Such a cause of self-gratulation, doubtless more satisfactory to recall at such a moment than any other, illustrates that long-sighted calculation, aversion to distant or hazardous enterprise, and economy of the public force, which marked his entire political career; a career long, beyond all parallel, in the history of Athens,—since he maintained a great influence, gradually swelling into a decisive personal ascendency, for between thirty and forty years. His character has been presented in very different lights, by different authors, both ancient and modern, and our materials for striking the balance are not so good as we could wish. But his immense and long-continued ascendency, as well as his unparalleled eloquence, are facts attested not less by his enemies than by his friends,—nay, even more forcibly by the former than by the latter. The comic writers, who hated him, and whose trade it was to deride and hunt down every leading political character, exhaust their powers of illustration in setting forth both the one and the other:[304] Telekleidês, Kratinus, Eupolis, Aristophanês, all hearers and all enemies, speak of him like Olympian Zeus, hurling thunder and lightning,—like Hêraklês and Achilles,—as the only speaker on whose lips persuasion sat, and who left his sting in the minds of his audience: while Plato the philosopher,[305] who disapproved of his political working, and of the moral effects which he produced upon Athens, nevertheless extols his intellectual and oratorical ascendency: “his majestic intelligence,”—in language not less decisive than Thucydidês. There is another point of eulogy, not less valuable, on which the testimony appears uncontradicted: throughout his long career, amidst the hottest political animosities, the conduct of Periklês towards opponents was always mild and liberal.[306] The conscious self-esteem and arrogance of manner with which the contemporary poet Ion reproached him,[307] contrasting it with the unpretending simplicity of his own patron Kimon,—though probably invidiously exaggerated, is doubtless in substance well founded, and those who read the last speech given above out of Thucydidês, will at once recognize in it this attribute. His natural taste, his love of philosophical research, and his unwearied application to public affairs, all contributed to alienate him from ordinary familiarity, and to make him careless, perhaps improperly careless, of the lesser means of conciliating public favor.
But admitting this latter reproach to be well founded, as it seems to be, it helps to negative that greater and graver political crime which has been imputed to him, of sacrificing the permanent well-being and morality of the state to the maintenance of his own political power,—of corrupting the people by distributions of the public money. “He gave the reins to the people (in Plutarch’s words[308]), and shaped his administration for their immediate favor, by always providing at home some public spectacle, or festival, or procession, thus nursing up the city in elegant pleasures,—and by sending out every year sixty triremes, manned by citizen-seamen on full pay, who were thus kept in practice and acquired nautical skill.” Now the charge here made against Periklês, and supported by allegations in themselves honorable rather than otherwise,—of a vicious appetite for immediate popularity, and of improper concessions to the immediate feelings of the people against their permanent interests,—is precisely that which Thucydidês, in the most pointed manner denies; and not merely denies, but contrasts Periklês with his successors in the express circumstances that they did so, while he did not. The language of the contemporary historian[309] well deserves to be cited: “Periklês, powerful from dignity of character as well as from wisdom, and conspicuously above the least tinge of corruption, held back the people with a free hand, and was their real leader instead of being led by them. For not being a seeker of power from unworthy sources, he did not speak with any view to present favor, but had sufficient sense of dignity to contradict them on occasion, even braving their displeasure. Thus, whenever he perceived them insolently and unseasonably confident, he shaped his speeches in such manner as to alarm and beat them down: when again he saw them unduly frightened, he tried to counteract it, and restore them confidence: so that the government was in name a democracy, but in reality an empire exercised by the first citizen in the state. But those who succeeded after his death, being more equal one with another, and each of them desiring preëminence over the rest, adopted the different course of courting the favor of the people, and sacrificing to that object even important state-interests. From whence arose many other bad measures, as might be expected in a great and imperial city, and especially the Sicilian expedition,” etc.
