Pericles the Athenian

by Rex Warner

  This message is a very fair example of Spartan hypocrisy. In fact, as we knew already, the Spartans were far from enthusiastic about carrying on the war against Persia. After the battle of Mycale, not only the great islands of Samos, Lesbos and Chios had joined the Greek League, but most of the Greek cities on the Asiatic coast had also applied for membership. But Sparta was most reluctant to commit herself. Her advice to the coastal cities was that they should take to their ships and emigrate westwards.

  Themistocles, however, and many other Athenians had already seen the prospect of a brilliant future. They could imagine a naval power great enough to sweep Persia from the Aegean and to guarantee the independence not only of the islands but also of the cities on the mainland. Such expansive dreams were beyond the capacity of the Spartans, and indeed, soon after Mycale, the Spartan admiral brought back his ships to home waters. Meanwhile, on the advice of Themistocles, instructions were sent to Xanthippus to employ the Athenian contingent of the fleet in carrying on the war. These instructions together with the refortification of Athens were absolutely decisive events for the future, and it may be that for them Themistocles deserves even more credit than for his leadership at Salamis.

  The story of the fortifications is well known. We all worked at them — men, women and children and the evidence of our hurry is to be seen to this day. We used any material that came to hand. Drums of columns were somehow incorporated into the walls, which, though not so beautifully built as the later walls around Piraeus, are still strong enough. Meanwhile Themistocles was at Sparta, protracting negotiations. When he heard that the walls were sufficiently high to be defended, he spoke out openly. Athens, he said, had the right and had shown the ability to think and to act for herself. She proposed to do so in future. A strong Athens, he pointed out, as had been shown in recent years, meant a strong Greece.

  The Spartans, wholly outmaneuvered, had to dissemble their feelings; but they never forgave Themistocles and later were instrumental in his ruin. But at Athens, at least for a short time, Themistocles was as popular as he had been after Salamis. He set to work immediately and with tremendous enthusiasm on his project of fortifying Piraeus. Indeed, it was said that if he could have had his own way he would have abandoned Athens altogether, the time-honored sanctuaries of the gods and all, and would have founded at Piraeus a new city on the sea, where, in his opinion, lay the greatness of Athens and her future.

  And in the next few years the naval policy which Themistocles had initiated was supported to a large degree even by his enemies and even by the pro-Spartan party. Late in the year, after the fortifications were finished, Xanthippus returned with the Athenian fleet. It was a spectacular and a symbolic occasion, for Xanthippus brought with him the great cables of flax and of papyrus which had been used for the making of the bridge over the Hellespont by which Xerxes’s army had marched into Europe. These cables were dedicated by the Athenians to the god in Delphi after they had been for some time exhibited in Athens. It seemed to us that Athens had removed the chains by which Persia had attempted to fetter Europe to herself.

  Both among the people and in the fleet there was enthusiasm for carrying on the war, with or without Spartan command or cooperation. Xanthippus told us how, after the battle of Mycale, he had sailed to the Hellespont and invested the city of Sestos, which was occupied by a Persian garrison. It had been a hard and long-drawn-out siege, but in the end the city had been taken and the Persian governor with many of his troops captured. Xanthippus used to relate with a kind of satisfaction how Artayctes, the Persian governor, had offered him a huge sum of money to spare his life and that of his son and how he had refused the offer. Instead he had taken Artayctes to a height overlooking the place where Xerxes had constructed the bridge. There he had nailed him to a board and, during the time when he was slowly dying, had had his son stoned to death before his eyes. Pericles, I remember, would listen with respect and a kind of professional interest to Xanthippus’s accounts of the siege; but he found it difficult, I could see, to dissemble his disgust at this example of savagery. I think his feelings were shared by the most trusted and most brilliant among Xanthippus’s subordinates, Kimon, whom I first met at about this time.

