Pericles the Athenian

by Rex Warner

  Just the same policies were carried out in the following year by Hagnon, who took a large army to Thrace and, at the place known as Nine Ways, founded the great city of Amphipolis. Nearly thirty years had passed since the disaster in which ten thousand Athenian colonists had been massacred at this place, and as was natural, the success of Hagnon’s expedition was greeted in Athens with patriotic fervor. The position is one of great importance and it appears that Hagnon has built and fortified the city in such a way that it is impregnable. It controls the main route from Macedonia to Thrace and is, I have been informed by young Thucydides, who has property in this area, most valuable as a center from which to exploit the great mineral resources of the district and the fine shipbuilding timber which comes down the river from the interior. Here too, as at Thouria, the policy with regard to the new city can be described as Pan-Hellenic rather than exclusively Athenian. Hagnon was the founder, but colonists were invited to come from all quarters and among these the Athenians form a minority.

  All these operations were carried out in parts of the Greek world over which neither Sparta nor any of her allies could claim any right to exercise control. The same, strictly speaking, can be said of the operations in the west under the brilliant leadership of Phormion, although it is true that some of Sparta’s allies, and in particular Corinth, were peculiarly sensitive to any Athenian action in the western sea. In responding to an appeal for help from the Acarnanians in the country north of the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth, Athens was infringing no existing treaty, nor, I think, did anyone suspect her, as some do now, of any design to occupy the islands in the Ionian sea and even the cities of Italy and Sicily. Pericles had indeed entered into alliance with some of these cities but these alliances were purely defensive. He had already clearly shown in the case of the settlement of Thouria that he had no ambitions for conquest in the west. And the foundation of Amphipolis provided further evidence that Athenian influence was to be extended peacefully and in a liberal spirit.

  In no legalistic sense, then, can it possibly be maintained that during these years Pericles was deliberately planning war. Yet it would be foolish to deny that he was aware that at any time he might be threatened with war. He had too much experience and intelligence to be under any illusions in this respect. He knew the slowness of the Spartan mentality and that extraordinary arrogance of theirs which allows them to convince themselves that they must be, under all circumstances, irresistible. He knew too that among the Spartans there were some who were not wholly dull. These had only to open their eyes in order to see that as the power and prestige of Athens increased, so inevitably, whether or not the fact were to be admitted, must decrease the influence of Sparta in international affairs. He hoped that in the end this fact would be recognized and accepted. After all, the Spartans prided themselves on their restriction and had shown little inclination and no ability to transcend their self-imposed limitations. It was possible that so long as they were left undisturbed in the Peloponnese they would not notice, until it was too late, that the Peloponnese had become in fact and in the eyes of the whole Greek world something out of date and inconsiderable.

  But this, though a possible solution, could not be depended on as a certainty. The only certainty was that Sparta, if she wished to retain what she still considered her dominant position in Greece, would have, at some time or other, to go to war. It could be logically maintained that to do so would not be in her best interests, but men do not always act in their best interests. Fear and pride often overrule reason. Pericles, therefore, while determined to abide strictly by the terms of the peace, was prepared for war. He believed that, so far as any forethought and calculation can be relied upon, Athens would, if war came, certainly be victorious, and in any matter which in his view vitally concerned Athens, he would never make the smallest concession to Sparta. Yet he knew that the course of no war is predictable. Events occur which are beyond the reach of calculation and even the strongest can make mistakes which may prove eventually or immediately fatal. He was, I think, confident that, so long as he lived and controlled policy, such mistakes would not be made; but he knew that both his ascendancy and his experience were unique and he distrusted some of the rising politicians who, under cover of the name of democracy, were already beginning to vulgarize and to distort the precision and justice of his own ideas. Following Themistocles and Ephialtes, he had consistently promoted a policy designed to make Athens independent and powerful. His opponents had been those who had shrunk from enterprise either from fear of Sparta or of democracy or of both. Against these opponents Pericles had developed arguments to show that without empire Athens could never be independent and that to gain and maintain empire it was necessary for the whole people to enjoy and be trained in responsibility. But behind these arguments lay his considered views of nature and of human life. Empire was not an end in itself; it was the necessary means for bringing into reality the potentialities which he saw hidden in human and in Athenian nature. Power had to be exercised, but not for its own sake. Freedom, justice, generosity and the flowering of ability and genius were the ultimate aims. His aversion to and contempt for Sparta sprang from his conviction that what merits these Spartans had were imposed upon them rather by necessity and discipline than developed through freedom of choice and the true courage which can look in any direction. His views, I may say, were those of a philosopher who recognizes and admires variety and who, in imposing order, will allow for change, growth and motion.

