[T]he customs that brought us to this point, the form of government and the way of life that have made our city great—these I shall disclose before I turn to praise the dead. I think these subjects are quite suitable for the occasion, and the whole gathering of citizens and guests will profit by hearing them discussed.
We have a form of government that does not try to imitate the laws of our neighboring states. We are more an example to others than they to us. In name, it is called a democracy, because it is managed not for a few people, but for the majority. Still, although we have equality at law for everyone here in private disputes, we do not let our system of rotating public offices undermine our judgment of a candidate’s virtue; and no one is held back by poverty or because his reputation is not well-known, as long as he can do good service to the city. We are free and generous not only in our public activities as citizens, but also in our daily lives: there is no suspicion in our dealings with one another, and we are not offended by our neighbor for following his own pleasure. We do not cast on anyone the censorious looks that—though they are no punishment—are nevertheless painful. We live together without taking offense on private matters; and as for public affairs, we respect the law greatly and fear to violate it, since we are obedient to those in office at any time, and also to the laws—especially to those laws that were made to help people who have suffered an injustice, and to the unwritten laws that bring shame on their transgressors by the agreement of all.
Moreover, we have provided many ways to give our minds recreation from labor: we have instituted regular contests and sacrifices throughout the year, while attractive furnishings of our private homes give us daily delight and expel sadness. The greatness of our city has caused all things from all parts of the earth to be imported here, so that we enjoy the products of other nations with no less familiarity than we do our own.
Then, too, we differ from our enemies in preparing for war: we leave our city open to all; and we have never expelled strangers in order to prevent them from learning or seeing things that, if they were not hidden, might give an advantage to the enemy. We do not rely on secret preparations and deceit so much as on our own courage in action. And as for education, our enemies train to be men from early youth by rigorous exercise, while we live a more relaxed life and still take on dangers as great as they do.…
We are lovers of nobility with restraint and lovers of wisdom without any softening of character.2 We use wealth as an opportunity for actions, rather than for boastful speeches. And as for poverty we think that there is no shame in confessing it; what is shameful is doing nothing to escape it. Moreover, the very men who take care of public affairs look after their own at the same time; and even those who are devoted to their own businesses know enough about the city’s affairs. For we alone think that a man who does not take part in public affairs is good for nothing, while others only say he is “minding his own business.” We are the ones who develop policy, or at least decide what is to be done; for we believe that what spoils action is not speeches, but going into action without first being instructed through speeches. In this too we excel over others: ours is the bravery of people who think through what they will take in hand, and discuss it thoroughly; with other men, ignorance makes them brave and thinking makes them cowards. But the people who most deserve to be judged tough-minded are those who know exactly what terror or pleasure lie ahead, and are not turned away from danger by that knowledge. Again we are opposite to most men in matters of virtue: we win our friends by doing them favors, rather than by accepting favors from them. A person who does a good turn is a more faithful friend; his goodwill towards the recipient preserves his feeling that he should do more; but the friendship of a person who has to return a good deed is dull and flat, because he knows he will be merely paying a debt—rather than doing a favor—when he shows his virtue in return. So that we alone do good to others not after calculating the profit, but fearlessly and in the confidence or our freedom.
In sum, I say that our city as a whole is a lesson for Greece, and that each of us presents himself as a self-sufficient individual, disposed to the widest possible diversity of actions, with every grace and great versatility. This is not merely a boast in words for the occasion, but the truth in fact, as the power of this city, which we have obtained by having this character, makes evident.
For Athens is the only power now that is greater than her fame, when it comes to the test. Only in the case of Athens can enemies never be upset over the quality of those who defeat them when they invade; only in our empire can subject states never complain that their rulers are unworthy. We are proving our power with strong evidence, and we are not without witnesses: we shall be the admiration of people now and in the future. We do not need Homer, or anyone else, to praise our power with words that bring delight for a moment, when the truth will refute his assumptions about what was done. For we have compelled all seas and all lands to be open to us by our daring; and we have set up eternal monuments on all sides, of our setbacks as well as of our accomplishments.
Such is the city for which these men fought valiantly and died, in the firm belief that it should never be destroyed, and for which every man of you who is left should be willing to endure distress.
