One of the great dangers to peace in a world divided into mutually suspicious powers is political instability within each state. We have seen how internal political conflicts in both Athens and Sparta contributed to the outbreak of the First Peloponnesian War. If a renewal of that war was to be avoided, each side must pursue a steady policy of restraint and mutual reassurance, and such steadiness is very difficult to achieve under any constitution. It was the good fortune of Athens, however, that within a few years after the conclusion of peace, she attained a degree of political stability that enabled her to conduct her foreign affairs with consistency and restraint.
If we have interpreted events correctly, the policy of aggressive war on land that produced the defeat at Coronea was not the policy of Pericles, but of the more ambitious element led by Tolmides, which he had not been able to control. The death of Tolmides and the disastrous consequences of his policy freed Pericles from this source of political opposition. The left, to use an anachronistic but useful term, would not trouble him for some time. Without losing the devotion of the demos, whose loyalty was guaranteed by his domestic program, Pericles relied very heavily on the moderates who had supported Cimon and followed him into the coalition with Pericles. Their fondness for Pericles could only have grown as the memory of Cimon faded and as Pericles became more and more the voice of moderation among the democrats. It is no coincidence that the trusted Callias, symbol of the alliance between Cimon and Pericles, was one of the negotiators who concluded the Thirty Years’ Peace.1
But the very forces that destroyed the opposition on the left raised up a new opposition on the right. It was led by Thucydides, son of Melesias, probably the brother-in-law of Cimon.2 This relationship has led some scholars to think that he inherited the mantle of Cimon and simply carried on as leader of the aristocrats (kaloi kagathoi), and again Plutarch is preserving an important and accurate tradition,3 but not everyone has been convinced. Hignett’s view of the nature of the opposition to Pericles is typical.
Plutarch calls them the aristocratic party, but his views on Athenian political history are distorted by the conditions of his own day, and he habitually fails to realize that in the fifth century there were not two but three parties in Athens. The new leader of the opposition, Thucydides the son of Melesias, is called Kimon’s κηδεστής and may have been his brother-in-law, and his adherents were probably composed in the main of Kimon’s old following, the hoplite class.4
Plutarch may well have failed to understand fifth-century politics, but Hignett’s own understanding lacks nuance. The evidence seems to show that there were, broadly speaking, two major political groups in Athens. One took its roots in the agitation against the Areopagus carried on by Ephialtes and Pericles beginning in 463. At its inception it would have deserved the title radical, but the passage of time, the success of its program, and the experience of power had tamed it, so that in modern terms we might call it liberal. It is not in the nature of all men to mellow with age; nor do all members of a political group agree as to its aims. No doubt some followers of Ephialtes had been attracted more by his attacks on Sparta than on the Areopagus. Their ranks may have been swelled during the First Peloponnesian War. Tolmides seems to have been one of them, and his death deprived them of leadership. Yet there remained this radical wing of the old Ephialtic group that was dissatisfied with the new Periclean policy of peace and accommodation with Sparta. The other major political group sprang up after the Persian War in the coalition against Themistocles. It created the Areopagite constitution and fought against the reforms of Ephialtes under the leadership of Cimon. We might call it a conservative party.
Cimon had adapted himself to the new conditions, joined with Pericles in his policy of maintaining the empire and seeking an understanding with Sparta, and brought most of his followers along with him. There had always remained, however, a number of diehards who would not accept the new democracy. They had planned treason before Tanagra but had been thwarted by Cimon. His death made it possible for them to organize as an opposition to Pericles. In all this time the moderate wings of both parties had grown closer together as their community of interest became more apparent. Thus, it could appear that there were three parties, radical, moderate, and oligarchic, but in fact there were two major groupings, one liberal and the other conservative, each with a radical wing. When the aggressive radicals of the left were discredited by the debacle of 446, the entire political spectrum shifted to adjust to their departure from the scene. The moderate coalition led by Pericles appeared to have moved to the left, although its policy was unchanged. The vacuum that was created to its right was filled by the oligarchic faction, which now emerged from the disgrace that their suspected treason had produced a decade earlier.
The group led by Thucydides consisted of those oligarchs who had refused to come to terms with the Periclean democracy. His political genius converted it from a suspected political faction to a respectable party that could present itself as a loyal opposition and come close to defeating Pericles and his policies. One of his great innovations was in the realm of political organization. Heretofore we have used the term party to describe political groups in Athens, but it should be clear that it is used loosely for lack of a more accurate description. Of political organization along party lines there was very little. Even after the Cleisthenic reforms the old politics of the great families and their clients had continued. The reforms of Ephialtes, to be sure, had crystallized political life along ideological, and perhaps along class, lines for a time, but the moderation of Pericles and the cooperation of Cimon had helped blur them again. The political position of Pericles was not very different from the one enjoyed by Cimon during his period of ascendancy; both relied on a combination of personal popularity, largesse to a clientele, and combinations with powerful noble families. The great difference was that Pericles paid his largesse out of public instead of private funds and so had an immensely larger clientele. Neither had anything that might be called a political party or the disciplined following and organization that go with it.
