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ERA OF PERICLES.
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His political thought & activities; his rival Cimon; fame in Athenian society; war between Sparta & Athens; Thucydides' "History."... More...
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Paper Abstract:
His political thought & activities; his rival Cimon; fame in Athenian society; war between Sparta & Athens; Thucydides' "History."
Paper Introduction:
We know much about Athenian society from the writings of historians and others about that era and about political leaders of that city like Pericles. Pericles was featured in writings by Thucydides, notably his history of the Peloponnesian War, and later by the Roman Plutarch.
Pericles was born into two of the best families of Athens, both on his father's and mother's side. He received a good education from his teachers, including the philosopher Zeno, and from Zeno he learned the sophistry that many believed made it possible for Zeno to prove any proposition to be false. Pericles learned even more from Anaxagoras. Anaxagoras was the first philosopher to attribute the order of the world to intelligence, rather than to chance or necessity. After this education, Pericles was dignified in his language and serene and
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Athens was named for the city's patron goddess,Athena, and the ancient city developed mainly to the north of this hill,around the Agora, or marketplace. In statesmen he valued aboveall intelligence and foresight, qualities possessed by his heroesThemistocles and Pericles. Proceeding north from Chiosto the Hellespont, Sparta gradually overcame the Athenian navy in spite ofeffective countermeasures taken by Alcibiades and others. London: Penguin Books, 1977.Martin, Thomas. The relationship between these events and Sparta's amazing social andmilitary reorganization is obscure. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1961.Cohan, Robert. It altered Athenian political life for a timewith the imposition of the oligarchy, but that time passed and Athensproduced a democratic form of government much imitated. Sparta resumed leadershipof all of Greece, but Spartan predominance did not last (Sealey 66-88, 169-237). These events did not end war for all time but indeedshow that a victory generally only means a temporary balance of power, tobe overturned when tensions increase once more and lead to another battle.The Peloponnesian War's strongest effect was its contribution to historicalwriting. The war changed the nature of politics in Greece by elevating Spartaand bringing down Athens. Sparta's agrarian and stagnant economy also played a role. The most glorious period in the city's history was the5th century BC, when it was the cultural and artistic center of theclassical world. Sparta's martiallife eventually disappeared as stronger powers prevailed, while thephilosophical and artistic accomplishments of Athens outlasted thepolitical dominance of the city-state and even the existence of the ancientGreek world itself. The first stage of the war, called Archidamian from Archidamus, theSpartan king, ended in a stalemate in 421 with the Peace of Nicias. Pericles was born into two of the best families of Athens, both onhis father's and mother's side. History of the Peloponnesian War. Tyrtaeus was an activeparticipant in the war and described it in his poetry, so we have a goodaccount of it today. The imperial city never recoveredfrom the blow, although the Thirty Tyrants were deposed in 4 3. He is considered bymany to be the greatest of the ancient Greek historians, and his work had aprofound influence on the development of historical writing. Although overshadowed by the rise of Rome, it remained acity of social and intellectual importance during the Roman Empire. Furthermore,the next year Athens demanded that Potidea, a Corinthian colony north ofmodern Fourka, tear down its sea defenses and expel its Corinthianmagistrates. Some believed that Pericles was only trying to fool the publicwith a false front of virtue, but Zeno argued that if Pericles were fakingvirtue, his detractors should do the same, because even pretending to begood, if continued for long enough, will give a man the desire and practicethat is needed for good habits. Athens was most damaged by the onset in 43 of plague, which removedperhaps a quarter of the Athenian population and caused Pericles' death in429. New York: Penguin, 1972. The deaths in 422 ofCleon and Brasidas, both of whom were prowar, led to a truce the next year. When the war broke out, most Athenians crowded intothe city, leaving the outlying areas of Attica open to invasion. He approved of thecurtailment of the democracy in 411, for instance, and he even found theoligarchic constitution of Chios admirable. The earliest settlement dates from before 3 BC and wassituated on the summit of the Acropolis, protected on all sides except thewest by its steep slopes. When he spoke tothe people on these occasions, his words were like thunder and lightning,for he was the best orator of his day, both for style and content (based onPlutarch http://www.e-classics.com/pericles.htm). The war itself has remained in our consciousness in part because ofthe work of Thucydides in writing his History of the Peloponnesian War.Thucydides lived c.46 -c.4 BC and was an Athenian. Plutarch's Lives: Volume 12. http://www.e- classics.com/pericles.htm.Plutarch. They were educated by the state and grew up inbarracks, where they learned discipline and austerity. Pericles was featured in writings by Thucydides, notably hishistory of the Peloponnesian War, and later by the Roman Plutarch. Aided by Persian resources, Sparta became a naval power andencouraged the rebellion of Athens's allies. Although hewas a relative of the great soldier and statesman Cimon, Thucydides wasalso an admirer of Cimon's political opponent, Pericles. The war was chronicled