Pericles of Athens

by Vincent Azoulay, Janet Lloyd

  Given this context, when Plutarch, on the subject of the Odeon, declares that Pericles “supervised” (epistatountos) the construction (Pericles, 13.9), the biographer was clearly misrepresenting the reality. Only two possibilities are plausible: either he was referring to the official post of an epistatēs, the supervisor of a construction site, elected by the people, in which case he forgets that the stratēgos was obliged to agree with the other nine members of the commission;20 alternatively, he was assuming that someone held the power of general supervision over all such works, and that is something that is nowhere attested by the contemporary sources.

  Plutarch’s testimony also needs to be considered cautiously where he writes of the building sites on the Acropolis where, if we are to believe him, “everything was under Phidias’s charge and all were under his superintendence, owing to his friendship with Pericles.” For in the first place, strictly speaking only the construction of the statue of Athena Parthenos can be attributed to the hand of Phidias; and second because, in the case of every one of his projects, Pericles had to persuade the Assembly to vote in favor of them and was obliged then to submit to controlling procedures that were beyond his own official powers. The ancient authors tend to ascribe to the stratēgos monuments that were in fact constructed both by the people and in the name of the people. This conflicting information is laid bare whenever it is possible to compare literary sources to the epigraphical documentation. Whereas Plutarch presents Pericles as the one who dedicated the monumental statue of Athena Hygieia, the foundation stone discovered on the Acropolis mentions only the Athenian people; the name of the stratēgos does not appear at all.21

  One thorny question nevertheless remains. How should we treat the claims of Lycurgus who, one century later, insisted on personalizing the great works produced between 450 and 430? That biased presentation makes sense once it is set in context. Clearly playing on the idea of a mirror image, by recalling memories of Pericles, Lycurgus was aiming to enhance his own actions as the builder who restored the Acropolis monuments. By magnifying the stature of the stratēgos, he hoped to increase his own.

  So should we deny Pericles any role in the great building projects that, from the mid-fifth century onward, multiplied in Athens, on the Acropolis, and on Cape Sunium? To do so would be to go too far, redressing the balance in an excessive manner. Certain documents allow us to glimpse how, within the framework of this concerted monumental policy, the collective will and individual initiative interacted. To come to a clearer understanding, we need to turn away from the domain of great stone monuments and consider the construction of more modest structures: fountains. A fragment of a decree dating from 440–430 B.C. mentions the provision of a fountain at Eleusis and explains how the project was financed: the Assembly decided to honor Pericles, Paralus, and Xanthippus, and his other sons, but to meet the costs by drawing on the money paid as tribute.22 Although fragmentary (the name of the stratēgos has been restored by epigraphists), this inscription does make it possible, with a certain degree of likelihood, to trace the process that led to the fountain’s construction. Initially, Pericles and his sons proposed to use their own resources to pay for either the whole or at least part of the monument. In doing so, they were acting as men keen to earn the favor of the people, for the provision of water was a matter of crucial importance in a Mediterranean land blasted by the sun and with insufficient supplies of water,23 not only for physical survival but also for performing numerous rituals both civic and private, such as lustrations and sacrifices, nuptial baths, and the washing of corpses. The people thanked them for this proposal but never theless declined the offer and eventually financed the project using funds received as tribute from the allies.24

  This interaction between individual initiative and popular control echoes an episode recorded by Plutarch that likewise involves polemics sparked off by the financing of major architectural works:

  Thucydides and his faction kept denouncing Pericles for playing fast and loose with the public moneys and annihilating the revenues. Pericles therefore asked the people in assembly whether they thought he had expended too much, and on their declaring that it was altogether too much, “Well then,” said he, “let it not have been spent on your account, but mine, and I will make the inscriptions of dedication in my own name [tōn anathēmatōn idian emautou poiēsomai tēn epigraphēn].” When Pericles had said this, whether it was that they admired his magnanimity or vied with his ambition to get the glory of his works, they cried out with a loud voice and bade him take freely from the public funds for his outlays and to spare naught whatsoever (Pericles, 14.1–2).