These were the invention of Thucydides. Party politics in Athens were so undeveloped that up until this time political groups did not even sit together at meetings of the assembly. Thucydides changed this, “for he did not allow the men called kaloi kagathoi to be scattered and mixed with the people as they had been before, their merit being eclipsed by numbers, but selecting them out separately and bringing them together into a single body, he made the power of all of them weighty, like a counterweight in a balance.”5 This organization was not only effective in itself but was also valuable in bringing to light the conglomerate nature of Pericles’ political support. The marriage between Periclean liberals and Cimonian conservatives was one of convenience, and many differences remained that Pericles would have preferred to leave obscure. The new political organization, with its policy of concerted opposition, made ambiguity difficult. Plutarch’s description of the new situation is very persuasive:
From the beginning there had been a sort of flaw under the surface, as there might be in a piece of iron, which hinted at a difference in the popular and aristocratic policy, but the rivalry and ambition of the opponents cut a very deep wound in the state and caused one part of it to be called “The People” [δῆμς] and the other “The Few” [ὀλίγοι].6
Organization alone is not enough to destroy as powerful a coalition as Pericles commanded. The oligoi needed a political program to lure the moderates away from Pericles. What Thucydides would have liked to proclaim was a program to roll back the democratic revolution of Ephialtes. This is a bold statement, but the scanty evidence we have seems to support it.7 We know that he was an aristocrat of the bluest blood. In Plato’s Meno, Socrates praises him for giving his sons a good general education and for making them the best wrestlers in Athens, and uses him as an example to show that even the best men cannot pass on virtue to their sons. He had many friends in Athens and among the allies; he “came from a great house and possessed great power in Athens and in the rest of Greece.”8 Wrestling, of course, was the most aristocratic of activities, and Plato himself was a famous wrestler. The palaestra served as a splendid meeting place for the noble youths of Athens, their trainers, admirers, and friends. If the conversations Plato reports in his dialogues are typical, little good was spoken of democracy. If Wade-Gery is right, Melesias, Thucydides’ father, was the greatest wrestling master of his time, the subject of an epinicion by Pindar, and the subject also of “the last words of praise for any Athenian” uttered by that most aristocratic of poets. We must agree that “no one who knows much of Pindar or indeed of the structure of early fifth-century Greek society will doubt that poet, trainer and athlete alike belong to the same class, the international aristocracy of Greece.”9 To that same class, of course, belonged the son of Melesias.
Aristotle also had a good opinion of him. He says that the best statesmen Athens had, after remote antiquity, were Nicias, Thucydides, and Theramenes. About Nicias and Thucydides almost everybody, says Aristotle, agreed that “they were not only gentlemen [kaloi kagathoi] but also statesmen and ruled the state in all matters as a father rules his household [patrikos].”10 We can get some idea of Aristotle’s idea of good statesmanship from his inclusion of Theramenes and the defense he offers for him. Whatever we may think of his motives, we must not forget that Theramenes was involved in the oligarchic revolution of the Four Hundred in 411, that he invented the strategem whereby the Athenians were starved into accepting unconditional surrender from Sparta in 404, and that he saw fit to join the Thirty Tyrants before falling victim to their excessive zeal. None of the evidence seems to contradict Plutarch’s belief that Thucydides led a party of aristocrats who pursued an aristocratic program and were called “The Few” as opposed to “The People,” not a party of moderate democrats.
There is another document that may give us an insight into the ideas and wishes of Thucydides and his party. It has come down to us under the title Athenaion Politeia and the manuscripts attribute it to Xenophon. Everyone agrees that it cannot be by Xenophon, but there agreement on authorship ends, and it has been customary to speak of the anonymous author as the “Old Oligarch.” Several scholars have believed it to be written by Thucydides, son of Melesias, himself. Such an assertion is impossible to prove, and the best course is to admit that we do not know the author.11 Still, it is noteworthy that scholars have seen fit to associate the ideas of the Old Oligarch with those of Thucydides. If we compare those ideas with the program Thucydides put forth, we shall see that there is some reason to agree with that association.
The precise intention of the pamphlet and the circumstances of its composition are far from clear, but we may dismiss the suggestion that it is ironic or intended as a joke. It is a serious work written by an oligarch for oligarchs, but the author enjoys the paradox of an oligarch explaining to other oligarchs that the Athenian democracy is really a very sensible apparatus when viewed from the democratic point of view. He begins,
As for the constitution of the Athenians, I do not praise them for having chosen it, because in choosing it they have given the better of it to the vulgar people (πονηροί) rather than to the good (χρηστοί). That is why I do not praise it. But since they have made such a choice I want to demonstrate that they preserve that constitution well and that they also do well in other matters in which the rest of the Greeks think they blunder.
