, “We must not grieve for our homes and land, but for human lives,
for they do not make men, but men make them. And if I thought I
could persuade you I would ask you to go out and lay waste to them
52 Kagan
yourselves and show the Peloponnesians that you will not yield to
them because of such things.”30
But not even Pericles could persuade the Athenians to do that in
mid-century. The employment of such a strategy based on cold in-
telligence and reason, flying in the face of tradition and the normal
passions of human beings, would require the kind of extraordinary
leadership that only he could hope to exercise, and even in the face of
a Spartan invasion in 465–446, Pericles was not able to persuade the
Athenians to abandon their farms. In 431 he imposed his strategy, and
held to it only with great difficulty. But by then he had become strong
enough to make it the strategy of Athens.
The second major weakness was less tangible but no less serious,
arising from the very dynamism that had brought the naval empire
into being. Shrewd observers, both Athenians and foreigners, recog-
nized this characteristic of imperial exuberance and the opportunities
and dangers it presented. Many years after Pericles’ death, his ward,
Alcibiades, arguing for an imperial adventure against Sicily, painted the
picture of an empire whose natural dynamism could only be tamed
at the cost of its own destruction. Athens should respond to all op-
portunities for expanding its influence, he said, “for that is the way we
obtained our empire, . . . eagerly coming to the aid of those who call
on us, whether barbarians or Greeks; if, on the other hand, we keep
our peace and draw fine distinctions as to whom we should help, we
would add little to what we already have and run the risk of losing the
empire itself.”31 Like Pericles, he warned that it was too late for Athens
to change its policies; having launched upon the course of empire,
the city could not safely give it up: it must rule or be ruled. But Alcibi-
ades went further, asserting that the Athenian Empire had acquired a
character that did not permit it to stop expanding—an inner, dynamic
force that did not allow for limits or stability: “A State that is naturally
active will quickly be destroyed by changing to inactivity, and people
live most safely when they accept the character and institutions they
already have, even if they are not perfect, and try to differ from them
as little as possible.”32
In 432, when they tried to persuade the Spartans to declare war on
Athens, the Corinthians made a similar point from a hostile perspective,
Pericles and the Defense of Empire 53
connecting the dynamic nature of the empire with the similar nature
of the Athenians themselves. They drew a sharp contrast between the
placid, immobile, defensive character of the Spartans and the danger-
ous and aggressive character of the Athenians:
When they have thought of a plan and failed to carry it through
to full success, they think they have been deprived of their ow
n
property; when they have acquired what they aimed at, they
think it only a small thing compared with what they will acquire
in the future. If it happens that an attempt fails, they form a new
hope to compensate for the loss. For with them alone it is the
same thing to hope and to have, when once they have invented a
scheme, because of the swiftness with which they carry out what
they have planned. And in this way they wear out their entire
lives with labor and dangers, and they enjoy what they have least
of all men—because they are always engaged in acquisition and
because they think their only holiday is to do what is their duty
and also because they consider tranquil peace a greater disaster
than painful activity. As a result, one would be correct in saying
that it is their nature neither to enjoy peace themselves nor allow
it to other men.33
Pericles emphatically disputed such analyses. He did not believe that
the Athenian naval empire needed to expand without limit or that the
democratic constitution and the empire together had shaped an Athe-
nian citizen who could never be quiet and satisfied. This is not to say that
he was blind to the dangers of excessive ambition. He knew there were
Athenians who wanted to conquer new lands, especially in the west-
ern Mediterranean, Sicily, Italy, and even Carthage. But he was firmly
against further expansion, as his future actions would clearly demon-
strate. During the great Peloponnesian War, he repeatedly warned the
Athenians against trying to increase the size of the empire. It is also
revealing that he never spoke of the tremendous potential power of
the naval empire until the year before his death, when the Athenians
were despondent and needed extraordinary encouragement. He held
back from this not merely, as he said, to avoid boastfulness, but chiefly
to avoid fanning the flames of excessive ambition.
54 Kagan
If Pericles ever had planned to expand the empire, the disastrous
result of the Egyptian campaign in the 450s seems to have convinced
him otherwise. Its failure shook the foundations of the empire and
threatened the safety of Athens itself. From that time forward, Pericles
worked consistently to resist the desires of ambitious expansionists and
avoid undue risks. He plainly believed that intel igence and reason could
restrain unruly passions, maintain the empire at its current size, and use
its revenues for a different, safer, but possibly even greater glory than the
Greeks had yet known. Pericles considered the Athenian Empire large
enough and its expansion both unnecessary and dangerous. The war
against Persia was over; now the success of Pericles’ plans and policies
depended on his ability to make and sustain peace with the Spartans.
Thus, Pericles’ defense of the Athenian Empire required a complex
strategy. The Athenians needed to deter rebellions by the great power
of their fleet and the readiness to crush uprisings when they occurred,
as Pericles did against Euboea in 446–445 and Samos in 440, and other
places at other times. At the same time, the policy of controlling the
empire was firm but not brutal, as it became after the death of Peri-
cles in 429. His successors killed all the men and sold the women and
children into slavery at Scione and Melos. Neither Cimon nor Pericles
ever permitted such atrocities. At the same time as he counseled keep-
ing the allies under firm control, he also resisted the pressure toward
further expansion, fearing that it would endanger the empire Athens
already had. Finally, he continued to make the effort to persuade Athe-
nian critics and the other Greeks that the Athenian Empire was neces-
sary, justified and no menace to other states. Although Thucydides was
doubtful that a democracy could restrain its ambition and conduct an
empire with moderation for long, he believed that it could so under an
extraordinary leader like Pericles.