  As in the case of the Eleusis fountain, the Athenian people were definitely keen to preserve their own major responsibility for great works; these had to redound to the glory of the whole community, not distinguish private individuals (idiōtai). All the same, Pericles’ influence was by no means minimal in the process of decision-taking, for he seems to have acted as the spur or even the initiator for the decisions taken by the community. The great works thus appear to have been the product of close negotiation between the people and the members of the Athenian elite.

  However crucial Pericles’ influence on monumental policy may really have been, his name rapidly became associated with these grandiose constructions and this helped to confer upon him exceptional political stature in the eyes of the western world. And there was another element that supported this impression of Periclean domination: namely, the introduction, for the first time, of pay for civic services. In the ancient sources, the creation of the misthoi was certainly interpreted as a symbol of the patronage that Pericles exercised over the Athenian people, reducing it to a passive recipient of the great man’s benefactions.

  The Beneficent Patron

  In the second half of the fourth century, already, the author of the Constitution of the Athenians was defending such an analysis, and Plutarch later concurred with his account:

  Pericles first made service in the jury-courts a paid office, as a popular measure against Cimon’s wealth. For as Cimon had an estate large enough for a tyrant, in the first place he discharged the general public services in a brilliant manner, and moreover he supplied maintenance to a number of members of his deme; for anyone of the Laciadae who liked could come to his house every day and have a moderate supply, and also all his farms were unfenced, to enable anyone who liked to avail himself of the harvest. So as Pericles’ means were insufficient for this lavishness, he took the advice of Damonides of Oea …, since he was getting the worst of it with his private resources, to give the multitude what was their own; and he instituted payment for the jury-courts; the result of which according to some critics was their deterioration, because ordinary persons always took more care than the respectable to cast lots for the duty.25

  Within this framework of Aristotelian analysis, the misthos was represented as a means for Pericles to rival the wealth of Cimon and become the patron of the people, which this collective gift had the effect of infantilizing. However, that version of the situation needs to be considered with circumspection. By the late 450s, Cimon no longer held any real political power. He had been ostracized ten years earlier and, although he was recalled to Athens in 451, his influence must by then have been limited.26 It is above all the interpretation given by the Constitution of the Athenians that needs to be reexamined. Its author analyzes the pay given to jurors from a typically anti-democratic point of view (later emulated by Plutarch27), regarding it simply as a way of buying the people and, for Pericles, a means by which to turn himself into the patron of the poorest of the Athenians. According to that author, the introduction of the misthos was simply the fruit of a rivalry between aristocrats before which the people were mere spectators mechanically tending to support whichever side seemed the more generous.

  As Pauline Schmitt Pantel has shown, that polemical interpretation deserves radical revision. With the creation of the misthos, Pericles was not establishing a new form of patronage—commu
nity patronage—to take over from private patronage, which Cimon embodied, as is clear for two reasons. In the first place, the misthos was not distributed by any identifiable individual, but by the community itself. So its assignation created no personal dependence between donor and recipient. Instead, it was the community that redistributed to a particular fraction of itself (the judges) wealth that it considered them to deserve. Second, its aim was radically different from that of private patronage: far from being a form of assistance, as was claimed by the detractors of radical democracy, this payment was awarded for active participation in the city institutions and so in no sense had an infantilizing effect.28

  Instead of being a measure reminiscent of the Roman client-system, the introduction of the first misthoi diminished the influence that members of the Athenian elite could acquire through patronage. However, it never quite ousted the latter phenomenon, if only on account of the size of the sum of money paid, which was relatively small, certainly not enough to satisfy the needs of the poorest citizens.29 However that may be, the payments did not turn Pericles into the unchallenged patron of the Athenian community.