From this point of view it is perfectly understandable that “the vulgar, the poor, and the people are given preference over the distinguished and the rich,” because it is the navy that gives Athens its power and the lower classes who man the ships. They employ election by lot for positions that are safe and pay a fee, but leave the dangerous posts of general and commander of cavalry to “the best qualified men” (δυνατοτάτους). Some may wonder that the Athenians give the greater share of government to the mob than to the aristocrats, for
in every country the aristocracy is contrasted to the democracy, there being in the best people the least licentiousness and iniquity, but the keenest eyes for morals; in the people, on the other hand, we find a very high degree of ignorance, disorder, and vileness; for poverty more and more leads them in the direction of bad morals, thus also the absence of education and in the case of some persons the ignorance that is due to the want of money.
But it is plain to the Old Oligarch that to prefer talent and virtue would soon lead to the destruction of democracy. The fact is that rather than be subordinate in an ideal constitution, the people prefer to live under a constitution where they are free and sovereign. “Whether the constitution is bad or no, they do not care very much. For what you think is no ideal constitution,” he says to his oligarchic audience, “is just the condition for the people being in power and being free.”
He makes very clear what he and his friends would consider a good constitution. The word which is translated ideal or good constitution is eunomia, a name given by Tyrtaeus to the ancestral constitution of Sparta and by Pindar to the oligarchy of Corinth and almost always associated with oligarchy or aristocracy. In the Old Oligarch’s opinion such a constitution will see to it that the best and most qualified men will make the laws. The aristocrats (οἱ χρηστοί) will punish bad men (τοὠς πονηρούς); only the worthy (οἱ χρηστοί) will deliberate concerning affairs of state and will not allow madmen (μαινομένους ἀνθρώπους) to serve in the council or to speak in the assembly. In such a constitution the people, of course, will sink into slavery (τάχιστ’ ἂν ὁ δῆμος εἰς δουλείαν καταπέσοι).
The Old Oligarch objects, too, to the free and easy life of Athens in which metics and slaves walk about freely, refuse to stand aside in the street, dress no worse than other Athenians, and are not to be beaten with impunity. The demos of Athens has destroyed the reputation of the old aristocratic training in gymnastics and music, replacing them with dramatic festivals, athletic contests, and naval expeditions in which the poor may participate since the rich are made to bear the cost.
A major subject of complaint is the Athenian treatment of the allies. The allies are forced to come to Athens for judgment in cases between Athenians and allies. This makes it more likely for the Athenians to win the case. It also enriches the Athenians who are paid for jury service, not to mention the profit to the tourist trade of Athens and the tax collected at the Piraeus. “Now every one of the allies has to cringe to the Attic people…and in court anybody is obliged to beseech and stretch out his hand to the casual person entering. Consequently the allies have more and more been made slaves of the people of Athens.” As in their own state, the Athenians support the worst elements in the allied states because aristocrats everywhere oppose them while the worthless mob alone supports them.
Perhaps the central message the Old Oligarch wishes to convey to his oligarchic audience may be found in the following paragraph:
The people itself I personally forgive its democracy; for everybody must be forgiven for looking to his own interest. But anybody who without belonging to the people prefers living in a town under democratic rule to living in one ruled oligarchically has prepared himself for being immoral, well knowing that it is easier for a bad person to remain unnoticed in a town under democratic than in one under oligarchic rule.
This paragraph seems to provide the clue to the intention of the author of the pamphlet and to the purpose of the oligarchic party at Athens. At another time, in Rome, the aristocratic Tacitus would use the experience of his illustrious father-in-law to show his fellow nobles that a good man can live even under a bad emperor. But by the time of Tacitus, many aristocratic plots had failed and monarchical rule seemed inevitable. In the Athens of Thucydidcs, however, the unbridled democracy was relatively new and had not been effectively challenged. Cimon had shown that subversion need not be the only way for the Athenian aristocrats to rule. Intelligent political management combined with charismatic leadership could make what was a democracy in name into an aristocracy in fact. It would, of course, be utter folly to make any of these attitudes and aims public. Issues must be found which were acceptable to a democratic people, which would discredit Pericles, and which would attract support to the party of Thucydides.
The son of Melesias had a keen understanding of the nature of democratic politics, and he must have learned the lessons of the recent past well. To destroy a politician in a democracy it is well to discredit him personally, to attach to his name and person attributes that are generally disliked, distrusted, and feared. In Athens the most damaging charge that could be made against a democratic politician was that he aimed at tyranny. The memory of the Peisistratid dynasty had been blackened by the treason of Hippias, who brought a Persian army to Marathon to conquer his native land. Athenian drama abounds with attacks on tyranny as the polar enemy of democracy.