It will be seen that the judgment here quoted from Thucydidês contradicts, in the most unqualified manner, the reproaches commonly made against Periklês, of having corrupted the Athenian people by distributions of the public money, and by giving way to their unwise caprices, for the purpose of acquiring and maintaining his own political power. Nay, the historian particularly notes the opposite qualities,—self-judgment, conscious dignity, indifference to immediate popular applause or wrath, when set against what was permanently right and useful,—as the special characteristic of that great statesman. A distinction might indeed be possible, and Plutarch professes to note such distinction, between the earlier and the later part of his long political career: he began, so that biographer says, by corrupting the people in order to acquire power, but having acquired it, he employed it in an independent and patriotic manner, so that the judgment of Thucydidês, true respecting the later part of his life, would not be applicable to the earlier. This distinction may be to a certain degree well founded, inasmuch as the power of opposing a bold and successful resistance to temporary aberrations of the public mind, necessarily implies an established influence, and can hardly ever be exercised even by the firmest politician during his years of commencement: he is at that time necessarily the adjunct of some party or tendency which he finds already in operation, and has to stand forward actively and assiduously before he can create for himself a separate personal influence. But while we admit the distinction to this extent, there is nothing to warrant us in restricting the encomium of Thucydidês exclusively to the later life of Periklês, or in representing the earlier life as something in pointed contrast with that encomium. Construing fairly what the historian says, he evidently did not so conceive the earlier life of Periklês. Either those political changes which are held by Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, and others, to demonstrate the corrupting effect of Periklês and his political ascendency,—such as the limitation of the functions of the Areopagus, as well as of the power of the magistrates, the establishment of the numerous and frequent popular dikasteries with regular pay, and perhaps also the assignment of pay to those who attended the ekklesia, the expenditure for public works, religious edifices and ornaments, the diobely (or distribution of two oboli per head to the poorer citizens at various festivals, in order that they might be able to pay for their places in the theatre), taking it as it then stood, etc.,—did not appear to Thucydidês mischievous and corrupting, as these other writers thought them; or else he did not particularly refer them to Periklês.
Both are true, probably, to some extent. The internal political changes at Athens, respecting the Areopagus and the dikasteries, took place when Periklês was a young man, and when he cannot be supposed to have yet acquired the immense personal ascendency which afterwards belonged to him. Ephialtês in fact seems in those early days to have been a greater man than Periklês, if we may judge by the fact that he was selected by his political adversaries for assassination,—so that they might with greater propriety be ascribed to the party with which Periklês was connected, rather than to that statesman himself. But next, we have no reason to presume that Thucydidês considered these changes as injurious, or as having deteriorated the Athenian character. All that he does say as to the working of Periklês on the sentiment and actions of his countrymen, is eminently favorable. He represents the presidency of that statesman as moderate, cautious, conservative, and successful; he describes him as uniformly keeping back the people from rash enterprises, and from attempts to extend their empire,—as looking forward to the necessity of a war, and maintaining the naval, military, and financial forces of the state in constant condition to stand it,—as calculating, with long-sighted wisdom, the conditions on which ultimate success depended. If we follow the elaborate funeral harangue of Periklês, which Thucydidês, since he produces it at length, probably considered as faithfully illustrating the political point of view of that statesman, we shall discover a conception of democratical equality no less rational than generous; an anxious care for the recreation and comfort of the citizens, but no disposition to emancipate them from active obligation, either public or private,—and least of all, any idea of dispensing with such activity by abusive largesses out of the general revenue. The whole picture, drawn by Periklês, of Athens, “as the schoolmistress of Greece,” implies a prominent development of private industry and commerce, not less than of public citizenship and soldiership,—of letters, arts, and recreative varieties of taste.
