In fact, such a sinister reputation already surrounded Pericles’ father, Xanthippus. Right at the end of the Histories, at a strategic point in his text, Herodotus produces an equivocal image of Pericles’ father: guided by vengeance, Xanthippus had the Persian governor Artaÿctes crucified at Sestos, after having his son stoned to death before his eyes.27 Perhaps this was a way for the historian, himself a native of Halicarnassus, implicitly to cast blame upon the actions of the son by means of an account of his father’s behavior. Herodotus presented Xanthippus as the initiator of a strategy of terror that reached its zenith under Pericles.28
Such cruelty was further amplified with the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431, as is shown by the expulsion of the Aeginetans in the first year of the conflict. Here too, it was probably Pericles who initiated that repression.
The Expulsion of the Aeginetans
Within a context of exacerbated tensions, the stratēgos decided to punish the Aeginetans even though they had not, in fact, revolted against Athens. That, at least, is the version favored by Plutarch: “By way of soothing the multitude who … were distressed over the war, he won their favor by distributions of moneys and proposed allotments (kai klēroukhias egraphen) of conquered lands; the Aeginetans, for instance, he drove out entirely and parcelled out their island among the Athenians by lot.”29 There were, in truth, several reasons why Aegina was punished in this way. In the first place, it had always been an undisciplined ally that had been late in joining the league (in around 459 B.C.), and it was, furthermore an ancient naval power that was a longstanding rival of the Athenians.30 Second, the Athenians accused the Aeginetans of having provoked the war and encouraged the Spartans’ hatred of Athens (Thucydides, 2.27.1); and last, the Athenians were in need of a sure base for themselves, within reach of the Peloponnese.
Although Thucydides does not accuse Pericles directly, there can be no doubt that he was implicated in this business. One of the only statements actually attributed to Pericles—for he left no writings of his own—refers precisely to the fate of the island, “urging the removal of Aegina as ‘the eye-sore of the Piraeus,’”31 and evoking the sticky substance that gathers on the lids of an infected eye. In this way, Pericles assimilated the island of Aegina to a bodily secretion that the Athenians were invited to suppress by means of an appropriate treatment. The metaphorical scorn reflected the real violence to which the Aeginetans were subjected at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War.
Pericles’ career, from the Euboean affair in 446 down to the expulsion of the Aeginetans, definitely suggests an unchanging attitude toward the allies. However, in this respect, the stratēgos was no better and no worse than anyone else and was by no means original. He was simply continuing a policy that was initiated before him—pace the admirers of Cimon such as Ion of Chios and Stesimbrotus of Thasos—a policy that was also continued after him, whatever the critics of Cleon, such as Thucydides, have to say.32 But what distinguished Pericles was the lucidity that he acquired from this experience of warfare punctuated by brutal episodes. The stratēgos developed a deep line of thought on the empire and the necessity of maintaining it. It was a choice that he theorized in words and materialized in grandiose monuments.
The Spectacle of Force and Pericles’ Presentation of It
The Theorization of Imperialism: A Necessary Injustice
If there is one original aspect to Pericles’ attitude to imperialism, it lies not so much in his practice as in the way that he represented the empire both to others and to himself. In the speech that he made in 430, faced with the anger of the Athenian people, the stratēgos set out a particularly lucid analysis of the Delian League and the way that it worked:
You may reasonably be expected, moreover, to support the dignity which the city has attained through empire—a dignity in which you all take pride—and not to avoid its burdens, unless you resign its honours also. Nor must you think that you are fighting for the simple issue of slavery or freedom; on the contrary, loss of empire is also involved and danger from the hatred incurred in your sway. From this empire, however, it is too late for you ever to withdraw, if any one at the present crisis, through fear and shrinking from action does indeed seek thus to play the honest man; for by this time the empire you hold is like a tyranny, which it may seem wrong to have assumed, but which, certainly, it is dangerous to let go. Men like these would soon ruin a city if they should win others to their views, or if they should settle in some other land and have an independent city all to themselves (Thucydides, 2.63.1–3).
