Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome (10 page)

all. Hesitation, uncertainty, and resistance threatened the empire’s ex-

istence. At the same time, the threat of Sparta loomed. The truce ne-

gotiated by Cimon would run out in a few years, but he was no longer

there to calm Spartan fears. Great differences remained between the

two powers, and there was no certainty that they could be overcome

without war. Yet Pericles’ plans required peace.

Not long after Callias’s peace was concluded, Pericles tried to solve

his problems with a most imaginative proposal. He introduced a bill

to invite all Greeks, wherever they lived, whether in Europe or

in Asia, whether small cities or large, to send representatives to

a congress at Athens, to deliberate about the holy places that

the barbarians had destroyed, and about the sacrifices that they

[the Greeks] owed, having promised them to the gods when they

fought against the barbarians, and about the sea, so that all might

sail it without fear and keep the peace.13

Messengers were sent to all corners of the Greek world to deliver an

invitation to “share in the plans for the peace and common interests of

Greece.” Pericles, as one scholar has put it, was “calling on the Greek

world to set up another organization to do what the Spartan-led Greek

alliance of 480 should have done but had failed to do, and to provide for

the peacetime needs which the Delian League had hitherto satisfied.”14

Pericles and the Defense of Empire 43

Beyond that, the invitation presented an Athenian claim to Greek lead-

ership on a new foundation. While war had brought the Greeks to-

gether originally, the maintenance of peace and security would cement

their union from then on. Religious piety, pan-Hellenism, and the com-

mon good were now to justify continued loyalty and sacrifice.

Was Pericles sincere? The temples burned by the Persians were al-

most all in Attica, and the fleet that would keep the peace would be

chiefly Athenian. Pericles may therefore have expected the Spartans

and their allies to reject his proposal and thus provide him with a new

justification for consolidating the empire. On the other hand, Pericles

could honestly have been trying to achieve Greek freedom, security,

and unity by this device. The cynical view ignores the facts of Pericles’

recall of and rapprochement with Cimon, and the truce with Sparta,

plainly intended to be a preliminary to a new policy of lasting peace. But

the picture of Pericles as a disinterested devotee of pan-Hellenic coop-

eration neglects the great advantages to Athens if the congress should

meet and approve his proposals. Pericles could well have thought there

was a chance the Spartans would accept the invitation. The policy of

its militant faction had brought disaster to Sparta and raised Athens to

new heights. Sparta’s agreement to the Five Years’ Peace of 451 shows

that this faction had been discredited. It was not unreasonable to expect

that the peace faction, impressed by Pericles’ unexpected alliance with

Cimon and his apparent conversion to a new foreign policy, might take

advantage of the troubles in Athens’s maritime empire to negotiate a

lasting peace, as in Cimon’s time. Such a development would achieve

Pericles’ goals and represent a diplomatic victory for his new policy of

pacific imperialism.

If Sparta refused, nothing would have been lost and much gained.

Athens would have shown its pan-Hellenic spirit, its religious devotion,

and its willingness to lead the Greeks for the common benefit; it would

thus have gained a clear moral basis for pursuing its own goals without

hindrance or complaint from others.

The Spartans declined the invitation to participate in the new plan

for international cooperation, and the congress did not go forward.

This episode announced to the Greek world that Athens was ready to

take the lead in carrying out a sacred responsibility. It also provided

44 Kagan

Athens with a justification for rebuilding its own temples. Pericles was

now free to restore order to the empire, to continue collecting tribute

on a new basis, and to use the revenue for the projects he had in mind.

A mutilated papyrus now located in Strasbourg provides a good idea

of these plans. The papyrus apparently reports a decree that Pericles

proposed in the summer of 449, soon after the failure of the congress.

Five thousand talents were to be taken from the treasury at once to

be used for the construction of new temples on the Acropolis, with

another two hundred transferred annually for the next fifteen years to

complete the work. The building program, however, would not inter-

fere with the maintenance of the fleet, which justified the payment of

tribute. The council would see to it that the old ships would be kept in

good repair and ten new ships added annually. If there had been any

question before, there could be none now: the Delian League, the al-

liance (
symmachia
) of autonomous states, had become what the Athe-

nians themselves were increasingly willing to call an empire (
archê
), an

organization that still produced common benefits but was dominated

by the Athenians and brought them unique advantages.

A few years after the new program had begun, Pericles found him-

self challenged by a formidable political faction led by Thucydides, son

of Melesias, a brilliant orator and political organizer. He used the usual

personal attacks to win support, alleging that Pericles was trying to es-

tablish himself as tyrant. This he cleverly combined with an assault on

the use of imperial funds for the Periclean building program. Plutarch

reports the essence of the complaints that were made in the assembly:

The people is dishonored and in bad repute because it has removed

the common money of the Hellenes from Delos to Athens. Peri-

cles has deprived it of the most fitting excuse that it was possible

to offer to its accusers, that it removed the common funds to this

place out of fear of the barbarian and in order to protect it. Hellas

certainly is outraged by a terrible arrogance [
hubris
] and is mani-

festly 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

Pericles and the Defense of Empire 45

The attack was shrewd, subtle, and broad in its appeal. It was not

against the empire itself or the tribute derived from it, which would

have alienated most Athenians. Instead it complained, on the one hand,

about the misdirection of funds to the domestic program of Pericles.

