Pericles of Athens
Page 18
Another account relayed by Plutarch tended to represent Pericles as, if not a sophist, at least a man close to them: “A certain athlete had hit Epitimus the Pharsalian with a javelin, accidentally, and killed him, and Pericles squandered an entire day discussing with Protagoras whether it was the javelin, or rather the one who hurled it, or the judges of the contests that ‘in the strictest sense,’ ought to be held responsible for the disaster.”53 Some historians believe that this passage confirms the stratēgos’s sympathy for the inflammatory ideas of the sophist Protagoras of Abdera. He had written a treatise titled On the Gods, in which he maintained that “man is the measure of all things” and even defended a number of agnostic ideas: “As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life.”54
However, this supposed complicity between Pericles and Protagoras remains unverifiable. First, no source from the classical period even mentions it. The fact that Protagoras may have played some role in the founding of Thurii—for which he may have drawn up laws—does not necessarily prove that he was an adviser to the stratēgos.55 Besides, even if the anecdote recorded by Plutarch was true, the conversation was not about the gods but about irrelevant philosophico-juridical considerations. Finally, even Plutarch himself admits that he is recording biased or even untruthful words, for it was Xanthippus who was spreading this story, with the explicit intention of harming his father (36.4).
After examining the sources, we still have found nothing to suggest that Pericles was a visionary who rejected all forms of superstition. To be sure, the stratēgos did keep company with Anaxagoras and was in touch with other sophists who were living in Athens. But that does not mean to say that he accepted all their beliefs. On the contrary, Pericles was keen to show that he was not the captive of any doctrine and, besides, his close acquaintances also included men who held the most traditional of religious beliefs. Revealingly enough, it was the seer Lampon that the stratēgos chose as the founder of Thurii, not Protagoras, although the latter also took part in the expedition.
Plutarch tells us that the stratēgos did sometimes manifest superstitious beliefs. In 429, when struck down by the plague, he was assailed by “a kind of sluggish distemper that prolonged itself through various changes, used up his body slowly and undermined the loftiness of his spirit” (Pericles, 38.1). At this point, his clear head was supposedly taken over by a weak mind: “Pericles, as he lay sick, showed one of his friends who was come to see him an amulet that the women had hung round his neck. [Theophrastus saw this as a sign] that he was very badly off to put up with such folly as that” (Pericles, 38.2). According to Aristotle’s successor, Pericles forwent all control over his mores, abandoning himself to beliefs that were the more discredited for being associated with the world of women.56 That demeaning story, which was doing the rounds in the philosophical schools, should be regarded with the utmost circumspection, since Plutarch, for his part, relates an alternative version of the death of the stratēgos that, on the contrary, transforms his death-throes into a most edifying scene. Although he missed out on a heroic death on the battlefield, the stratēgos is reported to have displayed an unshakeable lucidity right up to his dying breath, when he delivered one last calm message to his friends gathered about him.57
Pericles is portrayed now as a strong-minded man who pours ridicule on divine omens and is in communication with the sophists, now as a weak-minded individual abandoning himself to superstition. The fact is, though, that these contrasting pictures tell us more about the preoccupations of the philosophers than about Pericles’ personal beliefs. Among the philosophical schools, Pericles became a stylized ideal type identified with one of the sharply defined caricatures of figures that Theophrastus sketched in so cleverly in his Characters.58
In The Life of Pericles, one passage conveys this tension particularly sharply:
A story is told that once on a time the head of a one-horned ram was brought to Pericles from his country-place, and that Lampon the seer, when he saw how the horn grew strong and solid from the middle of the forehead, declared that, whereas there were two powerful parties in the city, that of Thucydides and that of Pericles, the mastery would finally devolve upon one man—the man to whom this sign had been given. Anaxagoras, however, had the skull cut in two and showed that the brain had not filled out its position but had drawn together to a point, like an egg, at that particular spot in the entire cavity where the root of the horn began. At that time, the story says, it was Anaxagoras who won the plaudits of bystanders; but a little while after it was Lampon, for Thucydides was overthrown and Pericles was entrusted with the entire control of all the interests of the people.59
Here too, the story is unreliable, and its elegant symmetry may well arouse legitimate suspicion in the mind of a reader. All the same, one element in the account does ring true: Pericles does not himself choose between the two suggested interpretations. It is the others present who pronounce on the matter, initially inclining to favor Anaxagoras but then having second thoughts about the matter and swinging back to rally to Lampon. Throughout this process, the stratēgos himself remains obstinately out of view. Does this, once again, testify to the prudence of Pericles, who never commits himself unless it is absolutely necessary or unless it is in his precise interest to do so? That is perfectly possible, but there is another possible hypothesis. If the stratēgos refrained from expressing a preference, that may have been because he saw no obvious contradiction between the two explanations. Plutarch confirms this possibility in the conclusion to the anecdote: “There is nothing, in my opinion, to prevent both of them, the naturalist and the seer, from being in the right of the matter; the one correctly divined the cause, the other the object or purpose.”