  In Athens, even by this time, there were few who grasped these views of his in their entirety, though many had been stimulated and ennobled by some glimpse or partial understanding of them. No one in my experience has understood them so well or admired them so fervently as that young Thucydides, the relation of Kimon, with whom I am from time to time in correspondence. But there were already others who, by appropriating for their own use some phrase or argument of Pericles, would wholly distort its meaning by taking it out of its context and, by robbing it of its complexity, reduce it to something simply untrue. There was, for example, Kleon, the rich owner of a tannery who claims to be a man of the people and who, I am told, now enjoys more influence than he did then, though even then he had a certain following. His authority was not, of course, at all comparable with that of Pericles, but what was both significant and dangerous about the little authority he did have was that he won it by representing himself as pursuing, with greater energy and realism, policies which in the past had been associated with Pericles himself. He was not only in favor of extending Athenian power and influence, but was for extending it extravagantly and by all means. He not only wished to keep control over the allies but openly demanded their subjection. He supported the violence of his opinions by making use of the commonest and most vulgar sophistries, in which he appeared actually to believe. He interpreted democracy not as being a state of affairs in which every man had the right and opportunity to develop in ability and virtue, but as one in which no one had the right to be more able and virtuous than anyone else. Yet at the same time he would declare it to be a law of nature that the powerful had always the right to impose their will, whatever it might be, upon the weak. Generosity was to him mere laxity, a wise consideration for others mere weakness and a waste of time. He prided himself on being blunt and simple, an active realist rather than a hesitant intellectual, and was unconscious that his “realism” consisted in an inability to see more than a fraction of reality and that his “simplicity” sprang merely from his incapacity for discursive thought. One may imagine that such a character, while possibly able to win some support from that minority who habitually envy and resent the superiority of others, could never enjoy a considerable influence among so informed and versatile a people as the Athenians; and indeed people were more apt to laugh at him than to take him seriously. Yet with all his defects, he possesses certain qualities which could make him both dangerous and effective. He has boundless energy, all the self-confidence of the unreflective, and a kind of insti
nctive shrewdness which enables him to exploit any apparent weakness in an opponent and to exaggerate into a frenzy any passing mood or prejudice in his audience.

  It was a new experience for Pericles to find himself opposed by one who claimed to be more of a democrat than he, and though he looked upon this vulgar travesty with the utmost contempt, he was fully aware that, though his personal position could never be disturbed by a man like Kleon, he would not always be present to counteract him and that a situation might arise in which, owing to either despair, disappointment or overconfidence, natural good sense could be overcome by violence and brutality if expressed with sufficient conviction and plausibility. He himself had known and had been able to restrain such moods, but he recognized their danger. “I am not afraid,” he would often say, “of anything that an enemy could do against us. What I fear is only our own mistakes.” It may well be, therefore, that with such characters as Kleon in mind, Pericles would have preferred to fight a war, supposing it to be inevitable, at a time when he himself together with those whom he trusted would be able to control it. But I do not believe that he did regard war as inevitable, even though he was more aware of its possibility than were most of us.

  And indeed, when I look back on the events which are said to have provoked the war, I cannot see that any one of them or all of them together were of sufficient consequence to explain the event. The war is not being fought for the sake of Corcyra or Potidaea or Megara. It is much more than that. It is a struggle between two irreconcilable schemes of living. At long last the Spartans did recognize what Pericles had always known, that Athens and the Athenian way of life were certain to control and permeate the future unless Athens was destroyed. One may speak of Spartan jealousy and Spartan fear, and no doubt these emotions played their part. But the true cause is something more profound and is to be looked for in the nature of man himself and of the universe. It is something, I think, which was recognized by Heracleitus when he wrote: “Strife is justice,” which I interpret as meaning that all life and all creation must, if they are to continue, perpetually advance into change, so that in a sense the future will always be at war with the present and the past. On the other hand, something of the past must be preserved and persist in some form even in change. Otherwise existence would be a series of discontinuous events, bearing no relation to each other and incapable of being either perceived or understood. There is, therefore, a necessary tension between two forces, a clinging to permanence and an impulse toward the unknown, rest and motion, peace and war. The nature of minerals is to resist motion and to deny growth; vegetables, while rooted in the same place, are capable of a variety of transformations; animals not only change and renew their structures but move freely from place to place in sea, air or on the earth. But of all things man seems to be most fitted for elaboration and invention. He alone can create and can choose, within limits, new and unexplored directions, Yet he too must have some of the qualities of a stone to ensure his continuity. Memory binds him to his past, tradition is a necessary basis for innovation. And he, being more conscious than a stone, a vegetable or a beast, being more sensitive to pleasure and to pain, feels with a particular severity the tension of the two forces on whose opposition his existence depends. He will find both delight and disquiet in innovation, and in lethargy he will find both peace and dissatisfaction. To create must imply disruption; to persist must be to repress. This truth has even found its way into our mythology, for example, in the story of Prometheus, which Aeschylus, in his old age, handled in a most philosophical manner. For Prometheus represents creation, liberty, transformation; he raises men from the mineral and vegetable state into the human and the divine; and as a result he comes into conflict with a god who controls what is and resists cruelly what is to come Who is just? Prometheus or Zeus? Both Prometheus and Zeus are, as Aeschylus wisely recognizes, necessary, and in his play he contrives a reconciliation between them. But because both are necessary it does not follow that both are equally good. The sympathy of an enlightened man will certainly be given to Prometheus, his liberator, rather than to Zeus, his oppressor; and even the mythological story insists upon the superior value, though not always the superior power, of innovation over a forced stability. For Zeus himself has not only won his supreme power by violence and by change but is certain to lose it unless he is able to adapt himself to a continued motion.

