Pericles of Athens Read Online Free Page A

that the ancient sources are full of
     gaps and can seldom convey a clear idea of the role that Pericles played in the evolution
     of the city of Athens in the mid-fifth century.
    S OURCES: T HE A NCIENT C ONSTRUCTION OF THE F IGURE OF P ERICLES
    I should first point out that the epigraphical and archaeological sources throw very
     little light upon the stratēgos ’s actions. No decree proposed by Pericles has come down to us, and he is mentioned
     by name in only two inscriptions. The first, engraved more than a century after his
     death, records that, as khorēgos , he financed three tragedies (including The Persians ) and a satyr play, by Aeschylus. The second, on which Pericles’ name was restored
     by epigraphists, alludes to his involvement in the construction of a fountain in the
     sanctuary of Eleusis in Attica. 9
    The archaeological evidence leaves the historian equally at a loss. The bust of Pericles
     that adorns the covers of so many books is merely a marble copy dating from the Roman
     period. The bronze original, sculpted by Cresilas, a craftsman of Cretan origin, used
     to stand on the Acropolis, no doubt as a votive offering (a gift to the deity) dedicated
     after his death by those close to him. 10 Pericles was represented wearing his famous helmet, raised to expose his brow. In
     this case too, we should remember that it was an idealized image, designed to represent
     a function—that of stratēgos —rather than the individual himself, as a snapshot might do. 11
    To tackle Pericles’ actions, historians are thus reduced to consulting literary sources.
     These are marked by two major features: first, the essential role that is played by
     a late text, Plutarch’s Life of Pericles , which gathers together many pieces of evidence dating from the fifth and fourth
     centuries, whose relative reliability has been demonstrated by historians; 12 second, the two-edged nature of the documentation on the stratēgos , some of which is laudatory, some critical.
    Topping the list is Herodotus, an author whose loyalties remain hard to pin down.
     That is not really surprising. In the course of his work devoted to the Persian Wars
     and their cause, this historian, a younger contemporary of the stratēgos , mentions Pericles only once. Despite the absence of any tangible evidence, many
     interpreters nevertheless portray Herodotus as anenthusiastic partisan of the stratēgos . 13 He was living in Athens in the 450–440s and was even thought to have slipped in a
     discreet laudatory reference to Pericles when he recounted a dream that his mother
     had had just before the baby’s birth. 14 However, there is nothing to support this hypothesis, which rests upon a questionable
     assumption—namely, that “the father of history must surely have been a friend of the
     father of democracy.” The fact is, though, that in his Histories Herodotus gives a critical account, if not of Pericles himself, at least of his ancestors,
     and does not hesitate to record traditions hostile to the Alcmaeonids and to Pericles’
     father, Xanthippus. 15 The historian is certainly no totally committed eulogist of Athens. Even if he admired
     the city that emerged victorious from the Persian Wars, he expressed barely veiled
     criticisms of the imperialist power that, guided by Pericles, oppressed the Ionian
     Greeks within the framework of the Delian League. As a native of Halicarnassus, he
     was well placed to see that his own community had simply exchanged one form of domination
     for another, when it passed from Persian control into that of the Athenians.
    While Herodotus’s view of Pericles may lead to some confusion, that is not the case
     of other contemporary testimonies. The criticism of the comic poets is undeniably
     bitter, as are the comments of Ion of Chios and Stesimbrotus of Thasos. However, Thucydides,
     the historian of the Peloponnesian War, was clearly full of admiration.
    In Pericles’ lifetime, in the theater, comic