But, in truth, was Pericles a freethinker or of a traditionalist cast of mind? He may have been both, either alternately or simultaneously. The two attitudes were not as contradictory as is suggested by some of the public pronouncements made by either the sophists or the Hippocratic doctors; the latter were prone to emphasize such a contradiction the better to justify their own practices before an audience that they had to convince.60 In reality, in the Greek world, there was no clear dividing line between rationality and “superstition”; in the fifth century, Hippocratic medicine and healing rituals functioned in parallel and for most of the time cohabited without clashing.61 Making offerings, taking part in festivals, believing in prophetic dreams, trying out experimental remedies, and observing natural phenomena without any reference to any other world were all modes of behavior or interpretation that could coexist perfectly well, not only in Greek society generally but also within a single individual who, depending on the context, would turn to the experiences that seemed most appropriate in the prevailing circumstances.
However, even if Pericles did not see these different beliefs as contradictions, that was not necessarily the case for all his fellow-citizens. There is evidence to suggest a certain hardening in religious matters in the 430s, as the political and diplomatic climate became progressively more difficult. According to certain sources, this was when several of those close to the stratēgos were charged with impiety in the lawcourts.
The Problem of Impiety
The increase in the number of impiety trials in Pericles’ time is a matter of historiographical debate. The fact is that this question involves adopting a definite position on the very nature of Athenian democracy. To accept their existence is to believe that this “Age of Enlightenment” was also a time of religious persecution, even before the Peloponnesian War brought about a hardening of attitudes. To reject it is to defend the irenic version of a tolerant and open democratic Athens. Depending on the view adopted, the trial of Socrates in 399 becomes either the climax of a series of attacks launched by the democracy against “freethinkers” or else an altogether exceptional case that can be explained by the philosopher’s provo
cative behavior in a context of political tension.62
The documentation is fraught with pitfalls, but along with many question marks, some things are clear. The first certainty is that Pericles’ reputation was murky on account of his maternal ancestors. As a member of the Alcmaeonid family, the stratēgos was sullied by the pollution of ancestors who had dared to massacre suppliants who had taken refuge on the Acropolis.63 Shortly before the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans had seized the opportunity to reactivate the memory of this embarrassing episode:
It was this “curse” that the Lacedaemonians now bade the Athenians drive out, principally, as they pretended, to avenge the honour of the gods, but in fact because they knew that Pericles, son of Xanthippus, was implicated in the curse on his mother’s side, and thinking that, if he were banished, they would find it easier to get from the Athenians the concessions they hoped for. They did not, however, so much expect that he would suffer banishment, as that they would discredit him with his fellow-citizens, who would feel that to some extent his misfortune would be the cause of the war.64
That inherited pollution was clearly at the origin of all the accusations made in Athens against the stratēgos.
