Pericles the Athenian

by Rex Warner

  Obviously such words were not calculated to endear the Athenians to the Spartans, and some have suggested that the purpose of Pericles in instructing the ambassadors to speak in this way was to goad the Spartan assembly into a declaration of war. Such a view is wholly mistaken. It is characteristic of Pericles that he believed that even when dealing with Spartans the most powerful argument is truth. He may have thought that in any case there was little chance of avoiding war, but he was convinced that the only chance there was lay in the clearest possible statement of Athenian resolution. It was impossible to appeal to the friendship of Sparta, but it was possible to count, to some extent, on her traditional caution and her reluctance to appear to be acting illegally. And in fact I am told that though the speech of the Athenians angered the Spartans intensely, it did have the desired effect of making them think.

  After these speeches the representatives of the allies and of the Athenians withdrew and the Spartan assembly debated the question of peace or war. It is said that the old King Archidamos expressed admirably just those sentiments which Pericles had hoped might act as a restraining influence. While admitting the danger of Athenian expansion, he argued that it would be wise to reflect before committing Sparta to a war which might last longer than anyone expected and the result of which could not be foreseen. Though Sparta and her allies might prove superior on land, they were no match for Athens at sea and they were weak financially. Let them start at once to build a fleet and to collect contributions, as Athens had done, from their friends and allies. Then, in a few years’ time, they would be in a position to fight a short and a decisive war. And in any case, he said, they should, before taking any irretrievable step, accept the Athenian offer of arbitration. Otherwise it would appear, whether rightly or wrongly, that it was Sparta, not Athens, which had broken the peace.

  It is said that this speech had a considerable effect. But it must be noted that affairs had now reached the stage when the question was not a choice between peace or war but merely of when it would be profitable to begin the war. In such a state of feeling people are not apt to think or act with patience or deliberation. What they desire is a quick and simple solution to a problem which by making too great a demand upon their intellectual powers is filling them with anxiety. And the Spartans, more than all other people, delight in listening to some plain statement, however misleading, which will free them from the necessity of attempting to employ whatever critical and analytical faculties they may possess. Indeed, their pride in using only a few words derives from the great satisfaction they feel at not having to consider more than one or two ideas at the same time. Thus the speech of the ephor Sthenelaidas, in avoiding almost every important issue that had been raised, proved very much more effective than the well-reasoned appeal of King Archidamos. “The Athenians,” he said, “are always making long speeches in praise of themselves. If they were good men at the time of the Persian wars, it is all the more disgraceful that they are bad now. All we want to hear is that they will leave our allies alone. On this point they say nothing. We must protect our allies. Therefore we must go to war.”

  He then, as presiding magistrate, put the question to the vote, and by a large majority the decision was for war.

  After this there was an interval of nearly a year before hostilities broke out, since the Spartans and their allies needed time to make the necessary preparations. During this interval the Athenians put their defenses in a state of order, but made no hostile moves. The Spartans showed much anxiety at the prospect of being considered as the first to break the truce and, by diplomatic and other methods, attempted to create the impression that the war was a just one and that it was being forced upon them. These moves are of psychological rather than political interest. After the vote at Sparta, there was no further possibility of peace.

  First the Spartans succeeded in securing a reply from the Delphic oracle to the effect that “if they fought with all their might, the god would be on their side.” Then they sent an embassy to Athens demanding that the Athenians should drive out “the curse of the goddess.” This was an obscure reference to events which had taken place several generations ago, when a remote ancestor of Pericles had been put under a curse. No doubt the Spartans hoped by this demand to strengthen any opinion in Athens which might be opposed to Pericles. However, the support for Pericles was almost unanimous. The Athenians retorted with a demand that the Spartans should drive out “the curse of the Brazen House,” also a somewhat obscure reference to a rather more recent act of sacrilege committed by a Spartan government.

  Then a second embassy arrived to demand that Athens should give Aegina her independence, revoke the Megarian decree and abandon the siege of Potidaea. As was to be expected, Athens refused all these demands.

  Finally Spartan envoys arrived who, without mentioning any of these subjects in particular, merely said, “Sparta wants peace. Peace is possible if you will give the Greeks their freedom.” No one was impressed by this typical piece of Spartan hypocrisy. The army of the Spartans and their allies was already mobilized and, at the beginning of spring, began to move across the Megarian frontier into Attica.

  17

  The Last Years

  It is no part of my intention, my friends, to describe the events of the present war. I am doing only what you asked me to do, which is to tell you what I can about the friend whom I loved and whom I admire. From the time when the Peloponnesians invaded Attica he lived for not much more than three years, and for nearly two of those years I had lost contact with him, being already at Lampsacus. Nor did anything happen in this period which revealed any aspect of the man which I have not already, to the best of my ability, noted. Indeed, one of the things most remarkable in him is his extraordinary consistency. He behaved in this period of crisis as he had always behaved; he might have changed his views had there been any reason to change them, but in fact every one of his estimates proved correct. The only event which upset his calculations was something wholly unpredictable, and he had always stressed the importance of the unpredictable. His only political disgrace (from which he soon recovered) was caused by that precise failure of nerve among his fellow citizens of which he had already warned them in advance.