Pericles was peculiarly vulnerable to charges of tyranny. As a young man, we are told, he was reluctant to face the public because of his resemblance to Peisistratus. “Very old men, noticing the sweetness of his voice and his glib and swift tongue in debate, were amazed by the similarity.”12 His wealth and nobility, coupled with his espousal of the popular cause, also brought to mind the demagogic tyrant of the sixth century. As we have seen, Pericles was not the man to win the love and personal affection of the masses as Cimon had. He won no great military glory; he was proud and unbending rather than affable and friendly. He avoided public occasions, was the least convivial of men, and rarely made public speeches, delegating the responsibility of carrying out his program to his associates.13 He associated with suspicious intellectuals, held uncommon religious views, and consorted regularly with foreign men and women. He was the sort of man whom the comic poets called Zeus or the Olympian, which indicate at the same time the stature of his reputation and the aura of arrogance that surrounded him. It was easy enough to persuade some people that such a man was on the way to establishing a tyranny, and it is clear that when the son of Melesias set out to oppose him he had come forth “to blunt the edge of his power so that it might not be absolutely a monarchy.”14
These personal attacks on Pericles were useful, but a more general program was also necessary. It is a credit to the acumen of Thucydides that he selected one that was politically effective, could be combined with the charge of Periclean tyranny, and gave promise of accomplishing the purposes of the oligarchic party: an attack on the use of imperial funds for the Periclean building program. Plutarch reports at least a reasonable approximation of the complaints made at meetings of the assembly:
The demos is dishonored and in bad repute because it has removed the common money of the Hellenes from Delos to Athens. Pericles has deprived it of the most fitting excuse that it was possible to offer to its accusers, that it removed the common fund to this place out of fear of the barbarian and in order to protect it. Hellas certainly is outraged by a terrible arrogance [hybris] and is manifestly tyrannized when it sees that we are gilding and adorning our city like a wanton woman, dressing it with expensive stones and statues and temples worth millions, with money extorted from them for fighting a war.15
The shrewdness of this attack is made clear when we observe the subtlety and breadth of its appeal. The attack, we should notice, is not against the empire itself, which would have alienated the majority of Athenians. It is not even aimed at the tribute, which would have had much the same effect. Instead, it complains of the misdirection of that tribute from its proper use in the war against Persia to the domestic program of Pericles. This was a clever stroke aimed at the Cimonian element in Pericles’ moderate coalition. It was a reminder of how the original Cimonian policy had been perverted if not altogether abandoned. It tried to split off the old Cimonians by suggesting to them that Cimon would not have sanctioned the continued collection of tribute without a Persian war to excuse it. The attack, moreover, took a high moral tone, employed the language of traditional religion and old-fashioned morality, and contrasted it not with the immorality of democracy, which would have been offensive, but with the arrogance of tyranny.
Nor was the attack on the abuse of imperial revenues chosen merely for its propaganda value. The son of Melesias was surely aware that the supremacy of Pericles rested on the loyalty of the demos, which was guaranteed by the expenditure of public money among the poor. The cost of such welfare programs always rises, as the modern world has learned. It may be that ordinary income might have been enough to sustain Pericles’ program in the 450’s, but rising expectations, and perhaps growing numbers, made that inadequate by the ’40’s. It is possible that Pericles was thinking of such things when he proposed the law restricting citizenship in 451/50. In any case, the welfare program depended on the tribute by the time that Thucydides challenged Pericles. If the oligarchs could put a stop to the use of imperial money for domestic Athenian purposes, at one stroke they would help their aristocratic friends among the allies who carried the major burden of paying the tribute and deprive Pericles of the resources that helped keep him in power. That accomplished, they might hope to defeat him as Cimon had defeated Themistocles and restore the state to the condition it had enjoyed under the Areopagite Constitution.16
There can be no doubt that the plan was effective. Thucydides was a formidable speaker and debater, whose attacks forced Pericles openly to defend his policy. The result was a great debate between two brilliant orators. Unfortunately, only Plutarch reports it, and even he quotes just a few fragments of what must have been incomparable rhetoric. We get some idea of the spirit and fierceness of the competition from an anecdote reported by Plutarch. King Archidamus of Sparta once asked the son of Melesias whether he or Pericles was the better wrestler and received this reply: “When I throw Pericles in wrestling he argues that he has not been thrown and wins by persuading the very men who have seen the whole thing.”17 Thucydides, of course, was no mean wrestler himself, whether in the palaestra or in debate. He was not a military man like Cimon, but more of a parliamentary and political man (ἀγοραῖος δέ καὶ πολιτικὸς μᾶλλον), who “by wrestling matches with Pericles on the bema soon brought the political situation to a state of equilibrium.”18
Thucydides, however, had underestimated the political talents of his opponent. In answer to the main complaint Pericles offered no apology but rather a spirited defense. The Athenians, he said, need make no account of the money they receive from the allies so long as they protect them from the barbarian:
They furnish no horse, no ship, no hoplite, but only money, which does not belong to the giver but to the receiver if he carries out his part of the bargain. But now that the city has prepared itself sufficiently with the things necessary for war, it is proper to employ its resources for such works as will bring it eternal fame when they are completed, and while they are being completed will maintain its prosperity, for all kinds of industries and a variety of demands will arise which will awaken every art, put in motion every hand, provide a salary for almost the entire city from which it may at the same time be beautified and nourished.19
It was a brilliant rebuttal. The first part answered the moral attack and was directed chiefly at the Cimonian element in the moderate group who were most susceptible to it. The use of imperial funds for Athenian purposes was not analogous to tyranny, Pericles suggested, but to the untrammeled use of his wages or profits by a man who had entered into a contract. If there were any breach of morality, it must be on the part of such allies who shrank from paying the tribute, although Athens continued to provide protection as always. But the second part is even more masterly. It was aimed at the lower classes who benefited from the empire most obviously and directly and reminded them in the plainest terms what it meant to them. It stripped the veil from the arguments of Thucydides and showed what his program implied: the end of the use of allied money for Athenian programs, which meant the end of the Periclean welfare state. In this crisis he reminded the masses who formed the hard core of his political support that their interests were at stake and he expected them to vote for their interests.