  Kimon, of course, was the son of the victor of Marathon, the Miltiades whom Xanthippus had prosecuted more than ten years previously, who, unable to pay the enormous fine that had been imposed on him, died in prison soon after the trial, when Kimon was a boy of about eighteen. For some years he had lived in great poverty with his sister Elpinice. People used to say that his relationship with her was incestuous; but I am not prepared to assert the truth of this rumor, though certainly Kimon was always extraordinarily fond of women and certainly Elpinice was all through her life devoted to him. Though she had no dowry, she married the richest man in Athens, who not only paid off the debt owed by Kimon’s father but set Kimon himself financially on his feet. From that time Kimon enjoyed for many years a career of brilliant and uninterrupted success. People would compare him for military ability with his father and for intelligent leadership with Themistocles. And if the latter comparison does him more than justice, it is still true that he was not only a daring but a wise commander. He was also immensely popular. His generosity, his open easy manner, his care for his men, his courage and his strength made him a hero in the army and the fleet. His appearance too was striking. He was tall and had a head of thick curly hair, and though he bore himself like an Athenian gentleman there was also something which seemed charmingly irresponsible about him, something naive or almost barbarian, possibly something inherited from his mother, who was the daughter of the Thracian king Olorus.

  Kimon had distinguished himself in the battle of Salamis; indeed he distinguished himself in every battle. And in the year of Salamis he had married into the clan of the Alcmaeonidae; his wife Isodice was the niece of Pericles’s mother Agariste. He was devoted to her in a quite extraordinary way. This I know from my friend and pupil, the Athenian Archelaus, a most distinguished natural scientist who will, I hope, carry on my work after my death. It was Archelaus who, at the request of Kimon, composed an elegy for Isodice after her death. He tells me that Kimon was at this time quite inconsolable, and I remember pointing out to him that Pericles also was remarkable for an almost inordinate affection for one woman. Yet in all other respects, apart from physical courage, he was utterly unlike Kimon. This, as I reminded Archelaus, was an interesting example of how, in the human soul as in nature generally, quite different elements, when mixed and blended in quite different ways, can, from certain aspects, produce similar appearances.

  Xanthippus himself, though he had been an enemy of Kimon’s father, had done all in his power to help the young man in his career. He was constantly applauding his great qualities, though even he found Kimon’s pro-Spartan sentiments somewhat exaggerated. “Athens and Sparta,” Kimon used to say with a rather charming enthusiasm, “are like a fine team of horses. Running together they will win every race.” This, as Pericles was quick to see, was a somewhat vulgar comparison, throwing no light on anything. It was also based on a number of inaccuracies. Kimon chose (one may say either foolishly or generously) to forget the facts that Sparta had done nothing to help Athens at Marathon, had only reluctantly fought at Salamis, and had only advanced to Plataea after Athens had been twice sacked. All he could remember was the actual fighting quality shown by the Spartans in battle. Pericles used to say to me afterwards (he was, of course, too well bred to intervene in the conversation of his elders) that if Kimon’s idea of a chariot team was to yoke together a racehorse with a bull, then it was surprising that he won any victories; and in fact his victories had been won with racehorses. Indeed, Kimon in the following years was forced by the logic of events rather than by any logic of his own (he was deficient in this quality) to go on winning victories with racehorses and to pursue a policy which was to have results opposite to those which he intended.

  One of the determining factors in this situation was the mere e
xistence of Themistocles. This great man’s enemies were still united against him and they did indeed succeed in keeping him out of any important command. But they could only succeed by following the policies which he initiated, so that what was meant to be an opposition to his influence became, in fact, merely an extension of it. The opposition (if such a word can be used) was led by Aristides, the man they used to call “the Just.” And so far as money was concerned he deserved his nickname, though whether he deserves moral credit for his financial integrity is another matter. The fact was that he was not interested in the kind of display for which money is necessary; also he found the show of rectitude very useful to him politically. In money matters, therefore, he made a kind of profession of honesty; in everything else he was as cunning as a fox. He had been quick to see how Kimon could be used as a counterpoise to Themistocles, and it was largely owing to his influence that in the year after the return of Xanthippus from Sestos the young man was appointed to the board of generals.

