Pericles of Athens
Page 11
In plenty of cities, the majority of citizens did not possess a property large enough to assure the viability of such an ideal of self-sufficiency. In Athens, the only city for which it is feasible to guess at a few figures, fewer than one citizen out of three was in a position to live off his own land. Close on two-thirds of the civic population either owned no land at all or else not enough for them to live off; most citizens owned plots of land less than one hectare in area (that is, less than 2.5 acres) and were consequently forced to engage in other activities, as craftsmen or as wage-earning agricultural laborers, in order to make a living.2 So only a fraction of the citizen population lived off its land, a number that corresponded to the number of those who, in the fifth century, belonged to the census class of zeugitae. To these should be added a tiny elite composed of large-scale landowners, such as Cimon and Pericles—probably no more than one thousand individuals in all—who owned estates of over 20 hectares (that is, 50 acres), which were in many cases run by specialized managers (see later).
Two conclusions may be drawn from that summary. First, the model of small-scale landowners was far from dominant in Athens; and second, self-sufficiency is not the appropriate term to describe the lifestyle of either largescale landowners or landless citizens. While the latter were obliged to find something to live off by buying in from outside, the former had to profit from their surpluses by selling them in some local, regional, or international market. Selling surpluses, buying what was lacking and paying taxes: that is an accurate enough definition of the oikonomia attikē that was characteristic of the fifth-century democracy of which Pericles is the ambiguous symbol.
Pericles in His Oikos: Agriculture Destined for the Marketplace
As we have seen,3 Pericles was a large-scale landowner and the heir to a family possessed of great wealth. According to Plutarch, far from living glued to his estate, the stratēgos managed his oikos in strict symbiosis with the market, selling his agricultural produce outside the city: “The wealth which was legally his, … so that it might not cause him much trouble and loss of time when he was busy with higher things, he set into such orderly dispensation as he thought was easiest and most exact. This was to sell his annual products all together in the lump, and then to buy in the market each article as it was needed” (Pericles, 16.3–4). Such buying and selling practices depended on confidence in the way the market functioned, for they implied retaining no stocks at all and relying throughout the year on continuous supplies from the agora. Such marketing operations also presupposed not only the existence of local or even regional markets but also an in-depth monetarization of Athenian society. Purchases were made using silver currency, which of course had first to be acquired from sales. We should remember that minted coins, invented in the sixth century, had spread rapidly throughout the whole of Greece, but particularly in Athens, and that ever since the early fifth century the city had been able to mint many issues of coins, thanks to its intensive exploitation of the Laurium district, in southern Attica. Pericles therefore had no compunction about resorting to money, unlike some of the traditional elite, who blamed this tool for dissolving traditional social relations by bringing fortunes into circulation and thereby upsetting status-based hierarchies.4
Pericles’ oikonomia was also characterized by another distinctive feature, this time involving the management of “human capital.” The stratēgos chose not to manage his property himself, preferring to delegate the task to Euangelos, a slave (oiketēs) whom he had previously trained. In this way, Pericles showed his attachment to the aristocratic ideal of skholē, leisure, freeing time to devote himself to political and military activities. This practice of delegation was in no sense a sign of aristocratic disdain for agricultural work. Rather, it testified to a desire for rational specialization: the estate was entrusted to a strictly efficient man5 who devoted himself full time to it and could even show inventiveness at the level of agricultural techniques.
Pericles’ attitude toward his oikos reflects not so much the development of market-agriculture—that would be an exaggerated claim—but rather of “marketable agriculture”—that is to say, agriculture whose products were destined for the marketplace.6 In this respect, the Periclean oikonomia testifies to a world that certainly did not operate within a closed space, on the model of self-sufficiency. But now we need to understand the reasons that led Pericles to act in this way. Was his behavior prompted by a desire for gain or by avarice (of which he was accused by some of his own relatives) or was it, rather, an effective way for the stratēgos to hold on to his patrimony, meanwhile maintaining his allegiance to the people?