The stratēgos conceded that it was perhaps unjust to change the Delian League into an empire at the service of Athens. However, there could be no question of reversing the decision, for to do so would be to accept slavery, douleia.33 His reasoning is subtle: it is necessary to defend an empire, even one that is acquired by coercion, for it would be too dangerous to give it up. If the allies cease to be in thrall to Athens, they will not remain neutral but will switch over to the enemy in order to wreak vengeance for the tribulations that they have suffered. In his speech, Pericles, rather then retreating on the subject of imperialism, goes into the attack. However unjust it was, the people must continue to act tyrannically toward the members of the League.34 There can be no question of dismounting once one’s steed is already charging.
Convinced of the necessity of the empire, Pericles furthermore undertook to lend legitimacy to the power of Athens by means of monuments that, over and above their proclaimed purpose, gave material expression to the city’s new imperial status.
The Odeon and Xerxes’ Tent: From One Empire to Another
The Odeon, constructed between 446 and 430 B.C., was associated so closely with Pericles that Cratinus, the comic poet, had one of his characters declare: “The squill-head Zeus! Lo! Here he comes, the Odeon like a cap upon his cranium, now that for good and all the ostracism is o’er.”35 The Odeon as headgear: what better way of expressing the link that bound the monument and the stratēgos together?
Today, this building is little known, for the archaeological excavations were never completed. But in Antiquity, it was considered one of the most impressive monuments in a city that was rich in architectural marvels (figure 4). The precinct in which it stood could accommodate huge crowds: this Odeon, flanking the theater of Dionysus, which was at that time built of wood, appeared as an immense hypostyle construction—with multiple colonnades—of 4,000 square meters in area (around 43,000 square feet). It was the largest public building in Athens and the first theater in Antiquity ever provided with a roof.
FIGURE 4. The Odeon of Pericles (ca. 443–435 B.C.): a virtual reconstruction. Image © the University of Warwick. Created by the THEATRON Consortium.
At an architectural level, the Odeon was freely inspired by Xerxes’ tent, which had been brought back to Athens, as booty, after the victory at Plataea, which the Greeks won over the Persians in 479 B.C.36 According to Plutarch: “The Odeon, which was arranged internally with many tiers of seats and many pillars, and which had a roof made with a circular slope from a single peak, they say was an exact reproduction of the Great King’s pavilion, and this too was built under the superintendence of Pericles” (Pericles, 13.5). One should, incidentally, not be misled by the vocabulary, Xerxes’ “pavilion” or “tent” resembled a real palace that could be dismantled and transported elsewhere and that adopted the form of the imperial residences of Persepolis. Its true model was the Apadana and the palace of a hundred columns, a reception hall built by Xerxes himself.37 In adopting such an architectural style, Pericles was modeling his Odeon on the great imperial architecture of the Achaemenids.
This strange mimicry had two symmetrical functions. It was intended, within the urban setting of the city itself, to commemorate the Athenian victory in the Persian Wars. Better still, by creating this hall for spectacles, the Athenians were manipulating the despotic symbolism associated with Xerxes’ tent and adapting it to democratic purposes. Whereas the original pavilion had, in pri
nciple, been reserved for the exclusive enjoyment of the Great King, the Odeon was conceived as an edifice open to all, constructed for the pleasure of the entire population. However, this architectural choice probably conveyed a quite different message to the foreigners who passed through Athens. The edifice must have struck them as a veritable imperialist manifesto.38 The Odeon, which imitated the splendors of Achaemenid architecture, returned the allies to the status of subjects and reminded them that they had, in truth, simply swapped masters. We should furthermore bear in mind that it was on the staircase leading to the Apadana, the throne-room in Persepolis, on which the Odeon drew freely for inspiration, that the long cohorts of tributary peoples had been represented, bringing their contributions to the Great King, in a lengthy procession (figure 5). Nor was that association solely metaphorical: in Athens, the allies of the Delian League were obliged to pass in front of Pericles’ Odeon when they came to deposit their tribute in the theater of Dionysus.39 This edifice brilliantly symbolized their new status as tribute-bearers, strictly in line with the imperial Achaemenid heritage.40
FIGURE 5. Tribute-bearers (maybe Ionians) from the ceremonial staircase (northern stairway) of the Apadana (Iran: Persepolis, end of the sixth century B.C.). In Persepolis and Ancient Iran with an introduction by Ursula Schneider, Oriental Institute. © 1976 by The University of Chicago. Image courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
The same reasoning may be applied to the city’s most famous monument, the Parthenon, for in many respects this too testified to the hardening of Athenian imperialism.