Further Reading
The nature and elements of the Athenian Empire are best outlined in the classic survey
of Russel Meiggs, The Athenian Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), updated
by Malcom McGregor, The Athenians and Their Empire (Vancouver: University of Brit-
ish Columbia Press, 1987), and P. J. Rhodes and the Classical Association, The Athenian
Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). Controversy arises over whether the
Pericles and the Defense of Empire 55
Athenians were exploitive imperialists or enlightened democrats who protected the
poor abroad through their advocacy of popular government. The arguments for both
views are set out well in Loren J. Samons II, The Empire of the Owl: Athenian Impe-
rial Finance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), and Donald W. Bradeen,
“The Popularity of the Athenian Empire,” Historia 9 (1960): 257–69. G.E.M. de Ste.
Croix most forcefully advanced the argument of Athens as a well-meaning protector
of the underclasses; see “The Character of the Athenian Empire,” Historia 3 (1954):
1–41, which should be read alongside the classic account of Athenian imperial finance
by M. I. Finley, “The Fifth-Century Athenian Empire: A Balance Sheet,” in Imperialism
in the Ancient World, ed. P.D.A. Garnsey and C. R. Whittaker, 103–26 (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1978).
Notes
1 Thucydides 1.97.1.
2 Thucydides 3.10.5.
3 Thucydides 1.99.2–3.
4 B. D. Meritt, H. T. Wade-Gery, and M. F. McGregor, The Athenian Tribute Lists, vol.
2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949), 69.
5 Thucydides 5.105.
6 Phocylides frag. 5.
7 Pseudo-Xenophon Respublica Atheniensium 2.7–8. This work was falsely attributed
to the historian Xenophon, and its true author is unknown. He is generally referred
to as “the Old Oligarch” because of this work’s antidemocratic views, but we do not
know his age or the purpose of his work, which is usually dated by internal evidence
to the 420s.
8 Hermippus in Athenaeus 1.27e–28a.
9 Pseudo-Xenophon Respublica Atheniensium 1.18.
10 Diodorus Siculus 12.4.5–6.
11 Raphael Sealey, “The Entry of Pericles into History,” Hermes 84 (1956): 247.
12 Eduard Meyer, Forschungen zur alten Geschichte, vol. 2 (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1899),
19–20.
13 Plutarch Pericles 17.1.
14 Some scholars have doubted the authenticity of the Congress Decree, as it is
called. For a good discussion, see Russel Meiggs, The Athenian Empire (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1972), 151–52, 512–15. Plutarch does not give a date for the decree, but
the sequence adopted here is the one chosen by those who accept its reality.
15 Pericles 12.2.
16 Pericles 12:3–4.
17 Thucydides 2.8.4.
18 Thucydides 1.75.3–5.
19 Thucydides 1.76.2.
20 Thucydides 2.63.1–2.
21 Thucydides 2.38.
56 Kagan
22 Thucydides 2.43.1.
23 Thucydides 2.64.3–6.
24 Pseudo-Xenophon 1.2–3.
25 Pseudo-Xenophon 2.4–6, 11–13.
26 Thucydides 1.4–19.
27 Pericles 1.143.4.
28 Pericles 2.62.1–2.
29 Pericles 143.4–5.
30 Pericles 1.143.5.
31 Thucydides 6.18.2.
32 Thucydides 6.18.7.
33 Thucydides 1.70.
Pericles and the Defense of Empire 57
3. Why Fortifications Endure
A Case Study of the Walls of Athens
during the Classical Period
David L. Berkey
The history of Athens during the classical period of Greek his-
tory is closely related to the building and rebuilding of the city’s
walls, as well as the extension of its defensive perimeter along the bor-
der of Attica. With every phase of construction, the walls transformed
the landscape and symbolized Athenian power, both at its peak and
at its nadir.1 Thousands of Athenian citizens and slaves constructed
these walls and forts, many of whom toiled incessantly at moments of
danger and uncertainty in the polis’s history. Throughout the classical
period, their construction was a critical public works project of great
political and strategic significance to Athens. In our contemporary era
of sophisticated technology, fortifications seem to remain ubiquitous,
and they reappear in new and innovative forms even as each new gen-
eration of military strategists seems to dismiss their utility. A review of
the century-long history of Athenian fortifications illustrates why walls
endure, and how construction practices evolve over time to meet new
diverse military and political agendas.
These grand investments of the city’s resources, both human and
material, in the defense of Athens are associated with some of the
city’s most prominent politicians and military commanders, in particu-
lar Themistocles, Pericles, and Conon. Following a time of both crisis
and triumph at the end of the Persian Wars, Themistocles began the
enlargement of Athens’s defenses and positioned the city to become
the foremost naval power in the Greek world. In the following decades,
Pericles ushered in the next phase in the fortification, the building of
the Long Walls. By the end of the century, years of conflict during
the Peloponnesian War had led to the destruction of these walls. The
resilient Athenian democracy commenced the postwar period with
a vehement desire to rehabilitate the city’s position within the inter-
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