The Periclean Mode of Management: Marked on the One Hand by a Refusal to Borrow and on the Other by a Rejection of Speculation
Pericles adopted a mode of managing his oikos that enabled him never to spend more than he produced. By selling the whole of his agricultural produce on the market, in one fell swoop, the stratēgos was in a position to know exactly how much capital he had at his disposal and so to proceed to make his purchases. He was now able to calculate exactly how much he could spend in order to meet both his private needs and his public commitments, such as liturgies, without drawing on his patrimony or running into debt.7 As Plutarch explains, his family “murmured at his expenditure for the day merely and under the most exact restrictions, there being no surplus of supplies at all, as in a great house and under generous circumstances, but every outlay and intake proceeding by count and measure.”8
This attitude toward accounting differed radically from the usual practices of members of the civic elite who, for the most part, preferred to run into debt rather than calculate their expenses. Wealthy Athenians felt no compunction about borrowing and pledging their land as collateral, in order to maintain their rank in society, as can be seen from the numerous pledged boundary markers (horoi) found in Attica and dating from the fourth and third centuries B.C. Strictly speaking, such boundary stones were placed in the fields in order to announce to one and all that this particular field was pledged to a mortgage or a guarantee.9 Far from being a sign of the endemic indebtedness of the small-scale Athenian peasantry—which may well have existed in the fifth century but is not documented—these boundary stones instead testified to a system of credit and mortgages that operated within a group of affluent citizens. As specialists have shown, debtors and creditors were all members of the same elite, so it was not poverty that drove borrowers to mortgage their land; rather, the need to finance heavy prestige expenses, such as dowries and liturgies, or else a desire to make productive investments.10 This was precisely the kind of sumptuary or speculative behavior that Pericles wished to avoid, so anxious was he to cover his expenses without risk of encroaching on his patrimony.
Pericles’ attitude was certainly marked by a measure of rationality, but there was nevertheless a negative aspect to it. In the eyes of many members of the elite, it smacked of stinginess to the point of creating serious tensions within his own family. His children bitterly resented the mediocre lifestyle that he imposed on the entire household. As Plutarch reports, his son Xanthippus was a “natural big spender [phusei te dapanēros] and was married to a young and extravagant woman” (Pericles, 36.1). So he did not take at all kindly to the fact that Pericles was so parsimonious with his allowances.11 Xanthippus was steeped in an ethic of aristocratic generosity and regarded his father’s carefully calculated moderation as pure avarice.
In reality, Pericles was above all determined not to be placed in the position of a debtor, a situation that he reckoned to be incompatible with the authority that he was keen to maintain. In this respect, an anecdote reported by Plutarch provides a striking illustration of his horror of debt. Exasperated at not receiving enough money from his father, “Xanthippus eventually sent to one of his father’s friends and got money, pretending that Pericles had bade him do it. When the friend afterwards demanded repayment of the loan, Pericles not only refused it, but brought a suit against him to boot. So the young fellow Xan
thippus, incensed at this, fell to abusing his father” (Pericles, 36.1–2). Because he refused to incur any debts, the stratēgos apparently had no hesitation in quarreling not only with one of his friends, but even with his own son!
The historical truth of this episode is far from well established, but the anecdote does testify to the hostility that Pericles’ behavior aroused among members of the Athenian elite, who were accustomed to a quite different attitude to expenditure. When stripped of its polemical aspect, this episode also reveals the deep-seated reasons for Pericles’ attitude. His mode of expenditure stemmed neither from avarice nor from speculation, but constituted a way of protecting his patrimony, by ruling out resorting to loans. Its aim was to defend his authority by avoiding being placed in a position of indebtedness.
Nevertheless, the stratēgos’s behavior is still astonishing, for it seems to defy the most elementary economic rationality. If Pericles refused to fall into debt, well and good. But that does not explain why he proceeded to sell all his produce in one go: to sell everything at once ruled out the possibility of obtaining the best prices, if only because, by pouring all his surpluses into the market, Pericles automatically drove prices down, to his own disadvantage. The iron law of the market would have favored him selling his products as circumstances dictated—for example, at points when gaps needed to be bridged and the price of cereals was soaring. It is therefore hard to portray Pericles as a model of novel and rational economic behavior. While the Aristotelian school defined the oikonomia attikē by the twofold action of selling and buying,12 it certainly did not recommend selling all one’s produce at once!