That is why I have spoken at such length concerning the city in general, to show you that the stakes are not the same, between us and the enemy—for their city is not like ours in any way—and, at the same time, to bring evidence to back up the eulogy of these men for whom I speak. The greatest part of their praise has already been delivered, for it was their virtues, and the virtues of men like them, that made what I praised in the city so beautiful. Not many Greeks have done deeds that are obviously equal to their own reputations, but these men have. The present end these men have met is, I think, either the first indication, or the final confirmation, of a life of virtue. And even those who were inferior in other ways deserve to have their faults overshadowed by their courageous deaths in war for the sake of their country. Their good actions have wiped out the memory of any wrong they have done. And they have produced more public good than public harm. None of them became a coward because he set a higher value on enjoying the wealth that he had; none of them put off the terrible day of his death in hopes that he might overcome his poverty and attain riches. Their longing to punish their enemies was stronger than this, and because they believe this to be the most honorable sort of danger, they chose to punish their enemies at this risk, and to let everything else go. The uncertainty of success they entrusted to hope, but for that which was before their eyes they decided to rely on themselves in action. They believed that this choice entailed resistance and suffering, rather than surrender and safety; they ran away from the word of shame, and stood up in actions at risk of their lives. And so, in the one brief moment allotted them, at the peak of their fame and not in fear, they departed.3
The second speech of Pericles is delivered under grimmer circumstances. It is now into the second year of the war, and the overcrowded city is being devastated by the plague.
What exactly was the disease? Was it bubonic plague, ebola hemorrhagic fever, glanders, typhus? All have been suggested, but recent analysis done on dental fragments found in the mass grave discovered in the Keramikos section of Athens has found traces of salmonella enterica serovar Typhi, or typhoid fever.
Thucydides, who was one of the few who became sick and recovered, described in lurid detail not only the excruciating symptoms—the pustules and internal burning and an unquenchable thirst that led the tormented to lie down in the rain gutters, some expiring there as they tried to slake themselves—but also scenes of the damned that seem to come out of the imagination of a sadistic and sordid filmmaker. “The present affliction was aggravated by the crowding of country folk into the city, which was especially unpleasant for those who came in. They had no houses, and because they were living in shelters that were stifling in the summer, their mortality was out of control. Dead and dying lay tumbling on to
p of one another in the streets, and at every water fountain lay men half-dead with thirst. The temples also, where they pitched their tents, were all full of the bodies of those who died in them, for people grew careless of holy and profane things alike, since they were oppressed by the violence of the calamity, and did not know what to do.”4 Lawlessness and depravity overtook the population, trapped within the city walls with no escape from the raging contagion. So it was that Athenians, who had seemed to be living exemplary lives so eminently worth living as to require no Homer to sing their praises, could, in a few short years, have descended to such pitiful straits. The precipitous reversal is akin to a Greek drama demonstrating the deadly repercussions of hubris, only with a polis standing in for an individual.
It is before these Athenians, devitalized and demoralized, that Pericles steps forward to address the ekklêsia. He knows that those gathered there on the Pnyx are in a mood to blame him and opens with a frank acknowledgment of the mood of the men he faces. “I expected you to get angry with me, and I can see why it has happened. I have called this assembly to remind you of certain points and to rebuke you for your misplaced anger at me and for your giving in too easily to misfortune.”5 But instead of offering the sorry spectacle of prolonged self-justification, he modulates quickly to a different range, elevated and inspiring. His rhetoric first moves to transmute personal grief into collective grief, and then collective grief into collective grandeur:
I believe that if the city is sound as a whole, it does more good to its private citizens than if it benefits them as individuals while faltering as a collective unit. It does not matter whether a man prospers as an individual: if his country is destroyed, he is lost along with it; but if he meets with misfortune, he is far safer in a fortunate city than he would be otherwise.…
For my part I am the man I was. I have not shifted ground. It is you who are changing: you were persuaded to fight when you were still unharmed, but now that times are bad, you are changing your minds; and to your weak judgment my position does not seem sound. That is because you already feel the pain that afflicts you as individuals, while the benefit to us all has not yet become obvious; and now that this great reversal has come upon you in so short a time you are too low in your minds to stand by your decisions, for it makes your thoughts slavish when something unexpected happens suddenly and defies your best-laid plans. That is what has happened to you on top of everything else, mainly because of the plague.
Still, you live in a great city and have been brought up with a way of life that matches its greatness; so you should be willing to stand up to the greatest disasters rather than eclipse your reputation. (People think it equally right, you see, to blame someone who is so weak that he loses the glorious reputation that was really his as it is to despise someone who has the audacity to reach for a reputation he should not have.)
So set aside the grief you feel for your individual losses, and take up instead the cause of our common safety.