Though Thucydidês does not directly canvass the constitutional changes effected in Athens under Periklês, yet everything which he does say leads us to believe that he accounted the working of that statesman, upon the whole, on Athenian power as well as on Athenian character, eminently valuable, and his death as an irreparable loss. And we may thus appeal to the judgment of an historian who is our best witness in every conceivable respect, as a valid reply to the charge against Periklês, of having corrupted the Athenian habits, character, and government. If he spent a large amount of the public treasure upon religious edifices and ornaments, and upon stately works for the city,—yet the sum which he left untouched, ready for use at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, was such as to appear more than sufficient for all purposes of defence, or public safety, or military honor. It cannot be shown of Periklês that he ever sacrificed the greater object to the less,—the permanent and substantially valuable, to the transitory and showy,—assured present possessions, to the lust of new, distant, or uncertain conquests. If his advice had been listened to, the rashness which brought on the defeat of the Athenian Tolmidês, at Korôneia in Bœotia, would have been avoided, and Athens might probably have maintained her ascendency over Megara and Bœotia, which would have protected her territory from invasion, and given a new turn to the subsequent history. Periklês is not to be treated as the author of the Athenian character: he found it with its very marked positive characteristics and susceptibilities, among which, those which he chiefly brought out and improved were the best. The lust of expeditions against the Persians, which Kimon would have pushed into Egypt and Cyprus, he repressed, after it had accomplished all which could be usefully aimed at: the ambition of Athens he moderated rather than encouraged: the democratical movement of Athens he regularized, and worked out into judicial institutions, which became one of the prominent features of Athenian life, and worked, in my judgment, with a very large balance of benefit to the national mind as well as to individual security, in spite of the many defects in their direct character as tribunals. But that point in which there was the greatest difference between Athens, as Periklês found if, and as he left it, is, unquestionably, the pacific and intellectual development,—rhetoric, poetry, arts, philosophical research, and recreative variety. To which if we add, great improvement in the cultivation of the Attic soil,—extension of Athenian trade,—attainment and laborious maintenance of the maximum of maritime skill, attested by the battles of Phormio,—enlargement of the area of complete security by construction of the Long Walls,—lastly, the clothing of Athens in her imperial mantle, by ornaments, architectural and sculptural,—we shall make out a case of genuine progress realized during the political life of Periklês, such as the evils imputed to him, far more imaginary than real, will go but a little way to alloy. How little, comparatively speaking, of the picture drawn by Periklês in his funeral harangue of 431 B.C. would have been correct, if the harangue had been delivered over those warriors who fell at Tanagra, twenty-seven years before!
It has been remarked by M. Boeckh,[310] that Periklês sacrificed the landed proprietors of Attica to the maritime interests and empire of Athens. This is of course founded on the destructive invasions of the country during the Peloponnesian war; for down to the commencement of that war the position of Attic cultivators and proprietors was particularly enviable: and the censure of M. Boeckh, therefore, depends upon the question, how far Periklês contributed to produce, or had it in his power to avert, this melancholy war, in its results so fatal, not merely to Athens, but to the entire Grecian race. Now here again, if we follow attentively the narrative of Thucydidês, we shall see that in the judgment of that historian, not only Periklês did not bring on the war, but he could not have averted it without such concession as Athenian prudence, as well as Athenian patriotism peremptorily forbade: moreover, we shall see, that the calculations on which Periklês grounded his hopes of success if driven to war, were, in the opinion of the historian, perfectly sound and safe. We may even go farther, and affirm, that the administration of Periklês during the fourteen years preceding the war, exhibits a “moderation,” to use the words of Thucydidês,[311] dictated especially by anxiety to avoid raising causes of war; though in the months immediately preceding the breaking out of the war, after the conduct of the Corinthians at Potidæa, and the resolutions of the congress at Sparta, he resisted strenuously all compliance with special demands from Sparta,—demands essentially insincere, and in which partial compliance would have lowered the dignity of Athens without insuring peace. The stories about Pheidias, Aspasia, and the Megarians, even if we should grant that there is some truth at the bottom of them, must, if we follow Thucydidês, be looked upon at worst as concomitants and pretexts, rather than as real causes, of the war: though modern authors, in speaking of Periklês, are but too apt to use expressions which tacitly assume these stories to be well founded.