by the ancient historian Thucydides, whostated in his great history of the war that the underlying cause wasSpartan fear of Athens's expansive power. In some ways, hewas as much a journalist as a historian. Clearly, while Sparta was victorious in the war, Athens retained animportant place in the ancient world and achieved greatness that lasted farbeyond the loss in the Peloponnesian War, while Sparta declined and isremembered largely for that war and not for anything that occurredthereafter. What sort of city-states were Sparta and Athens before they foughtwith one another and changed history? Generally, his History is remarkable for itsobjectivity, although his treatment of Sparta and Athens shows that hegreatly admired the qualities attributed to the Athenians--inventiveness,daring, and aggressiveness. Athens was quite a different sort of society and would become thebirthplace of philosophy, drama, and other artistic and intellectualmovements. He wrote about the Greek politicalleader Pericles and compares him to Fabius Maximus, who fought againstHannibal, and says that they are "men alike, as in their other virtues andgood parts, so especially in their mild and upright temper and demeanor,"and further notes that each was "most useful and serviceable to theinterests of their countries" (Plutarch 37). The gods of Greece were carried over into theRoman pantheon, though the names and some of the stories were changed.Plutarch showed a belief in deeper connections between the Greeks and theRomans in his Lives in which he generally paired a Greek and a Roman,showing that the thought of the two halves of these pairings as equal instature in some field, as the Greek Demosthenes and the Roman oratorCicero, or Alcibiades and Coriolanus. "Overview of Archaic and Classical Greek History." http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~tlg/index/resources.html.Plutarch. Lysander won thedecisive battle of Aegospotami in 4 5, and Athens was blockaded andsurrendered in April 4 4). He returned from exileafter the war ended in 4 4. The war resulted in Athens being defeated and strippedof its empire and in Sparta becoming the acknowledged leader of the Greekworld. This last stage of the war iscalled "Decelean" from the name of a town in Attica, Decelea, which Spartafortified, to the enormous cost of the Athenians. We know much about Athenian society from the writings of historiansand others about that era and about political leaders of that city likePericles. Because the Spartans had the superior army, the Athenian leaderPericles employed a strategy that avoided land battles and relied insteadon control of the sea. "Pericles." Pericles the Olympian. One of the elements of these celebrationswas the dithyramb, a choral ode sung or chanted by a chorus of men.Aristotle says this evolved into the drama when one of the chorus leaders,Thespis, left the chorus and assumed the role of "the god," and sotradition has it that Thespis was the first actor. However, the war was actuallytriggered by hostility between Athens and Corinth, Sparta's major ally.Athens concluded an alliance with the Corinthian colony Corcyra (the modernCorfu) in 433 even though that city was at war with Corinth. He believed that the war wouldprove epochal and that his account would possess permanent value becausesuch significant conflicts were bound to occur in future epochs "so long as human nature remained the same," and he was clearly correct in theseassessments. Greek Political Theory. Once he was in politics, he only rarely appearedin public, and then only on the most important occasions. These actions, along with an Athenian-imposed embargo oncommerce from Megara, led Sparta to declare war on Athens when negotiationsfailed. Therewere four major festivals in honor of the Greek god Dionysus, three ofwhich would later involve drama. Pericles learned even more from Anaxagoras.Anaxagoras was the first philosopher to attribute the order of the world tointelligence, rather than to chance or necessity. Spartans became thebest warriors in Greece, and as a result the word Spartan has since becomea byword for endurance and rugged simplicity. After an initial confrontation (446-445) withAthens terminated indecisively, the Peloponnesian War broke out in 431 andended in 4 4 with Sparta's conquest of Athens. Whatever may be said of the "sacrifice" of the individual to the State in Greek politics or in Greek theory, the fact remains that in Greece, as contrasted with the rest of the ancient world, man was less sacrificed to the whole to which he belonged than he was elsewhere (Barker 2).The classical features of Greek democratic tradition was an emphasis ondisbursing political power among all citizens, and the participation of allcitizens was seen as essential both to the well-being of the state and thecitizen himself. Spartan supremacy was also threatened in 464 by a revoltof helots and perioikoi called the Third Messenian War, which wassuppressed with difficulty. Athenshad remained firm and had suppressed the dangerous rebellion of Mytilene in427. New York: P.F. One of the primary conditions for the development of politicalthought in Greece was a sense of the value of the individual, and this alsomeant that one of the issues that had to be addressed was the properrelationship between the individual and the collective, between theindividual and the state: That sense had its manifestation as much in practice as in theory; and it issued into action in the shape of a practical conception of free citizenship of a self-governing community--a conception which forms the essence of the Greek city-state. "The Greeks." http://lupus.northern.edu:9 /wild/ th1 /greek.htm. The speeches he inserted into his history, brilliantlyconceived and written, probe deeply into human motivation and explain thepolicy of states in terms of human psychology. Athensheaded a similar alliance of Ionian states, the Delian League, and arose tochallenge Sparta. He