Events proved his expectation sound. Hard pressed by charges of corruption in the handling of funds for his building program, he brilliantly turned the tables on his opponents. Did the people think, he asked in the assembly, that he had spent too much? Altogether too much, was the reply. “Well then,” said Pericles, “let the expense of the buildings be mine and not yours. But the name inscribed on the monuments will be mine as well.” The result was all that Pericles could have wished; there was a general outcry in his favor, and he was urged to spend whatever was needed from public funds.20 It was, of course, a remarkably effective rhetorical trick. No one man could afford to pay for the buildings, and everyone knew it. To admit this, however, is not to dismiss the importance of the gesture and the meaning of the rhetoric. Perhaps it is not too imaginative to see in this story a message that Pericles meant to convey to any of his democratic supporters who might have forgotten the nature of his opposition. These buildings, he implied, are yours, not the property of a wealthy nobleman; they are symbols of your glory and evidence of the greatness of your democracy. Do you want to return to a time when the great nobles were all and the people nothing? Perhaps some of his audience thought back, in contrast, to the story of Miltiades, who in an earlier time asked merely an olive crown as a reward for his victory in battle. A certain Sophanes of Decelea is said to have risen in the assembly and said, without grace, “When you have fought and conquered the barbarian alone, Miltiades, then you may ask to be honored alone.” 21 Such was the old democratic spirit that Pericles was able to evoke.
In this way Pericles was able to check the swift growth of the opposition party. The danger was by no means passed, but he still retained a reliable majority, and the Athenian constitution presented him with a means for restoring tranquillity to Athenian politics: ostracism. It was a weapon originally designed by Cleisthenes to protect the democracy against subversion while it was still in its infancy. It also gave the leader of the democracy a weapon with which he could rid himself of a leader of the opposition who had become too dangerous. It was, however, a double-edged sword and could only be used with safety if the proposer of an ostracism were confident of a majority. It had been of enormous value to Cleisthenes, who had never needed to use it, for the very threat was enough to cow his enemies. It had been employed to good effect by Themistocles in the 480’s to rid himself of all his rivals. It had been turned against him by the coalition of Cimon in 474, and Cimon had been its victim in the democratic surge of 461. We must realize that no politician used the weapon of ostracism unless he was altogether confident that his opponent would be ostracized and not himself. The exception that tested the rule was the ostracism of Hyperbolus in 417. His ostracism was the only one that produced a surprise, for neither of the obvious candidates, Nicias and Alcibiades, was ostracized but instead a relative nonentity. This was precisely because both major candidates felt that the vote would be too close for comfort and joined forces against Hyperbolus. The experience showed the weakness of the institution, and it is no accident that it is the last ostracism of which we hear.22
These considerations support Plutarch’s clear and unequivocal statement that it was Pericles who introduced the proceedings that ostracized Thucydides, probably in the spring of 443, and removed him from Athenian politics for ten years.23 Athenian political parties tended to be groups clustered around a leader, and the removal of that leader usually had serious consequences for the party. The son of Melesias more than most was the heart and soul of his party, which he had led from the political wilderness into a position close to victory by the force of his rhetoric, organizational skill, and personality. When he was ostracized, his faction was totally shattered.24
It is customary to date from the ostracism of Thucydides the change in the character of Pericles from demagogue to aristocrat, from champion of the poor to defender of property, from party leader to statesman.25 But if we have understood him correctly, there was no great transformation either in the character or policy of Pericles. He was both a demagogue, which is to say a skillful politician in a democracy, and an aristocrat, both before and after the ostracism. Thereafter he continued to be the champion of the poor as he had been from the beginning of his career, but he also defended the property of Athenian citizens, which he had never dreamed of attacking. His success was based on the fact that he had always been both party leader and statesman, and he continued to be both. It is possible, even likely, that in his youth his foreign policy had been more aggressive, that he believed it possible for Athens to expand her empire, her influence, and her wealth by warfare, but if so, he had abandoned that policy and that belief well before the final struggle with Thucydides. The recall of Cimon, the Five Years’ Peace, the Peace of Callias, and the Thirty Years’ Peace are all proof enough of that. Before the ostracism Pericles had decided on a conservative foreign policy, which meant the abandonment of expansion, coupled with the firm maintenance of control in the empire, and a democratic welfare state for Athens. The ostracism of Thucydides amounted only to a popular ratification of those decisions.