This reminded the friends of Cimon who were now part of the Peri-

clean coalition that the original Cimonian policy had been abandoned

and perverted. On the other hand, it reached out to a broader constitu-

ency by taking a high moral tone. Employing the language of tradi-

tional religion and old-fashioned morality, it played on the ambiguity

many Athenians felt toward their rule over fellow Greeks.

Thucydides’ attacks forced Pericles to defend the empire and his

new imperial policy before the Athenians themselves. In answer to the

main complaint he offered no apology. The Athenians, he said, need

make no account of the money they received from their allies so long

as they protected 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 car-

ries 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 vari-

ety of demands will arise which will waken every art, put in mo-

tion every hand, provide a salary for almost the entire city from

which at the same time it may be beautified and nourished.16

The first part of this rebuttal answered the moral attack. The use of

imperial funds for Athenian purposes was not analogous to tyranny,

Pericles asserted, but to the untrammeled use of wages or profits by a

man who has entered a contract. If there was any moral breach, it must

be on the part of any allies that shrank from paying the tribute while

Athens continued to provide protection. The second part was aimed

especially at the lower classes, who benefited from the empire most di-

rectly, and reminded them in the plainest terms what it meant to them.

The Athenians understood Pericles well, and in 443 he called for an

ostracism that served both as a vote of confidence in his leadership and

46 Kagan

as a referendum on his policies. Thucydides was expelled, and Pericles

reached new heights of political influence. The people supported him

not least because of the powerful stake they had in the empire.

The concept of empire does not win favor in the world today, and

the word “imperialism” derived from it has carried a powerfully pejo-

rative meaning from its very invention in the nineteenth century. Both

words imply domination imposed by force or the threat of force over

an alien people in a system that exploits the ruled for the benefit of

the rulers. Although tendentious attempts are made to apply the term

“imperialism” to any large and powerful nation that is able to influence

weaker ones, a more neutral definition based on historical experience

requires political and military control to justify its use.

In holding such views, the people of our time are unique among

those who have lived since the birth of civilization. If, however, we are

to understand the empire ruled by the Athenians of Pericles’ time and

their attitudes toward it, we must be alert to the great gap that separates

their views from the opinions of our own time. These developments

were a source of pride and gratification, but in some respects they also

caused embarrassment and, at least to some Athenians, shame. Peri-

cles himself confronted the problem more than once and addressed it

with extraordinary honesty and directness, although neither he nor the

Athenians were ever able to resolve its ambiguities.

The Athenians repeatedly acknowledged the unpopularity of their

rule, and the historian Thucydides, a contemporary of outstanding

perceptiveness, makes the point in his own voice. At the beginning of

the war, he tells us,

Good wil was thoroughly on the side of the Spartans, especial y

since they proclaimed that they were liberating Greece. Every in-

dividual and every state was powerful y moved to help them by

word or deed in any way they could. . . . So great was the anger of

the majority against the Athenians, some wanting to be liberated

from their rule, the others fearing that they would come under it.17

Pericles was fully aware of these feelings, and he understood both

the ethical problems and practical dangers they presented. Yet he never

wavered in his defense of the empire.

Pericles and the Defense of Empire 47

In 432, when the threat of war was imminent, an Athenian embassy

arrived at Sparta, ostensibly “on other business,” but really to present

Athens’s position to the Spartans and their assembled allies. Their ar-

guments were fully in accord with those of Pericles. The ambassadors

argued that the Athenians acquired their empire as a result of circum-

stances they did not set in motion and of the natural workings of hu-

man nature. On the one hand, they pointed out,

We did not acquire this empire by force, but only after you [Spar-

tans] refused to stand your ground against what was left of the

barbarian, and the allies came to us and begged us to become

their leaders. It was the course of events that forced us to develop

our empire to its present status, moved chiefly by fear, then by

honor, and later by advantage. Then, when we had become hated

by most of the allies and some of them had rebelled and been

subdued, and you were no longer as friendly to us as you had

been but were suspicious and at odds with us, it was no longer

safe to let go, for all rebels would go over to your side. And no

one can be blamed for looking to his own advantage in the face

of the greatest dangers.18

On the contrary, they continued, the Athenians had only done as the

Spartans would have had to do had they maintained their leadership. In

that case, they would have become equally hated. “Thus we have done

nothing remarkable or contrary to human nature in accepting the em-

pire when it was offered to us and then refusing to give it up, conquered

by the greatest motives, honor, fear, and advantage.”19

Pericles certainly thought that circumstances had made the empire

inevitable, and the mainspring of Athenian action after Plataea and My-