As for your fear that we will have a great deal of trouble in this war and still be no closer to success, I have already said something that should be enough for you: I proved many times that you were wrong to be suspicious of the outcome. I will tell you this, however, about your greatness in empire—something you never seem to think about, which I have not mentioned in my speeches. It is a rather boastful claim, and I would not bring it up now if I had not seen that you are more discouraged than you have reason to be. You think your empire extends only to your allies, but I am telling you that you are entirely the masters of one of the two usable parts of the world—the land and the sea. Of the sea, you rule as much as you use now, and more if you want. When you sail with your fleet as it is now equipped, there is no one who can stop you—not the King of Persia or any nation in existence. This power cannot be measured against the use of your land and homes, though you think it a great loss to be deprived of them. It makes no sense to take these so seriously; you should think of your land as a little kitchen garden, and your house as a rich man’s trinket of little value compared to this power. Keep in mind too that if we hold fast to our liberty and preserve it we will easily recover our land and houses; but people who submit to foreign domination will start to lose what they already had. Don’t show yourselves to be doubly inferior to your ancestors, who took the empire—they did not inherit from others—and, in addition, kept it safe and passed it on to you. No, what you should do is remember that it is more shameful to lose what you have than to fail in an attempt to get more. You should take on the enemy at close quarters, and go not only with pride, but with contempt. Even a coward can swell with pride, if he is lucky and ignorant; but you cannot have contempt for the enemy unless your confidence is based on a strategy to overcome them—which is your situation exactly. Even if you have only an even chance of winning, if you are conscious of your superiority it is safer for you to be daring, for in that case you do not depend on hope (which is a bulwark only to those who have no resources at all), but on a strategy based on reality, which affords a more accurate prediction of the result.
You have reason besides to support the dignity our city derives from her empire, in which you all take pride; you should not decline the trouble, unless you cease to pursue the honor, of empire. And do not think that the only thing we are fighting for is our freedom from being subjugated: you are in danger of losing the empire, and if you do, the anger of the people you have ruled will raise other dangers.6 You are in no position to walk away from your empire, though some people might propose to do so from fear of the current situation, and act the part of virtue because they do not want to be involved in public affairs. You see, your empire is really like a tyranny—though it may have been thought unjust to seize, it is now unsafe to surrender.7 People who would persuade the city to do such a thing would quickly destroy it, and if they set up their own government they would destroy that too. For those who stay out of public affairs survive only with the help of other people who take action; and they are no use to a city that rules an empire, though in a subject state they may serve safely enough.…
Keep this in mind: our city is famous everywhere for its greatness in not yielding to adversity and in accepting so many casualties and so much trouble in war; besides, she has possessed great power till now, which will be remembered forever by those who come after us, even if we do give way a little now (for everything naturally goes into decline): Greeks that we are, we have ruled most of the Greeks, and held out in great wars against them, all together or one city at a time, and our city has the most wealth of every sort, and is the greatest. And yet a man of inaction would complain about this! No matter, anyone who is active will want to be like us, and those who do not succeed will envy us. To be hated and to cause pain is, at present, the reality for anyone who takes on the rule of others, and anyone who makes himself hated for matters of great consequence has made the right decision; for hatred does not last long, but the momentary brilliance of great actions lives on as a great glory that will be remembered forever after.
As for you, keep your minds on the fine future you know will be yours, and on the shame you must avoid at this moment. Be full of zeal on both counts. Send no more heralds to the Lacedaemonians, and do not let them know how heavy your troubles are at present. The most powerful cities and individuals are the ones that are the least sensitive in their minds to calamity and the firmest in their actions to resist it.8
This is political mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Pericles is breathing life back into the soul of the city by articulating their collective sense of why their lives are worth the living—and, therefore, worth the losing. You have achieved it, he tells his numb-with-grief-and-with-foreboding Athenians, a greatness such that men will speak of in all the times to come. You are as song-worthy as a garlanded victor who has had a poet’s epicinean ode composed in his honor. Here is your ode. I, Pericles son of Xanthippus, am singing it now for you.
This is Pericles’ last speech before the Athenians. Within the year
, he himself is dead of the plague.
* * *
1In Thucydides, Pericles, and Periclean Imperialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), Edith Foster comes down on the side of disapproval. She argues that Thucydides’ text surrounds Pericles’ speeches with a narration of events that gestures toward the doom implicit in his imperialism. His narration in Book 2 undercuts the “simultaneously idealized and evasive view of Athenian imperial power depicted by Pericles in his speeches” (p. 183).
2Paul Woodruff, whose translation I am using, adds this useful footnote: “ ‘We are lovers of nobility without restraint, and lovers of wisdom without any softening of character’ (philokaloumen te gar met’ euteleias kai philsophoumen aneu malakias): the most famous sentence in Thucydides. Like many of Thucydides’ memorable sentences it admits of a variety of interpretations. I have translated kalon here as nobility, meaning nobility of character, but the reader should be warned that it can mean beauty as well. Met’ eutelaia could also mean ‘without excessive expenditure,’ but this seems inappropriate. If Pericles means that Athens is not extravagant, his claim is preposterous in view of his magnificent building program. ‘Lovers of wisdom’ translates philosophoumen, which is cognate to our ‘philosophize’ but has a much wider meaning.” Thucydides: On Justice, Power, and Human Nature, p. 42, n. 103. And remember, too, that where Woodruff writes “virtue,” the word being translated is aretē.
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