  By now, at the end of our investigation, that supposed Periclean monarchy seems no more than a myth. The great construction works and the establishment of the misthos testify to the growing sovereignty of the dēmos just as much as to the domination of the stratēgos. Not only was Pericles obliged constantly to work with the other magistrates, but, both institutionally and socially, he was placed under the strict control of the Athenian people.

  PERICLES UNDER CONTROL: THE POWER OF THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY!

  One of Many Magistrates

  Pericles never held military power on his own. The stratēgoi always acted in a collegial fashion, never individually:30 a single magistrate could never impose his will upon his colleagues, unless, that is, they wished him to do so. So his influence has probably been overestimated, partly as a result of the point of view adopted by the literary sources and the context in which they were produced. The comic writers based their craft on personal attacks and always set particular individuals on stage, often enough exaggerating their influence the better subsequently to demolish them. It was as if one were to pass judgment on the British political scene, gauging it solely in relation to the TV series Spitting Image, a satirical puppet show. As for Plutarch, his biographical viewpoint inevitably focused excessively on his particular hero, and it did so the more emphatically given that he was writing within a political framework—the Roman Empire—in which personal power had become the norm.31

  An attentive rereading of the texts suggests that we should adopt a more circumspect attitude. Although Thucydides is always quick to ascribe unequaled domination to Pericles, he also mentions plenty of other important actors in the period between 450 and 440,32 at both the military and the diplomatic levels. First, at the military level it is the stratēgos Leocrates who is in command in the war against the people of Aegina in the early 450s (1.105.2); Myronides distinguished himself at Megara (1.105.3), as did the spirited Tolmides both at Chalcis and against the Sicyonians in 456/5 (1.108.5), before suffering a bitter defeat at Coronea in Boeotia in around 447 (1.113.2). In the years between 440 and 430, the stratēgos Hagnon seems to have held all the key roles. He was stratēgos alongside Pericles in the second year of the campaign against Samos (440–439),33 and was then, in 437/6,34 sent to found the colony of Amphipolis in Thrace, which was a great honor for him. In fact, Hagnon was judged by the Athenian people to be sufficiently powerful to deserve ostracism,35 although, in the event, not enough votes favored his banishment. Second, at the diplomatic level, Pericles clearly remained in the background—whether or not deliberately is not known—in the negotiations with the Spartans. The Thirty Years’ Peace was negotiated by Callias, Chares, and Andocides in 446, and Pericles was not even present at the negotiations.36 Similarly, at the time when the plague was ravaging the city and the Athenians sent ambassadors to parley with the Spartans (Thucydides, 2.59), this was clearly against the advice of the stratēgos.37

  It is true that the posthumous aura of Pericles eclipsed many actors of the time, but they too shaped the destiny of the Athenian city in the course of those troubled decades. Throughout his career, the stratēgos inevitably had to share power, as was the custom in Athens, and above all had to submit to popular control. In the final analysis, it was the people who remained sovereign. However persuasive Pericles may have been, his influence was only temporary and could at any point be challenged by a change of heart on the part of the dēmos. As there were no political parties in Athens, nor any stable majority, every decision was the subject of negotiation between the orator and the people. The balance was precarious, and the situation of orators was often uncomfortable, for the popular assembly could change its mind and sometimes did so very rapidly, retracting its earlier commitments. Not long after Pericles’ death, Thucydides mentions two successive assemblies, the second of which reversed the decisions made a few days earlier on the fate of the Mytilenaeans who had revolted in 427 B.C. Even an orator with a huge majority of votes in favor of his advice on one day could find himself totally rejected on the next.38

  In a wider sense too, the people exercised strict control over the orators and stratēgoi, maintaining them in a perpetual state of tension by resorting to more or less formalized supervision.