Seeing then that Periklês did not bring on and could not have averted the Peloponnesian war,—that he steered his course in reference to that event with the long-sighted prudence of one who knew that the safety and the dignity of imperial Athens were essentially interwoven,—we have no right to throw upon him the blame of sacrificing the landed proprietors of Attica. These might, indeed, be excused for complaining, where they suffered so ruinously; but the impartial historian, looking at the whole of the case, cannot admit their complaints as a ground for censuring the Athenian statesman.
The relation of Athens to her allies, the weak point of her position, it was beyond the power of Periklês seriously to amend, probably also beyond his will, since the idea of political incorporation, as well as that of providing a common and equal confederate bond, sustained by effective federal authority between different cities, was rarely entertained even by the best Greek minds.[312] We hear that he tried to summon at Athens a congress of deputies from all cities of Greece, the allies of Athens included;[313] but the scheme could not be brought to bear, in consequence of the reluctance, noway surprising, of the Peloponnesians. Practically, the allies were not badly treated during his administration: and if, among the other bad consequences of the prolonged war, they, as well as Athens, and all other Greeks come to suffer more and more, this depends upon causes with which he is not chargeable, and upon proceedings which departed altogether from his wise and sober calculations. Taking him altogether, with his powers of thought, speech, and action,—his competence, civil and military, in the council as well as in the field,—his vigorous and cultivated intellect, and his comprehensive ideas of a community in pacific and many-sided development,—his incorruptible public morality, caution, and firmness, in a country where all those qualities were rare, and the union of them in the same individual of course much rarer,—we shall find him without a parallel throughout the whole course of Grecian history.
Under the great mortality and pressure of sickness at Athens, their operations of war naturally languished; while the enemies also, though more active, had but little success. A fleet of one hundred triremes, with one thousand hoplites on board, was sent by the Lacedæmonians under Knêmus to attack Zakynthus, but accomplished nothing beyond devastation of the open parts of the island, and then returned home. And it was shortly after this, towards the month of September, that the Ambrakiots made an attack upon the Amphilochian town called Argos, situated on the southern coast of the gulf of Ambrakia: which town, as has been recounted in the preceding chapter, had been wrested from them two years before by the Athenians, under Phormio, and restored to the Amphilochians and Akarnanians. The Ambrakiots, as colonists and allies of Corinth, were at the same time animated by active enmity to the Athenian influence in Akarnania, and by desire to regain the lost town of Argos. Procuring aid from the Chaonians, and some other Epirotic tribes, they marched against Argos, and after laying waste the territory, endeavored to take the town by assault, but were repulsed, and obliged to retire.[314] This expedition appears to have impressed the Athenians with the necessity of a standing force to protect their interest in those parts; so that in the autumn Phormio was sent with a squadron of twenty triremes to occupy Naupaktus, now inhabited by the Messenians, as a permanent naval station, and to watch the entrance of the Corinthian gulf.[315] We shall find in the events of the succeeding year ample confirmation of this necessity.
Though the Peloponnesians were too inferior in maritime force to undertake formal war at sea against Athens, their single privateers, especially the Megarian privateers from the harbor of Nisæa, were active in injuring her commerce,[316]—and not merely the commerce of Athens, but also that of other neutral Greeks, without scruple or discrimination. Several merchantmen and fishing-vessels, with a considerable number of prisoners, were thus captured.[317] Such prisoners as fell into the hands of the Lacedæmonians,—even neutral Greeks as well as Athenians,—were all put to death, and their bodies cast into clefts of the mountains. In regard to the neutrals, this capture was piratical, and the slaughter unwarrantably cruel, judged even by the received practice of the Greeks, deficient as that was on the score of humanity: but to dismiss these neutral prisoners, or to sell them as slaves, would have given publicity to a piratical capture and provoked the neutral towns, so that the prisoners were probably slain as the best way of getting rid of them and thus suppressing evidence.[318]