The Parthenon: A Marble Symbol of Athenian Imperialism
There can be little doubt that the great building program launched in Athens after 450 was associated with imperial dynamics. Pericles’ opponents would even reproach him for having misapplied imperial revenues in order to realize his monumental policy and, especially, to build the Parthenon with its statue of Athena Parthenos: “Hellas is insulted with a dire insult and manifestly subjected to tyranny when she sees that, with her own enforced contributions for the war, we are gilding and bedizening our city, which, for all the world like a wanton woman, adds to her wardrobe precious stones and costly statues and temples worth their millions” (Plutarch, Pericles, 12.2). To be sure, this declaration calls for a measure of qualification. For it is by no means certain that the Parthenon was built with the money obtained from the allies.41 All the same, the fact remains that, in the imaginary representations of the Athenians and of their allies, this building remained closely associated with the onward march of the empire, for was it not used to shelter the league’s treasury, which was transferred to Athens in 454 B.C., at the latest?
It is, moreover, this practical necessity—namely, to find a place for the treasury—that explains the strange layout of the monument. The fact is that, ordinarily, a Greek temple was built in accordance with a stereotyped schema: a vestibule (pronaos), then a central hall containing the cult statue (naos), and, finally, a back room (opisthodomos), for the use of the temple staff. In comparison to this canonical arrangement, the structure of the Parthenon is, to say the least, unusual—and for two reasons: in the first place, the huge dimensions of the naos contrast strongly with the limited area taken up by the pronaos and the opisthodomos (figure 6). The fact was that the central hall had to be spacious enough to house the immense statue of Athena Parthenos. Then, an extra room, with four columns, was set between the naos and the opisthodomos: a hall that gave its name to the edifice as a whole, the Parthenon, “the room for the virgin.”42 It was in this space that the city treasures were stored, in particular the treasury of the Delian League. This extra room that housed the allies’ tribute was thus the very symbol of Athenian imperialism. It is surely not merely by chance that the four columns that supported the roofing of this room were in the Ionic style. Incorporating this Ionic style at the very heart of a Doric edifice was a way for the Athenians to give material expression to their domination over a league made up chiefly of Ionian cities.
FIGURE 6. Athens, Acropolis, the Parthenon (ca. 447–437 B.C.): plan of the temple. Drawing by M. Korres. Courtesy of the Media Center for Art History at Columbia University.
Far from being a temple,43 the Parthenon was a treasury and a monument that glorified imperialism and symbolized the hardening or even petrification of Athenian domination. In this respect, the chronology is significant: the construction of the Parthenon began in 447, one year before the great Euboean revolt, and it was completed in 438, one year after the Samos affair.
In truth, there is nothing specifically Periclean about the management of the empire, except a particular way of theorizing about its necessity, and its presentation. Although we should perhaps not impute to Pericles in particular the responsibility for the city’s slide into imperialism, Pericles certainly did take over this new order without compunction, both in practice and in the representations that he promoted. Now we must evaluate to what degree the imperial dynamic and democratization of the city went hand in hand. Let us do so by analyzing the bases of the Periclean economy.