The second certainty: Spartan propaganda never succeeded in harming him directly. No lawsuit was ever brought against him and, according to the orator Lysias, Pericles was even passed down to posterity as a model of piety: “Pericles, they say, advised you once that in dealing with impious persons you should enforce against them not only the written but also the unwritten laws … which no-one has yet had the authority to abolish or the audacity to gainsay—laws whose very author is unknown; he judged that they would thus pay the penalty not merely to men, but also to the gods.”65 So Pericles was represented as promoting a strict, even intransigent view of piety, and urging his fellow-citizens to punish offenders even more severely than was prescribed by law. That astonishing excessiveness should probably be ascribed to the very suspicion of impiety that surrounded him.
According to the ancient sources, his opponents, foiled in their attempts to damage Pericles in person, resorted to bringing charges of impiety (asebeia) against several of those close to him: the sculptor Phidias, Pericles’ partner, Aspasia, and his teacher, Anaxagoras. It is at this point that a historian is obliged to abandon the solid ground of certainties and venture into the fogs of speculation and hypothesis.
Let us start with the misadventures of the sculptor Phidias. In The Life of Pericles (31.4), Plutarch reports that “when he wrought the battle of the Amazons on the shield of the goddess [belonging to the statue of Athena Parthenos], he carved out a figure that suggested himself as a bald old man lifting on high a stone with both hands, and also inserted a very fine likeness of Pericles fighting with an Amazon. And the attitude of the hand, which holds out a spear in front of the face of Pericles, is cunningly contrived as it were with a desire to conceal the resemblance, which is, however, plain to be seen from either side.” Having discovered this subterfuge, citizens were apparently revolted by this transgressive action that “raised the memory of men to the level of the celebration of heroes and of gods.”66 Plutarch claims that the sculptor was thrown into prison, where he died, and meanwhile Meno, who had denounced him, was honored by the city.
However, there is no evidence to confirm the veracity of such an episode, which is related in this form only in the works of later authors.67 Besides, Plutarch makes a factual error in his account: Phidias did not die in prison for, soon after 438, he went off to Elis to sculpt a gigantic statue of Zeus at Olympia.68 From there, it is but a step to consign the entire anecdote to the gallery of Plutarchian fantasies. However, it is a step that we should forbear to take. Not only are the sculptor’s misfortunes mentioned by several fifth-century and fourth-century sources,69 but Plutarch does appear to be speaking from some experience. It is possible that during his stay in Athens, he had himself spotted the portraits sculpted on the goddess’s shield.70 Moreover, it seems that this was not the only misdemeanor of which the sculptor was accused: it was said that he had diverted for his own use some of the gold and ivory allotted for the construction of the statue of Athena Parthenos.71
Even if we accept that those accusations have some historical basis, it was certainly not impiety that fueled the Athenians’ indignation. The statue of Athena was provided with no attested sacrifices, no altar, no priest, and it had no ritual role. Rather, it was a political monument erected to the glory of Athens. What Phidias was accused of was, first, of having ignored the ban on representations of individuals on public Athenian monuments—in effect, of manifest hubris, not impiety (asebeia)—and, second, of having embezzled public funds.
The legal attacks against Aspasia, Pericles’ partner, are even more doubtful. According to Plutarch, the sole source to mention this affair, this Milesian woman was dragged before the courts on charges of impiety, prompting Pericles to abandon his usual reserve and to move the jurors’ hearts with his tears. Far from being historically attested, the whole story is probably the fruit of a late reconstruction that misconstrues the accusations made on the comic stage as an actual lawsuit against impiety.72
Are we on any firmer ground with the lawsuit brought against Pericles’ teacher, Anaxagoras? That is far from certain. He had been living in Athens for many years and is said to have been condemned for impiety at a date that is uncertain—possibly 432—and this prompted him to flee to Lampsacus, his home city, in northern Asia Minor, where he is said to have lived until his death.73 However, the whole affair remains very unclear. The Hellenistic sources, recorded by Diogenes Laertius (2.12), in any case produce two different versions of the matter. In one, it is the demagogue Cleon who prosecuted him for impiety; in the other, it is Thucydides, Pericles’ opponent, ostracized in 443, who accuses him of collaboration with the Persians.