  For more than a decade after this Kimon was always in command and nearly always victorious. An objective student of war cannot possibly put him on the same level as Themistocles, since he lacked Themistocles’s ability to estimate the future and to see where he was going. But these are rare qualities. In my day they have been fully possessed only by Themistocles and by Pericles himself. And only Pericles has been able for any long period to persuade his fellow citizens to respect rather than to resent his superior intelligence. As for Kimon, he neither had nor claimed to have unusual intellectual ability. He was successful, and he was conservative two qualities that are apt to attract the Athenians; also, unlike Themistocles, he was modest. Not that Themistocles ever showed any vulgar ostentation, but he was impatient of mediocrity and he was fully aware of his own brilliance. And in those days even the Athenians were alarmed at what seemed the illimitable extent of his ambitions. He aimed, people said, at covering the whole sea with Athenian ships. In his mind the war with Persia was already won and he was thinking in terms of expansion to the west and south and indeed to the farthest corners of every navigable sea. It was significant that one of his daughters was called Italia and another Asia.

  But, while most of the noble families disliked and envied Themistocles, the Athenian people, who might have been his allies, could not keep up with the range and rapidity of his thought. In later years, led by Pericles, they were to applaud just these ideas and even had to be restrained from exaggerating them. But now the novelty of such ambition alarmed them. They were, as always, enterprising; but only in one direction. Kimon, with his simple and courageous leadership, his modesty, his friendship for Sparta and his respect for the past, was for them, the man of the moment. When, at about this time, Themistocles paid the expenses for the production at the spring dramatic festival of a play by the aged dramatist Phrynichus on the subject of the battle of Salamis, people were offended at what appeared to be a piece of self-advertisement. Pericles, I remember, who was then about eighteen, much deplored the fact that Themistocles, whom he greatly admired, had not employed the services of Aeschylus, a much superior dramatist. I fancy, however, that Themistocles, who always had a good reason for his actions and who certainly knew that Aeschylus was a greater master of both stagecraft and poetry than Phrynichus, employed the older man because of his connection with Ionia. People still remembered the story of Phrynichus’s play on the collapse of the Ionian revolt. Themistocles now wished the same author to celebrate the liberation of Ionia, and, no doubt, to suggest to the audience that it was he himself who had been responsible for it.

  Certainly the timing was apposite and, whether the audience in the theater appreciated the fact or not, it was indeed the policy of Themistocles which was in these years being proved, in the hands of his enemies, triumphant. For these were the years in which Athens took over the Hellenic leadership that had previously been exercised by Sparta. It is likely, I think, that Aristides, who stole for his own purposes so many of the political plans of Themistocles, saw what was happening and aided the event. Kimon would never, even with his passionate Athenian patriotism, have voluntarily alienated Sparta. But the main factors, undoubtedly foreseen by Themistocles, were Spartan stupidity and Spartan arrogance. One might add Spartan irresolution, for it is a fact that Spartans, when placed in unfamiliar circumstances, are so little adaptable that they tend to behave almost as though they were cowards, hurrying back, if they can, to what is known and to what does not require thought.

  For all these reasons the Spartans lost the leadership of the Hellenic fleet. First their officers showed no capacity whatever to deal with Greek allies other than Peloponnesians. They could scarcely affront the Athenians, who supplied the greater part of the fleet, but they treated the newly liberated Ionians as though they were slaves. Naturally these Ionians approached Aristides, asking him to take over the command instead of Sparta, and Aristides, after having pretended to a loyal reluctance, made it clear that, so long as the allies acted for themselves, he and the Athenians would support them. By this time the Spartan government at home had become alarmed, partly because their officers overseas were showing independence (Pausanias had actually adopted Persian dress and was intriguing with the Great King), partly because of the danger that some of their own men might become infected with that new spirit of democracy and enterprise which pervaded the Athenian and Ionian contingents of the fleet. After one half-hearted attempt to re-establish their authority, they withdrew their own ships and left Athens to carry on the war.

  So the great Hellenic alliance under Spartan leadership came to an end. There were on both sides professions of amity, but in fact Greece was and remains split into two sides — on the one the Spartans and their allies, on the other the Athenians and theirs. Moreover, these two sides were certain to develop in contrary directions.