The removal of the son of Melesias did, of course, improve the political situation of Pericles and, for the moment, made him more independent of his supporters. But political victories in a democracy, no matter how overwhelming, are never permanent. A clever politician will begin planning for future troubles the day after his victory. Although Plutarch tells that the resolution of its political quarrels had unified Athens and made it “like a smooth surface,” some ripples had not yet receded. The moralistic, anti-imperial propaganda of Thucydides could not have failed to make an impression on the Cimonian supporters of Pericles. The idealistic, Panhellenic appeal of Thucydides’ complaints about Athenians tyrannizing over other Greeks must have been a major reason for the support many of them gave him. To win them back to his moderate coalition, Pericles must appeal to such sentiments. The destruction of the right wing, moreover, strengthened the left. To defend his imperial policy, Pericles had appealed to pure self-interest; he had emphasized the empire as a source of profit. For the moment he was in firm control of the aggressive imperialists, but one day they might insist on payment for their services in saving Pericles from defeat. Finally, the allies themselves might present a problem. The hopes of the many friends of Thucydides scattered throughout the empire must have rested on his success. No doubt they expected him to succeed and then to end, or at least reduce, tribute payments. The disappointment of his defeat could well lead them to revolt, as many of them had done only a few years earlier.
It was to this last problem that Pericles immediately turned. The tribute lists give evidence that troubles in the empire had not been completely ended by the suppression of the Euboean rebellion and the measures that followed it. In the year 447/6 some 171 cities are listed. The following year shows only 156 and the year after that 158. The year of the ostracism finds 163 cities on the lists, which climbs to 165 in 443/2. In 442/1 there is a rather marked increase to 173. This drops to 164 in 441/40 but rises again to 172 in 440/39.26 The rise from a low of 156 in 446/5 to 165 in 443/2 is evidence of the undramatic but steady tightening of imperial control that followed the Euboean rebellion, but the increase from 165 to 173 between 443/2 and 442/1 is striking, and it appears that the new higher figure became normal, for the dip of 441/40 may very well be the result of the Samian revolution of that year.27 It seems very much as if something significant happened in the realm of imperial organization in 443/2. The rest of our evidence confirms this judgment. In the normal course of events a reassessment of the tribute was due for the year 442/1, but instead such a reassessment took place a year earlier. Not only was there an early reassessment, but for the first time the empire was formally divided into five districts: Ionia, the Hellespont, Thrace, Caria, and the Islands. Such a division was already implicit, but now it was made explicit and appears inscribed on the stones. It is also clear that significant changes were made in the tribute paid by some of the cities. In some cases substantial reductions took place; in others there was a restoration of a previous, probably normal, figure after fluctuation; in still others some intermediate figure between previous highs and lows was fixed. None of these changes were large enough to compare with the more important adjustments of 446/5, which often resulted from the establishment of cleruchies. They appear rather to be minor readjustments, part of a general but not radical reorganization.
Another fact that emphasizes the unusual character of the year 443/2 is that for the first time a co-secretary (xyngrammateus) is chosen to serve the board of Hellenotamiae. His name is Satyrus, and he is chosen for the same job in the following year, the only instance of a secretary of any kind ever chosen for consecutive years. Finally, it is worth noticing that the man elected chairman of the board of Hellenotamiae for the same year was Sophocles of Colonus, the tragic poet.28 From all this information several questions arise: What were the purposes, nature, and results of this imperial reorganization? Why was the reassessment made a year earlier than usual? Why was it necessary to choose a second clerk and keep him on an unprecedented second year? Finally, what, if anything, is the significance of the appearance of the famous Sophocles as chairman of the board of Hellenotamiae?
The answers to most of these questions can only come from a proper understanding of the political situation in the aftermath of the ostracism of Thucydides. The first task for Pericles was to maintain imperial control where it existed and to restore it where it had been cast off. A closer analysis of the tribute lists shows that in the Hellespontine, Thracian, and Carian districts, particularly the more remote inland towns, there had been considerable defections.29 It was imperative to act immediately to recover lost ground and to deter further defections. It must have been chiefly for this reason that Pericles moved the reassessment up a year and used the occasion for a thorough reorganization.30
But it was not enough to tighten up imperial control; it was also necessary to win back the moderates who had been impressed by the arguments of the son of Melesias. For this reason the reassessment and reorganization were gentle and, we must imagine, scrupulously fair. We hear of no new cleruchies, no harsh measures, but only of readjustments of tribute, usually downward. It was as though Pericles were harking back to his campaign speeches and refuting the charge of tyranny. Athens, he was saying, does not wish to dominate and exploit her allies, but merely to see that they observe the bargain they have made. If they did so they would find Athens fair in financial matters and careful of their rights. The reorganization required a good deal of work in addition to the usual labors of the committee, and so a second secretary was needed. When one year proved insufficient, Satyrus, who had no doubt become indispensable, was reappointed to finish the job. The reorganization was clearly effective, especially in the more difficult regions. Between 444/3 and 440/39 the number of cities paying tribute in the Hellespont went from twenty-five to thirty-two, in Thrace from thirty-eight to forty-three, and in Caria from thirty-five to forty-six. Although the Carian district ultimately proved untenable, the rest was saved.