CHAPTER 5
A Periclean Economy?
Today, an “economy” means the production, distribution, and consumption of goods, both material and immaterial. But this term, which was forged in Athens in the classical period, had a sense that was very different from its contemporary one. In the fourth century, oikonomia defined, first, the way of managing an oikos, an agricultural property. It was only by extension that the term came to designate the management of the resources of a city, or even an empire. This mismatch between oikonomia and “economy,” the ancient formulation and the modern definition, for a long time led historians to doubt the existence, in the Greek world, of any economic sphere separate from all other social activities.
One group of ancient historians thus maintains that the cities knew of nothing more than a primitive form of economy, characterized by the preponderant part played by agriculture, the role of self-subsistence, the limited place of crafts and money, and an absence of major exchange systems. That view has long since been challenged by experts who, on the contrary, emphasize the dynamism of the ancient economy. In this battle between “primitivists” and “modernists” that started at the end of the nineteenth century, the Athens of Pericles constitutes a particularly animated scene of disagreement.
The fact is that, in the course of the fifth century, the democratic city experienced a phase of extraordinary prosperity. Its silver coinage was developing so rapidly that the little Athenian “owls” became the common currency of a large part of the Greek world. Its port, Piraeus, became the major seat of exchange for the eastern Mediterranean. However, historians are not in agreement as to the nature of the economic prosperity of Athens: did it result from an internal dynamic, in particular a rational management of resources both private and public, or was it no more than a by-product of Athens’s exploitation of the Delian League? What were the bases of the Athenian economy under Pericles? Was this an economy based on the revenues that Athens obtained from the hegemonic position that it acquired, or did its vitality spring from the rise of new economic ways of proceeding within the city? And, in any case, is it really possible to assign to Pericles a specific role in any such evolution?
To find answers to these questions, we must begin by focusing upon the private sphere: can we detect the existence of any Periclean oikonomia—that is to say, any specific way of managing an oikos and one’s own personal assets? According to the ancient authors, the stratēgos administered his own patrimony extremely carefully, radically rejecting extravagant behavior and the kind of practices that led one into debt and that were then favored by the Athenian elite.
When we pass from the private sector to the civic level, the questions change. They now concentrate on the part that the empire played in the economic dynamism of Athens. Even if it is clear that the Athenians drew substantial benefits, both direct and indirect, from the empire, this does not mean that their
prosperity stemmed solely from the tribute that they levied on their subject cities. Today, most historians think that the policy of “major constructions” associated with the name of Pericles was financed only partly by the league treasury, which was transferred to Athens before 454.
Whatever the exact degree of the economic exploitation of the allies, the city also profited from other large revenues—what the Greeks called prosodoi. The Athenians took to using these sums of money in a new way: they redistributed part of them to the community in the form of wages and civic allowances. Perhaps this was the true specificity of the Periclean economy: a new way of redistributing wealth to beneficiaries who, in return, became more strictly controlled. In this major development, Pericles certainly played a decisive role.
PERICLES AND A RATIONAL MANAGEMENT OF THE OIKOS: THE BIRTH OF A “MARKET ECONOMY”
The Oikonomia Attikē
Etymologically, oikonomia designates the controlled management (nomos comes from nemein, with the root meaning “distribute” and so “manage”) of a household. Far from identifying with the modern notion of an economy, initially it concerned only the private sphere and, above all, affected only agricultural activity, to the detriment of other forms of production and distribution, such as artisan activity and commerce.
It is true that agriculture constituted the essential part of the wealth that was produced in the Greek world—as much as 80 percent of its total value.1 This predominance of agricultural activity has sometimes led historians to represent the Greek economy as a static world, characterized by technological stagnation and an ideal of self-sufficiency. But was that really the case? It is certainly what one might think, reading ancient history sources that set such a high value upon the autourgos, the citizen who worked on his land with his own bare hands within the framework of direct exploitation. Yet that representation corresponds only partly to the reality.
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