  So the scene was set for the life of Pericles, and before his death the full struggle between incompatibilities was joined. The struggle continues.

  4

  Early Youth

  Xanthippus himself took little part in the affairs of the new Athenian League. He never fully recovered from the hardships endured at the siege of Sestos and he died at the time when Pericles, as a young man, had nearly completed his military training. His death left Pericles well off, though not immensely rich, and from the time when he first took over his family estates, he managed them carefully, without avarice and without slackness. He was not indifferent to money as Aristides affected to be; nor did he squander it as his young ward Alcibiades did later. He regarded it as something to be used as wisely as possible in the interests of his friends, himself and his fellow citizens, and he arranged for the management of his affairs in the most efficient way, spending less time and labor on them than anyone I have known. Though he was living a life that was free and easy enough, it was obvious that be was fitted for responsibilities infinitely greater than the superintendence of estates or the ordinary course of military service.

  As he grew into manhood his charm was as great as ever and his intelligence shone more and more brightly. There was a delightful fervor in the way he expressed himself — a kind of mixture between gravity and wit. He sang and played the lyre well, though perhaps not so well as his friend Sophocles; but in reciting Homer he seemed to show a sense of the value of words superior even to that of Sophocles himself, who was already a poet of whom people were beginning to speak with respect.

  How many of that circle of friends have since been, like myself, exiled or else killed in battle! And how clearly I remember them today! There was Damon, Pericles’s music teacher and one of the wittiest and most intelligent men I have ever met. He was not only a skilled musician, one capable of making any evening memorable when he could be persuaded to play and sing, but he was by nature a philosopher. His views on the theory of music were interesting enough, but these he seemed to throw out in passing; he was capable of advancing brilliant and original theories on any subject at all. Perhaps he was most enthusiastic on the sub
ject of politics. He would carefully examine the precise meaning of the word “democracy,” and as we discussed the matter we came to see that even in Athens democracy was not totally a reality. Men were still hindered by poverty from taking a full part in the affairs of the city; the great families still exercised an influence quite out of proportion to their numbers; and venerable institutions such as the Council of the Areopagus still were able to take a stand at variance with the Assembly of the people and with the people’s chosen representatives.

  Damon, I remember, would develop his ideas gracefully and dexterously, rather as though he were composing music. But they were taken up with an almost savage enthusiasm by others. Notable among these was Ephialtes, a young man not much older than Pericles and one who was to become for a short time Pericles’s chief collaborator in politics. Indeed, there were occasions when Ephialtes, with his strange fervor and wild sincerity, seemed almost to gain an ascendancy over Pericles. He was particularly violent in his attacks on the noble families, and of course it was even easier then than it is now to produce examples of wealthy and privileged people who, because of a private feud or merely for the sake of personal gain, deliberately acted contrary to the interests of the city. Ephialtes would often prophesy that these same great families would finally succeed in destroying Themistocles, the finest statesman that Athens had ever had, and he would ridicule Kimon as a stupid and pretentious protégé of the aristocrats.

  Here, as Pericles and indeed most of us were quick to see, Ephialtes was going too far. Kimon’s policy may have been mistaken, but he was an honest man and a brilliant commander. Moreover, he was undeniably popular, and we used sometimes to ask Ephialtes how he could reconcile his apparent belief that the people were always right with his assertion that Kimon, the people’s favorite, was always wrong. Such questions as these used to irritate Ephialtes greatly. He would call us “sophists” (he was the first, I think, to use this word as a term of contempt). Indeed, he said, the people were always right, but only in the end. There were times, such as the present, when they could be intimidated or cajoled. What was needed in politics was legislation designed to minimize the possibilities of intimidation or cajolement. And the first steps should be to deprive the Areopagus Council of all political authority and to limit the powers of the great families, including, he would add, that of Pericles. Here he would laugh, since he had the greatest admiration for Pericles and he knew that Pericles shared most of his political ideas, although he expressed them with less bitterness.