So how is it possible to explain this strange decision that not only alienated his closest relatives but also deprived him of substantial profits? In truth, in behaving in this way, Pericles was obeying rationality of a political rather than an economic nature. Because all forms of speculation were liable to damage the people—who depended on cereals for their survival—the stratēgos was absolutely determined not to pass for a profiteer or even a monopolist, however much this harmed his own interests. Pericles wished to be the protector of the dēmos even in the manner in which he managed his own property.
Although he was sometimes accused of avarice in the private sphere, the stratēgos had a fine reputation for generosity in the public sphere. Throughout his career, he manifested an unfailing concern for the well-being of the people, not only through the liturgies that he delighted in providing with munificence (see earlier, chapter 1), but above all by passing on to the dēmos the profits that resulted from the exploitation of the empire.
PERICLES AND THE EXPLOITATION OF THE EMPIRE: THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN ECONOMY BASED ON REVENUES
Under Pericles’ leadership, the Athenians derived from the functioning of the Delian League both direct benefits in the shape of pay and cleruchies, and indirect ones thanks to Athens’s control of commercial routes.
The Direct Benefits of Imperialism: Military Pay and Cleruchies
Military pay constituted one means of enrichment for the city: the empire made it possible, de facto, to feed a by no means negligible proportion of the civic population. According to Plutarch, Pericles sent out “sixty triremes annually, on which large numbers of the citizens sailed about for eight months under pay [emmisthoi], practising and at the same time acquiring the art of seamanship” (Pericles, 11.4). Was this an innovatory move on the part of the stratēgos? That is a matter for debate, for it was a practice that may have gone back to Cimon or even to Aristides.13
Whatever the case may be, soldiers and oarsmen, thetes, but also metics, were certain of being remunerated well enough when they enrolled on the Athenian triremes. At the cost of one drachma per day for every man who embarked, Athens supported over 10,000 citizens and metics during those eight months of seafaring.14 If Plutarch is to be believed, that already represented an expenditure of over 400 talents a year and it was all funded by the league’s treasury!
Remaining in the domain of the military and the direct administration of the empire, we must, as the author of Constitution of the Athenians suggests,15 add to this all the pay for sixteen hundred bowmen, twelve hundred cavalrymen, and five hundred guards for the arsenals located in Athens. The empire furthermore mobilized seven hundred magistrates who were despatched throughout the league to control it and protect Athenian interests. These were specialized employees such as the hellēnotamiai, the league treasurers, and the episkopoi (the overseers), whose salaries were, in all probability, directly financed by the federal treasury.16 All this represented no fewer than 4,000 men who, at that time, were all Athenian citizens. If the oarsmen are added to these, the total amounts to almost 15,000 individuals supported directly by the empire, the majority of whom were Athenians, out of a population of between 40,000 and 50,000 citizens.
Thanks to Pericles, citizens benefited from the empire in other ways too. The stratēgos increased the number of cleruchies—that is to say, the installation of military garrisons in the territories of allied cities. This was part of a tradition that had been initiated well before his time and was then developed by Cimon.17 “He [Pericles] despatched a thousand settlers to the [Thracian] Chersonesus, and five hundred to Naxos, and to Andros half that number, and a thousand to Thrace, to settle with the Bisaltae, and others to Italy, when the site of Sybaris was settled, which they named Thurii.”18 But the list provided by Plutarch is incomplete: cleruchies were also sent to Chalcis and Histiaea after the revolt in Euboea,19 and to Sinope and Amisos on the Black Sea (Pericles, 20.2), to Aegina (Pericles, 23.2), and to Astakos in the Propontis.