  We find, then, in all nature and all human affairs a basis of necessary contradiction, but must not conclude that each opposite has an equal value. What is capable of motion and creation is to be judged as higher than what is not. Yet what is not will always be at enmity with what is.

  If we bear these general truths in mind, we shall be, I think, better equipped to understand the causes of the present war and what is at stake in it. Athens and Sparta are both organizations of human beings and as such must depend on tradition and must grow by innovation. The existence of each is determined by this internal antagonism. But the two organizations are far from being similar. Each of them, it is true, has a strong sense of tradition or fund of inertia; but here all resemblance ends, because in Athens the creative and revolutionary element is so enormously more powerful and pervasive then it is in Sparta that, though in reality no organization of human beings can be static, one is almost inclined to compare Sparta with a stone and Athens with some winged creature. Here the disproportion is so great that it is impossible for one system to be merged with the other. Yet it would be better and nobler, were it possible, for a stone to become a bird than for a bird to become a stone.

  Consequently I am, apart altogether from personal loyalties, on the side of Athens in the present war, and, though I would hesitate to forecast its result, I know that the Promethean qualities of Athens will, whether in victory or defeat, extend into and shape the future, while Spartan inertia can offer nothing but a kind of stability which, lacking a sufficient measure of the possibility of variation, cannot, in the nature of things, attain growth and must in time be buried or decay.

  Of course the pretexts for the war, as distinct from its real causes, have a certain importance. It is possible to argue that if Athens had not allied herself with Corcyra, or if she had repealed the Megarian decree, the war would not have broken out, and it may be said that since the interests of Athens were furthered more by peace than by war, she made in these instances serious mistakes. This was not the view of Pericles. In his opinion the likeliest way of avoiding or postponing war was to make it clear that under no circumstances would Athens abandon any of her rights or make any concession to a threat. She would abide strictly by the terms of the peace and would be ready to accept arbitration on any point where the interpretation of these terms might be in dispute. In all other matters she would insist on her complete freedom of action. In making this guiding decision he was no doubt counting on the fact that the Spartans themselves profess to be, and in a sense are, great sticklers for legality and extremely cautious in making the first move in any conflict. But he knew that in the end Sparta would act, whether legally or illegally, in accordance with what she conceived to be her interests, and he thought, with much reason, that the best way to postpone this action was in the policy which he had followed throughout his life.

  I doubt whether even he suspected that the naval battle in the northern seas between the fleets of Corinth and Corcyra, a battle which took place in the year after his triumphal expedition to the Black Sea, was likely to have any effect one way or the other on the future of Athens. Nor were the authorities in Sparta interested in this battle except insofar as they had done their best to prevent it. Certainly in Athens no strong feelings were aroused by the news that a fleet of seventy-five Corinthian ships had been completely defeated by a fleet of eighty ships from Corcyra. The Athenians had no great love for the Corinthians, who had been at war with them several times during this generation, but as the Corinthians had been invariably defeated, the Athenians, as is their way, bore them little resentment. Nor were they greatly interested in Co
rcyra. This island was indeed a considerable naval power capable of manning a hundred and twenty ships, but the Athenians had never feared such a power nor even wished to bring it into alliance with their own.

  I would say therefore that the events which followed this battle were unexpected by almost everyone. It hardly seemed that even the battle itself had been fought for a sufficient reason. Its occasion was a quarrel between Corinth and Corcyra with regard to their respective rights in a joint colony of theirs, Epidamnus, on the coast of Illyria. Corinth, as the founder city of Corcyra itself, claimed an authority which Corcyra denied, having long been independent. Corinth, contrary to the advice of Sparta, had refused arbitration, had manned what was for her an exceptionally large fleet, had been disastrously defeated and had lost all control of Epidamnus. Here it was expected that the matter would end.

  But this was, in fact, only the beginning. For the next two years the Corinthians applied all their energies to the building of a great fleet, to enlisting support from her allies and to hiring skilled steersmen and rowers from all parts of Greece. Large sums were offered in pay and many of these rowers came from cities of the Athenian alliance. Athens made no effort to stop their enlisting. Nor did Sparta intervene in any way. She neither encouraged nor discouraged Corinth in her preparations for a war of revenge.

  It was natural for the people of Corcyra to become alarmed. Corinth was building up a fleet larger and more efficient than her own; she was also receiving assistance from many states in the Peloponnese, though not from Sparta. But Corcyra had to depend entirely on her own resources. If she had only one enemy, she had no friends. So, before the two years of Corinthian preparation were completed, she sent an embassy to Athens, asking to be allowed to join the Athenian alliance. The Corinthians also sent an embassy to oppose this request.