The question of Sophocles remains. What are we to make of his chairmanship? To begin with, it is important to recognize that Sophocles came from a wealthy and respected family. By the time of his election he was about fifty and had been an important and popular public figure at least since 468, when he had won his first victory as a tragedian. There is a story that the prize was awarded by a jury composed of Cimon and his fellow generals.31 However that may be, we may well imagine him to be a typical Cimonian. That he was in favor of Pericles and his program, like many other Cimonians, is made more than likely by his willingness to serve as chairman of the board of Hellenotamiae at such an important moment. Further evidence is provided by his election to the strategia in 441/40. It is possible to argue that he was elected to the board of Hellenotamiae before the ostracism of Thucydides, and so need not have been a Periclean candidate. Possibly one might even argue that so popular a man as Sophocles could have been elected to the generalship against the wishes of Pericles, even though the evidence shows such situations to be rare. Yet it is worth mentioning that Sophocles is one of only two men in the time of Pericles who held both positions, and the other’s being a Hellenotamias is uncertain.32 It is surely impossible to believe that Pericles, at the height of his power, would have been unable to stop the election of a political opponent to the generalship.
But there is even better evidence of the friendly relationship between Sophocles and Pericles. Ehrenberg has offered us a brilliant and persuasive interpretation of the epigraphic and historical data. He points out that the tribute list for 443/2, number 12 in the series, is the first to name a chairman of the board. Like all the previous lists, it has a prescript in wide-space large letters giving the number of the list and the name of the secretary. At the bottom of the list, the name of the second secretary and the chairman are inscribed in letters smaller than the prescript and only a little larger than the list itself. The prescript of list 13, which follows immediately, is written in the same smaller letters. "We get the impression that these three lines are somehow pressed into narrow space, perhaps as a result of an afterthought, after the spacing of the whole reverse side of the stele, which contains the lists 9-13, had been done.’ The prescript for list 13 contains the names of all three officials, two secretaries and a Hellenotamias. In future lists the Hellenotamias is always mentioned and the prescripts are once again inscribed in large, widely spaced letters.33 Now the general opinion is that the Hellenotamiae were elected at the same time as the strategoi, in the seventh month of the Athenian year. The decision to have an ostracism was taken in the sixth, and the actual ostracism in the eighth. Thus, Sophocles stood for his office at the hottest moment in the struggle between Pericles and Thucydides, when it was clear that one of them would be ostracized. Whether or not he correctly anticipated the outcome, it is clear he did not suffer by it. The evidence seems to show that his selection as chairman came late.
It is easy to believe that the idea for this innovation came from Pericles after he was rid of his opponent. His influence over Athenian affairs could never have been greater than at the moment of his victory over the son of Melesias. It was then that the idea must have come to him of moving up the reassessment and using it for a significant reorganization of the empire. But it was not enough that the reorganization should be fair and equitable. As an experienced democratic politician, he knew that it was at least equally important that it should seem fair and honorable and should be recognized as such by one and all. It was no less important that it should seem to have the support not only of the radical imperialists but of the respectable, conservative elements as well. Nothing could have served his needs better than to have Sophocles available to head the board of Hellenotamiae at such a time. Whether by chance or design, he had been elected. It was certainly no chance that the position of chairman was first given a prominent listing at this moment and Sophocles chosen to fill it. In one stroke Pericles could accomplish the necessary imperial reorganization and demonstrate the respectability and moderation of his policy to the more restless element among his supporters. Perhaps they were not yet fully convinced, but this brilliant improvisation could not fail to help. Soon developments in the west would give him another opportunity to convince them.
1 Diod. 12. 7.
2 Wade-Gery, in Essays in Greek History (Oxford, 1958), 246–247.
3 Per. 11. 1.
4 Hignett, Athenian Constitution, 256.
5 Plut. Per. 11. 2–3.
6 Per. 11. 3–4.
7 For a list of the ancient references, see Fiehn, PW, VI A, 1937, s.v. Thukydides (2), 625–627, who also includes what amounts to a survey of modern German scholarship on the subject up to his time. The most important and interesting study of Thucydides is Wade-Gery’s article, cited above. Although I disagree with most of its conclusions, it is a pioneering work which has helped us to a better understanding of the man and his political milieu. See also A. E. Raubitschek, Phoenix, XIV (1960), 81–95.
8 94 c-d.
9 For Melesias, see Wade-Gery, Essays, 243–247.
10 Ath. Pol. 28. 5, πάντες σχεδὸν ὁμολοῦσιν ἄνδρας γεγονέναι οὐ μαλοὠς κἀγαθοὠς ἀλλὰ καὶ πολιτικοὠς καὶ τῇ πόλει πάσῃ πατρικῶς χρωμένους. For my translation of patrikos, see J. E. Sandys, Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens (London, 1893), 114–115.