Nor are these the only gray areas surrounding this supposed trial. On what legal basis could Anaxagoras have been found guilty? According to Plutarch, a certain Diopeithes proposed “a bill providing for the public impeachment of such as did not believe in gods [ta theia] or who taught doctrines regarding the heavens.”74 The suggestion, then, is that Diopeithes, an influential seer, was one of the zealous figures who clung to traditional piety and was shocked by Anaxagoras’s studies on the heavenly bodies and phenomena. For did not Pericles’ friend believe that the sun was an incandescent mass—not a deity—and did he not refuse to believe that eclipses were divine portents75?
Yet Plutarch is the only one to mention this strange decree, the authenticity of which is such a bone of contention for historians.76 Without entering into this debate that is so full of pitfalls, we can perhaps try to rephrase the question. To be sure, attacks on “naturalists” (phusikoi) did make a comeback in the 430s,77 for as the Spartan threat became more pressing, the Athenians were clearly keen to make sure that the gods were on their side. But does this imply that these critics resorted to a legal solution? There is no evidence to suggest that it does. What is certain, however, is that the comic poets were busy attacking not only the sophists and “nebulous chatterboxes” (meteōroleskhai), but any individuals who in some way drew attention to themselves in the city. In this respect, the seer Diopeithes was not spared any more than Anaxagoras was; the comic poets portrayed him as an oracular expert of doubtful repute, or even as a dangerous visionary.78 Perhaps, after all, that is the main lesson to be learned here: in the 430s, all forms of individual distinction became suspect.
Thus, none of the trials for impiety involving those close to Pericles is attested with certainty. So it is hard to detect any symptoms of a democracy given to persecution let alone terrorism and bent on punishing the slightest religious deviation. If authoritarianism did become stricter, it probably did so after Pericles’ death. The plague that carried off the stratēgos along with so many of his fellow-citizens did have a profound effect on the Athenians and their beliefs. According to Thucydides, the epidemic even drove men into nihilism and despair, as all their invo
cations to the gods remained unanswered: “The sanctuaries too, in which they had quartered themselves, were full of the corpses of those who had died in them; for the calamity which weighed upon them was so overpowering that men, not knowing what was to become of them, became careless of all law, sacred as well as profane. And the customs which they had hitherto observed regarding burial were all thrown into confusion, and they buried their dead, each one as he could.”79 Relations between men and the gods were lastingly undermined, as is testified by the mutilation of the Hermai and the profanation of the Mysteries of Eleusis, in 416/5. Readers of Thucydides will not be surprised to learn that the death of the stratēgos constituted a definite break; according to the historian, with the disappearance of the stratēgos, the life of the whole community underwent a change for the worse.
CHAPTER 9
After Pericles: The Decline of Athens?
In The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides treats the death of Pericles as a turning point in the history of Athens. He represents Pericles’ “reign” as a clear dividing line between a community led by a virtuous elite and a democratic city abandoned to the hands of kakoi—the despicable demagogues. Once Plutarch had put the finishing touches to it, this Manichean vision was often readopted by modern historiography, without the slightest criticism.1 Yet the ancient sources are by no means unanimous on the subject. Some ancient authors rejected the historiographical model that represents a rise up to Pericles, followed by a fall after the death of the stratēgos. The disciples of Socrates, for instance, had no hesitation in criticizing even Pericles’ “reign.” In Plato’s view, Pericles was certainly no model. He proved himself incapable not only of raising his own children but also of educating the Athenian people. This showed that the stratēgos was at least partly responsible for the decadence which, according to the philosopher, had characterized the city right from the start. In Plato’s view, democracy was a regime that was fundamentally vitiated and the personalities of its leaders were of little account; in the last analysis, it was the people, the true tyrant, who forced its leaders to do as it wished.