  At the beginning of the war his authority was unquestioned. Some of his instructions were unpopular, but they were logical, definite, clearly explained and obeyed. He believed that Athens was invincible so long as her manpower was not dissipated and her navy retained control of the seas. Nothing predictable, except recklessness or impatience, could, he believed, do her any vital damage. He marked out and explained his strategy from the beginning. Like all his thought, it showed the precision and daring of one who sees clearly and distinctly what is essential and what is not. He told the Athenians that their possessions were everywhere in the world which could be reached by their ships. Their farms, their country houses, their land in Attica was expendable. What was not expendable was their manpower, their navy and their empire. Thus they were to avoid any pitched battle with the whole Peloponnesian army and, so far as operations in Attica were concerned, were to content themselves with using their cavalry to cut off isolated enemy detachments and to interrupt his supplies. Each year fleets were to sail to the Peloponnese to ravage the coasts and set up fortified bases from which further operations could be launched. He warned the people that the months during which they would have to abandon their farms and take refuge behind the fortifications of the city would be arduous and that they must be prepared to face some losses. But they must recognize that the loss of houses and of crops was quite inconsiderable. These could be rebuilt and resown, and meanwhile all the land in the world that was in reach of the sea was at their disposal. If anyone suffered from lack of food it would be the Peloponnesians, who imported nothing and who, by invading Attica, would be neglecting the cultivation of their own fields.

  So, as soon as it was known that the enemy army was approaching, the Athenians in the country districts drove off their livestock to th
e coast and ferried them over to Euboea and other islands. They themselves, taking with them whatever household belongings they could carry, came into the city. The more fortunate were able to find lodgings with friends or relations, but the majority had to camp in the various parks or temples and on the ground that was not built over in Piraeus and near the long walls.

  This procedure has been followed every year when there has been an invasion and by now the Athenians accept the situation as almost natural. After the enemy armies have withdrawn they return to their property, rebuild what they can, drive back their flocks and cattle and resume, so far as possible, their normal life from the autumn until the following spring. But in this first year of the war everything seemed strange and almost unbearable. The Athenians who live outside the city walls are very attached to their property, their local shrines and the whole tradition of each neighborhood. They are indeed proud of Athens but still have, as is natural, a deep affection for their own villages, each one of which likes to regard itself as being in some way superior to all the rest. Moreover, they are used to security and to success. Now only the older people could remember the time of the Persian invasion, when not only the country but the city itself had to be abandoned. They had never seen, as Pericles and I had seen, smoke rising into the sky of Attica from the destruction of their own homes. So, though they might be logically convinced of the wisdom of Pericles’s policy, the results of carrying it out seemed to them almost intolerable. There was indeed all the discontent which Pericles had predicted. “What sort of a general is this,” people were constantly saying, “who has an army and does not use it?”

  In fact, Pericles used the army exactly as he had intended to do. While the Peloponnesians were still in Attica, he sent out a fleet of a hundred ships with a thousand hoplites and a large force of bowmen to raid the enemy coast. This force did at least as much damage as the enemy had done in Attica and perhaps caused an equal amount of anxiety, since no one could tell where it would strike next. Meanwhile three thousand hoplites were still engaged in the siege of Potidaea; many more were occupying posts in Attica and manning the fortifications of Athens herself. And later in the year the Athenians could at least feel the satisfaction of having retaliated in full for what they had suffered themselves. During the summer they expelled the whole population of Aegina and resettled the island with Athenian colonists, and, after the Peloponnesians had withdrawn, Pericles himself with a large army invaded the territory of Megara and laid waste the whole country, thus demonstrating that the Spartans were unable to defend their allies.

  So, by the end of the year, much of the discontent which had been felt against Pericles during the first few months had disappeared. Indeed, to any intelligent man the value of his strategy was evident. Athens had lost some property but few men; she had done more damage to the enemy than she had suffered; she had shown that, while her enemies could operate for only a short time and in one place, her own forces could strike wherever they chose and at any time. When, at the end of the year, the question arose of who should be chosen to deliver the customary speech at the state funeral of those who had lost their lives in the war, the people unhesitatingly chose Pericles again for this honor. The speech he made on this occasion was the most moving and, I may say, the grandest that I have ever heard. He did not say a word to justify his own detailed policy. His aim was to do honor to the dead and to convince the living that, though life was indeed precious, they had died for something more precious still. Athens, to his mind, was not only great, but was absolutely unique. I believe his view to be a correct one. Certainly when Pericles (or, for that matter, Sophocles or Euripides) speaks of Athens, the words used are wholly different from what is usual in patriotic literature or declamation. Victory, courage, resolution, honor are the usual themes, but these Athenians will also and most markedly lay claim to other qualities such as wisdom, beauty, versatility and perfection. In this first year of war a new play by Euripides, Medea, was performed. It received only the third prize, largely, I think, because the audience was offended by the psychological complexity of the main character. But to one of the choruses everyone in the theater listened with a most profound pleasure and a strange reverence. In this chorus Euripides seems to have expressed both the antiquity of Athens and her dazzling modernity. It runs, to the best of my memory, as follows:

  From of old the children of Erechtheus are

  Splendid, the sons of blessed gods. They dwell

  In Athens’ holy and unconquered land,

  Where sacred Wisdom feeds them, and they go gaily

  Always through that most brilliant air where once, they say

  That golden Harmony gave birth to the nine

  Pure muses of Pieria,

  And beside the sweet flow of Cephisos’ stream,

  Where Cypris sailed, they say, to draw the water,

  And mild soft breezes breathed along her path

  And on her hair were flung the sweet-smelling garlands

  Of flowers of roses by the Loves, the companions

  Of Wisdom, her escort, the helpers of men

  In every kind of excellence.

  This, my friends, was the Athens which I knew and was so soon to lose. Not that my own calamities, which have ended in a happy and peaceful life at Lampsacus, are of the slightest significance. What moves me most when I think of the great and proud words of Pericles and of Euripides is that they were true when they were spoken and may still be true, even after the misery and disappointment which fell on the city, and on Pericles himself.

  For the next year started in confidence and ended in hysteria, lawlessness, terror and persecution. The Athenians have never been afraid of their enemies; if they suffer a defeat, they redouble their efforts for victory. Now, however, they were faced with a danger against which they could not fight and an enemy whose attacks were sudden, incalculable and irresistible. Those who had died in battle during the first year of the war were not numerous and they were buried in state. Those who in the second and third years died of the plague were almost innumerable; their bodies lay about the streets, where not even birds of prey or scavenging dogs would touch them, choked the cisterns or, if buried at all, were buried hurriedly and indecently.

  Soon after the Spartans invaded Attica in the spring, the first deaths from this disease, hitherto unknown, were reported from Piraeus. Within a week it had spread to the upper city, where people began to die like flies. The death, moreover, was peculiarly painful and, in all its different forms, horrible to witness. Some died raving with thirst or fever, others from perpetual vomiting, ulceration of the bowels and sheer weakness. Very few of those who caught the disease recovered from it and there was no knowing who would catch it and who would avoid it. The rules of health commended by doctors appeared wholly ineffective; indeed, more doctors died in the course of their work than any other class. Equally ineffective were prayers and offerings to the gods. Nothing could be depended upon for protection; the healthy were as prone to infection as the unhealthy; those noted for their piety died together with criminals and blasphemers. It was a situation in which all the decencies, the mutual confidence and the conventions on which civilized life depends were powerless to guide, to stimulate or to restrain. Something was occurring which was beyond custom and beyond understanding, and without custom and understanding, human nature must lose integrity and fall into chaos. In individual cases terror, fear and bewilderment led to despair, abject cowardice, reckless desperation, apathy or vice according as character, circumstances or physical constitution differed. There were few indeed who throughout this period were able to retain their virtue, their courage and their good sense; and, as might be expected, this general deterioration continued to spread as time went on. This was not a calamity to which one could become used.

  At the beginning the Athenians continued to prosecute the war with vigor. While the Spartans were still in Attica, Pericles himself, with a hundred and fifty ships carrying a large force of infantry and cavalry, s
ailed for the Peloponnese. Just as the fleet was about to sail and Pericles was boarding his flagship, there was an eclipse of the sun. Had this event taken place later in the year or, indeed, had this expedition been commanded by anyone else, it seems likely that the whole effort would have been paralyzed by superstitious terror. Even as it was, the helmsman of Pericles’s ship was too frightened to give the necessary orders. Pericles then took off his general’s cloak, held it in front of the man’s eyes and said, “Do you regard this as a terrible omen?” The helmsman owned that he did not and Pericles next asked him, “Is there any difference between this and the eclipse, except that the eclipse has been caused by something bigger than my cloak?” Then he himself gave the order for the libations to be poured and, as the sun’s light was renewed, the fleet set out with confidence. As in the previous year they did more harm to the enemy than the enemy could do to them in Attica. But neither they nor the Spartans could do such harm as was being done by the plague.

  When Pericles returned from this expedition, he found that the Spartans had retreated, no doubt fearing that they themselves might become infected, and that the plague had taken a firmer hold upon the city. He therefore decided to stay in Athens himself. The army and fleet which had been ravaging the Peloponnese were put under the command of Hagnon and sent northward to reinforce the army before Potidaea. However, some of these troops had already caught the disease and they carried it with them to Potidaea and to the men there. Within six weeks Hagnon had lost a quarter of his men, and he could do nothing but return to Athens, having achieved nothing valuable.