received a good education from histeachers, including the philosopher Zeno, and from Zeno he learned thesophistry that many believed made it possible for Zeno to prove anyproposition to be false. Thucydides was the firstGreek to write contemporary history but was deeply indebted to Herodotusfor his conception of the fundamental importance of historical writing.Unlike Herodotus, however, who considered it his duty to repeat whatpeople said without necessarily subscribing to it, Thucydides made everyeffort to authenticate the facts he reported, and he shows unusualsophistication in his awareness of the way that witnesses oftenmisremember what they have seen. Sparta'sstrategy was to invade yearly, as it did from 431 to 425 (except in 429 and426), hoping to break Athens's will and to encourage Athens's subjects torebel. In the aftermath, Athens gave up its fleet,submitted to the destruction of its fortifications, and suffered the ruleof an oligarchy, the Thirty Tyrants. The Ancient Greeks. The expedition ended disastrously in 413, and the debacleenticed Sparta into fighting once more. He was also not at easeamong the common people, but when he did decide to participate in publicaffairs, he joined the democratic party. By the end of thecentury Sparta headed a confederation of all major Peloponnesian citiesexcept Argos--the Peloponnesian League, which in 48 -479 became thebulwark of the Greek defense against Persia in the Persian Wars. A History of the Greek City States 7 -338 B.C. Inany case, Sparta was transformed into a collectivist warrior society.Seven-year-old boys of the ruling class were removed from their familiesto be trained for war. Although an admirer of Pericleandemocracy, Thucydides was not a democratic ideologue. After this education,Pericles was dignified in his language and serene and calm in hismovements. In the Roman era, much of Greek literature and culture was eitheradopted or held up as an example even though the Romans had a differentworldview in many ways. Parallel walls, called the Long Walls,made a protected thoroughfare between the city and its port of Piraeus(Sealey 89-1 6). The Peloponnesian War (431-4 4 BC) was a major event during the reignof Pericles and was a struggle between Athens and Sparta and theirrespective allies. However, the war was wonon the sea. The History is incomplete as far as the war isconcerned because it ends abruptly with the narrative of the events of 411BC (Finley 8-32). His rival was Cimon, leader ofthe aristocratic party. Thucydides'History of the Peloponnesian War is the principal source for the events ofthe war up to 411 (derived from Sealey 238-385). This tradition is embodied in aspects of the politicalphilosophies of Plato and Aristotle, as will be indicated in an explorationof certain of the themes that recur in Greek political philosophy, such asthe question of justice and the nature and meaning of citizenship. Thucydides began writing his History of thePeloponnesian War in 431 when the great war broke out. The Greek drama was well-developed by the time of Pericles. TheSpartans acquired the western portion of the lower Peloponnesus byconquering Messenia in the First Messenian War in the late 8th century.The Messenians, who were also Dorians, rebelled and were suppressed in theSecond Messenian War in the mid-7th century. Berkeley: University of California, 1976.Thucydides. March 27, 1998.Finley, M.I. The peace was unstable because, although there were no significanthostilities, neither side fully complied with the terms of the agreement. However, Pericles stayed out ofpolitics for a long time from fear of retaliation. In 415, a year after destroying the inoffensive island-state ofMelos, Athens attempted to conquer Syracuse, largely at the urging ofAlcibiades. Pericles was very wealthy, and his skill with words made him famousin Athens while he was still young. War had an impact on the development of the ancient world, butit cannot be said that the victor is necessarily the one to achieveascendance. The Spartans gradually conquered Laconia, the lowersoutheastern quarter of the Peloponnesus, and pre-Dorian Amyclae, the lastholdout, was absorbed into Sparta by the 8th century. Collier & Son, 19 9.Sealey, Raphael. Dorian Sparta grew out of fourvillages settled in and after the 11th century BC. Thomas Martin notes, The problematic relationship that Greeks believed existed between gods and humans formed the basis of classical Athens' most enduring cultural innovation: the tragic dramas performed over the course of three days at the major annual festival held in honor of the god Dionysus (Martin).Sophocles was the major playwright of the era of Pericles and would leave alasting legacy, as did the political, philosophical, and social thinkers ofthe era. The eventual fusion ofthese separate villages into a polis, or city-state, may explain Sparta'sdouble kingship. He was also the firstplaywright in that he won the first Greek tragedy contest in 534 B.C.(Cohan). By the mid-6th century Sparta had taken possession of Argiveterritory along the southeastern Peloponnesian coast in a battle forsupremacy that soon left Argos a second-class power. Many of theconquered pre-Dorians became helots, or serfs, and members of variousneighboring groups in Laconia were granted the semiautonomous status ofperioikoi, though they were required to serve in the Spartan army. He served as ageneral in 424 but was banished from Athens in that same year for hisfailure to protect Amphipolis from the Spartans. Works CitedBarker, Ernest. Some elements of the "new" Spartaseem to be primitive survivals paralleled elsewhere, notably in Crete,while others seem to derive from its need to control its subjectpopulation. Athens gained an advantage in the war in 425 by capturing a Spartanforce on the island of Sphacteria, but this victory was canceled the nextyear when the Spartan Brasidas captured Amphipolis.
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