  Multiform Institutional Supervision

  In Athens, the stratēgoi and, more generally, all incumbents of magistracies were submitted to frequent and persnickety controls. These checks involved, in the first place, a rendering of accounts at the end of a magistrate’s mandate, necessitating a double examination. In the fourth century—and probably as early as the fifth—stratēgoi had to face a commission of controller-magistrates, the logistai, who verified all financial aspects of their management. In cases of proven irregularities the logistai, who were selected by lot from among all the citizens, could refer the affair to the courts. Furthermore, the stratēgoi could be prosecuted by any citizen before the members of yet another committee, an offshoot of the council. These were the euthunoi. If they judged the complaint to be well founded, they passed the case on to the competent magistrates (thesmothetai), who then organized a trial.39

  Historians have for many years maintained that, in cases where a stratēgos was reelected, this procedure was omitted for practical reasons—for instance, the magistrates might be on a mission far from the city, rendering the examination impossible. In that case, Pericles would not have had to render any accounts during the fourteen years in which he had, without fail, been reelected; and this would have greatly diminished the control exercised over him. But in reality this hypothesis has to be abandoned. In the first place, expeditions of long duration were rare in the fifth century; Pericles was never away from Athens for more than a year, except at the time of the war against Samos, which lasted from 441 to 439. Second, Pericles did render his accounts after the Euboean revolt, in 447/6, despite the fact that he was reelected as stratēgos for the following year. “When Pericles, in rendering his accounts for this campaign, recorded an expenditure of ten talents as ‘for sundry needs,’ the people approved it without officious meddling and without even investigating the mystery” (Plutarch, Pericles, 23.1). So it is clear that stratēgoi did render their accounts even when they were reappointed to their posts.40

  One anecdote recounted by Plutarch conveys just how stressful the procedure was for Athenian magistrates, even the most influential of them: “[Alcibiades] once wished to see Pericles and went to his house. But he was told that Pericles could not see him; he was studying how to render his accounts to the Athenians. “Were it not better for him,” said Alcibiades, as he went away, “to study how not to render his accounts to the Athenians?” (Alcibiades, 7.2). Alcibiades was Pericles’ evil genius, but this remarkable role-reversal turns the undisciplined youth’s tutor, Pericles, now no longer Alcibiades’ teacher, into his pupil in the school of crime!

  Over and above that e
xercise of control, at the end of a magistrate’s duties, the Athenians had the power to depose the city’s principal magistrates even while they were still carrying out their official mandate: each month the Athenians voted, with a show of hands, on whether or not they confirmed their magistrates in their positions, epikheirotonia tōn arkhōn.41 In the event of a negative vote (apokheirotonia), the magistrate was forthwith deposed. This was probably the procedure of which Pericles was a victim in 430/429, when he was dismissed from his duties as a stratēgos.42 Following that first sanction, the stratēgoi could be arraigned for high treason (eisangelia). Treason was a fairly vague notion to the Athenians; losing a battle or being suspected of corruption was sometimes enough to set the procedure in motion. Pericles himself probably suffered this bitter experience in 430/429, when, after being deposed, he was judged and sentenced to pay a very large fine.43 According to Ephorus, the source for Diodorus Siculus,44 his accusers blamed him for being corrupt, and this probably explains why Thucydides, in contrast, goes to such pains to emphasize the incorruptibility of Pericles in his final panegyric for the stratēgos (2.65.8).

  Last, the Athenians also had at their disposal a more general mode of control over members of the city’s elite: the procedure of ostracism. This was instituted following Cleisthenes’ reforms; it consisted of exiling for a period of time any figure considered to wield too much influence. This limited the risks of a return to tyranny. The decision did not need to be justified—a fact that many ancient authors considered to be scandalous. It was applied for the first time in 488/7 B.C. against a certain Hipparchus, son of Charmus, who was probably related to the family of the former tyrants of Athens. In 485 B.C., Pericles’ father was a victim of the procedure of ostracism, but he was recalled at the time of the Persian Wars. According to Plutarch, it was because Pericles feared that he, in his turn, might be ostracized that he sided with the dēmos. Ostracism thus constituted a permanent threat that hung over the heads of the most influential Athenians and encouraged them to conform to popular expectations.