11 For the best discussions of the questions of authorship, date, and interpretation, see Gomme, HSCP Suppl., I, 1940, 211–245 and Hartvig Frisch, The Constitution of the Athenians (Copenhagen, 1942), with an extensive bibliography. My quotations come or are adapted from Frisch’s text and translation.
12 Per. 7. 1.
13 Ibid. 7. 4–6.
14 Ibid. 11. 1: ὥστε μὴ κομιδῇ μοναρχίαν εἶναι.
15 Per. 12. 2; E. Meyer (Forschungen. II. 86) supports the view that Plutarch gives us à reliable account of the entire debate: “die von beiten Seiten vorgebrachten Argumente sind uns bei Plut. Per. 12 in authentischer Fassung bewahrt.”
16 For an interesting discussion of the purposes and activities of Thucydides and his faction, see H. D. Meyer in Historia, XVI (1967), 141–154. Meyer rejects the interpretation of the political events offered by Plutarch and largely accepted here. Putting aside the possibility that the party of Thucydides might really have been anti-imperialist, he suggests that there was no real opposition to the empire, and that the dispute was over means rather than ends. He does not give great weight to the possibility that the oligarchs were eager to overthrow the democracy established by Ephialtes. In his judgment they were chiefly interested in defeating Pericles and the building program which would have guaranteed his supremacy. After his fall, they presumably would have continued the imperial policy. The evidence discussed above seems to me to point in another direction altogether. Meyer’s argument is weakened somewhat by his overly simplified view of Athenian politics, which sees only two sharply defined parties. As we have seen, Athenian politics were more complicated.
17 Per. 8. 4.
18 Per. 11. 2.
19 Per. 12. 4.
20 Per. 14. 1–2.
21 Cim. 8. 1.
22 On the origin and purposes of ostracism, as well as my interpretation of its history, see Kagan Hesperia, XXX (1961), 393–401. The standard monograph on ostracism is that of Jérôme Carcopino, L’Ostracisme athénien (2nd ed., Paris; 1935), but the discovery of many ostraca and a good deal of recent scholarship has made it somewhat out of date.
23 It is surprising that such shrewd historians as Grote (IV, 506) and Busolt (GG, III: 1, 495, n. 3), among others, should have believed that it was Thucydides who brought on the ostracism. No persuasive argument is put forth to support that view, the nearest thing to it being Grote’s remark: “Probably the vote was proposed by the party of Thucydides, in order to procure the banishment of pericles, the more powerful person of the two, and the most likely to excite popular jealousy.” But this is to misunderstand the nature of the institution, which operated less by popular jealousy than by political power. If Thucydides thought that the more powerful man was more likely to be ostracized, he was more naive than the rest of the record shows. The words of Plutarch, moreover, are altogether unambiguous: τέλος δέ πρὸς τὸν Φουκυδίδην εἰς ἀγῶνα περὶ τοῦ ὀστράκου καταστὰς καὶ διακινδυνεύσας ἐκεῖνον μέν ἐξέβαλε (Per. 14. 2). Adcock (CAH, V, 166–7), De Sanctis (Pericle, 157) and Ehrenberg (Sophocles and Pericles, 137) are among those who believe Pericles initiated the ostracism.
24 Per. 14. 2.
25 The first transformation is noticed by Plutarch (Per. 9. 1–2 and 15. 1–2), the second by Beloch (Die Attische Politik, 19–21), the third by Hignett (op. cit., 253–257). Raphael Sealey (Hermes, LXXXV [1956], 234–247) argues against the reality of such a major shift.
26 See the table provided by Ehrenberg, Sophocles, 130.
27 Idem.
28 The evidence for the foregoing account is collected and interpreted by Ehrenberg in the sixth chapter of his Sophocles and Pericles, (117–140). I have in general followed his interpretation. The texts of the relevant tribute lists are in the second volume of ATL, 13–22; ATL, III, 67–68 and 306–307 add some pertinent remarks. An argument for 443/2 as a year of reassessment is made by Meritt in AJA, XXIX (1925), 247–273. See also Nesselhauf, Untersuchungen, 36ff.
29 See Ehrenberg’s table (Sophocles and Pericles, 130).
30 The authors of ATL (III, 306) believe that Pericles intended to make the Great Panathenaea of 442, the normal occasion for a reassessment, “a demonstration that Athens was the center of the civilized world,” and that he advanced the reassessment to the summer of 443 “to keep this celebration clear of business.” Even if the evidence for Pericles’ intentions were far better than it is, this explanation would be a very weak one. Ehrenberg also rejects it and offers one far more persuasive. “Pericles had finally silenced the opposition of the oligarchs who had been voicing the complaints of the allies. What was more natural than to remove some causes of discontent and thus secure the tribute from reluctant states, when concessions could no longer be regarded as a sign of weakness?” (Sophocles and Pericles, 129–130).
31 Cim. 8. 8.
32 Ehrenberg, Sophocles and Pericles, 133.
33 Ibid., 132–133.