What exactly was a cleruchy? It was composed of Athenian citizens who were installed, as a garrison, on a portion of the allied territory that had been confiscated for their use. The cleruchs, who retained their original citizenship, had to remain, under arms, in the lands that the allies cultivated for them and from which they received the income. So these were not peasant-soldiers, but soldier-landlords of the occupied territory. In all likelihood, they did not become owners of the land but simply enjoyed the usufruct, in the name of the city of Athens as a whole.20
This system certainly helped the poorest of the Athenians, the thetes and the zeugitae, who were the principal beneficiaries of these territorial initiatives: the decree that founded the city of Brea, in Thrace (between 446 and 438), testifies explicitly to the role that fell to them in this type of operation.21 The cleruchs in this way became eligible for the archonship, at least they did once this prestigious magistracy was opened to admit the third census class, from 457 B.C. onward. It would, however, be wrong to treat the cleruchies simply as a way of benefiting the poorest citizens. Everything leads us to believe that wealthy Athenians were also beneficiaries, although they were not forced to reside in the garrisons.22
Over and above their direct exploitation of the empire, the Athenians enjoyed other, more indirect, benefits from their hegemonic position at the heart of the Delian League. By constructing a vast commercial zone that was, if not unified, at least under Athenian control, the city confirmed its position as the economic center of the Aegean world at the time of Pericles.
The Indirect Benefits of Imperialism: The Control of Commercial Routes
Thanks to its powerful navy, very early on in the fifth century, Athens obtained control of the wheat route that led to the Pontus Euxinus, today’s Black Sea, the location of one of the principal granaries of the Greek world—the kingdom of the Bosporus. Much was at stake here: cereals (sitos) formed the basis of the staple diet of the Greeks of Antiquity—almost three-quarters of their daily nutritional intake23—and, as Attica was, for ecological reasons, deficient in grain,24 every year the city was obliged to import almost 25,000 tons of cereals in order to feed its large population.25 That is why, ever since the foundation of the league, the Athenians had taken care to control the stopping-off points along this vital commercial route, at a time when navigation was mostly a matter of hopping from one Aegean island to another: Lemnos and Imbr
os remained under Athenian control throughout the Classical period; Skyros was captured in 475; and the revolt of Thasos was mercilessly crushed in 465–463.
This policy was pursued and strengthened in the years when Pericles played a major role in the city. First, the stratēgos encouraged the creation of the colonies of Brea, in Thrace—between 446 and 438—and Amphipolis in Chalcidice in 437, both so as to distribute land to Athenian citizens and also in order to secure supplies of cereals for Athens (Thucydides, 4.102). Next, he launched an expedition to the Chersonesus, a narrow spit of land that controlled the routes through the straits. According to Plutarch, this was the most popular of all his military ventures (Pericles, 19.1). This campaign, which may have begun in 447 B.C., made it possible to set up cleruchies26 and to establish control of the straits leading to the rich wheat-lands of the Pontus Euxinus. Finally, Pericles may have led a military expedition to the Black Sea, if we are to believe Plutarch, who, however, is the only author to mention this little-known episode (Pericles, 20.1). This campaign, probably launched between 438 and 432, after the Samos War, testifies to the stratēgos’s concern to ensure cereal supplies to the city.
This preoccupation of his found expression in the elaboration of an ad hoc legal framework and the creation of a specific magistracy, probably in Pericles’ time. An Athenian decree drawn up between 432 and 426 for Methone in Pieria (on the Macedonian coast at the end of the Thermaic Gulf) reveals the existence of “guardians of the Hellespont,” the hellespontophulakes. The text authorized the city of Methone each year to import a fixed quantity of grain, for which it had to apply to these magistrates.27 The “guardians of the Hellespont” in this way controlled all the convoys of grain in the Hellespont (today known as the Dardanelles), for the allied cities had first to apply to them for authorization to transport wheat directly to their own territories. Even if, as it happened, those arrangements suited the allied cities, they nevertheless show how very intrusive Athens’s control of the trading of cereals was. No city was allowed free passage in the straits leading to the Black Sea: the Athenians were determined not only to safeguard their own supplies and prevent these deliveries from being diverted by the enemy, but possibly also to make supplies to the allies dependent on their loyalty.28 Thanks to the empire, the Athenians in this way benefited from guaranteed supplies of cereals that enabled them to feed their large population at a strictly controlled price, at the same time manipulating an effective means of making the allies toe the line.