Pericles: Policies That Built the Athenian Empire

Introduction: Pericles and Athenian Leadership

Pericles was an Athenian political leader largely responsible for the full development of both the empire and democracy of Athens during the fifth century BC. As a result, Athens became the political and cultural center of Greece. His achievements included the development of the Acropolis, begun in 447 BC. During Athens' golden era, philosophy, sculpture, drama, poetry, and technology all reached new heights. Over roughly fifty years, Athens experienced an expansion in artistic and intellectual life whose creative legacy continues to inspire and instruct people across the globe.

Fair and decisive, Pericles maintained broad popular support for 32 years. He was a skilled and politically inspiring orator as well as a distinguished general. He dominated Athenian life from 461 to 429 BC, a period so defined by his leadership that it is commonly known as the Age of Pericles (Aird, 2009). He pursued three central goals:

(1) To strengthen Athenian democracy; (2) To consolidate and expand the empire; and (3) To glorify Athens.

His Reign and Policies

Pericles intended to extend his aggressive foreign policy throughout the region, but events in subsequent years frustrated those ambitions considerably. An Athenian military force, sent to suppress an invasion, was compelled to surrender at Coronea, and the ransom paid was matched by an Athenian withdrawal from Boeotia. Upon news of this disaster, Locris, Phocis, and Euboea revolted, the Megarians killed the Athenian garrison, and a Spartan army occupied Attica. In response to this crisis, Pericles reportedly persuaded the Spartan military commanders to withdraw — allegedly through bribery — and moved swiftly to re-conquer Euboea. Other lost territories, however, could not be recovered. After a 30-year truce was negotiated in 445 BC, Pericles formally renounced Athenian predominance over mainland Greece. His foreign policy thereafter shifted decisively: to defend and, where possible, carefully extend the supremacy of the navy became his primary ambition. Though he occasionally staged displays of Athenian power abroad — reflecting a continuation of westward engagement — he generally avoided adventurism in distant regions (Samons, 2014).

The revolt of Samos disrupted the peaceful growth of Athenian power. Pericles assembled a fleet against the rebels and, after winning an initial engagement, unwisely divided his forces, allowing one squadron to be defeated. In the subsequent battle, he recovered from this setback and, following a prolonged blockade, reduced the city into submission. A Samian request for Persian assistance was declined. Turning to Pericles' policy toward the members of the Delian League, it is clear that he worked systematically to convert allies into subjects. A distinctive feature of his policy was the dispatch of Athenian settler-colonies, or cleruchies. These served the dual purpose of securing Athenian strategic positions and relieving the surplus poor of the capital by resettling them as landowners. Territory was acquired by confiscating land from disaffected states, sometimes in exchange for reductions in tribute.

In his domestic policy, Pericles built on Ephialtes' program of making Athens genuinely self-governing. His primary innovation was the introduction of payment for state services. Most notably, he introduced pay for jury service. He also established a "theoricon" fund, which provided the poor with money to attend dramatic performances at the Dionysia festival. Similarly, the military received pay during the Peloponnesian War in addition to traditional provisions. Pericles likely also introduced pay for the archons and members of the Council, with some magistrates receiving compensation early in his tenure. Closely linked to this program of state payments was a more restrictive policy: Pericles required Athenian parentage on both sides as a condition for holding citizenship and the right to sit on paid juries. The opening of the archonship to the third property class and eventually to all classes of citizens is also attributed to his initiative (Aird, 2009).

Pericles' domestic program has been debated since antiquity. His core enactments centered on compensation for state service, measures that critics have characterized as appeals to the baser instincts of the masses. However, such an interpretation is difficult to reconcile with what is known of Pericles' own attitude toward the people, over whom scholars suggest he effectively ruled as a statesman-king. It is more plausible that Pericles genuinely believed in the civic good of his reforms and sought to realize an ideal Athens — the Athens that Thucydides describes in the Funeral Oration: a city where intelligence and willing obedience are rendered to a rational code of law, where merit rises to the top, and where military preparedness coexists with free cultural development, stifling neither commerce nor art. In pursuit of this vision, Pericles sought to educate citizens in political wisdom by giving all of them a meaningful share in political institutions, including governance, and to cultivate their aesthetic sensibilities by making available the best music and drama. The Peloponnesian War severely damaged this enterprise by diverting the financial resources necessary to sustain it and by subjecting the democracy of Athens — before Pericles could consolidate it under his guiding hand — to intolerable strain.

Restoring Athens' Supremacy

The wars among the Greek states had ended in 451 BC. Pericles adopted a program aimed at securing Athens' political and cultural leadership in Greece. He had already assumed control of the alliance that had continued the Persian Wars after Sparta's withdrawal in 478 BC. In 454 BC, Athenian leadership was further consolidated by the transfer of the alliance's treasury from Delos to Athens. Even if peace with Persia did not formally dissolve the league, it may have undermined the rationale for the annual tribute paid into that treasury (Spielvogel, 2009).

Whether to reassert Athenian prestige or to claim outright leadership of the Greek world, Pericles convened a congress of all Greek states to deliberate on the restoration of temples damaged by the Persians, the rendering of sacrifices owed to the gods for salvation, and the freedom of the seas. Sparta refused to cooperate, but Pericles proceeded on the narrower basis of the Athenian alliance. Tribute would continue, and Athens would draw heavily on the league's reserves to fund a spectacular building program centered on the Acropolis (Spielvogel, 2009). In 447 BC, work began on the Parthenon and the great ivory-and-gold statue of Athena that it was to house. The Acropolis program was eventually to include, among other elements, a temple to the goddess of Victory and the Propylaea — the monumental gateway to the Acropolis — far grander and more costly than any previous secular Greek building.

There was domestic opposition. Thucydides — inheriting his father's political network — denounced both the extravagance of the building program and the ethical impropriety of using allied funds to finance it. Pericles countered that the allies paid for their protection, and that, provided this obligation was met, Athens bore no accountability for how the surplus was spent. The debate ultimately led to a formal contest: Thucydides was ostracized and sent into ten years of exile, leaving Pericles without serious political opposition. Whether the popularity of the building program had genuinely captured the Athenian imagination, or whether Pericles was simply regarded as indispensable, is difficult to determine. Pericles also wished to stimulate employment and commercial activity in Athens, though these motivations may be somewhat anachronistic and may not have weighed heavily with ordinary voters.

Conclusion

When Pericles assumed leadership of the Delian League, Athens' stated objectives were honorable. In the early years of his hegemony, he achieved remarkable results, driving the Persians from the Aegean. He also presided over a substantial inflow of tribute from the league's members, ostensibly to fund naval defense. The Athenians grew accustomed to a higher standard of living, sustained by the wealth and food now flowing into the city. The power and prestige of Athens benefited its citizens materially and culturally.

Athens depended on imported grain to feed its growing population, and tribute revenues gave Pericles the means to secure it. Income from tribute and the spoils of empire came to exceed a million talents per year, while confiscated lands and colonial settlements provided livelihoods for many Athenians. Imperial revenues funded the navy, financed spectacular public buildings, and supported the urban poor. The empire also generated full employment: at one time or another, nearly everyone in Athens served in the fleet. Because the entire city benefited, it is hardly surprising that democratic Athens had strong incentives to maintain the flow of tribute once the league had succeeded in neutralizing the Persian threat.

References

Aird, H. (2009). Pericles: The rise and fall of Athenian democracy. New York: Rosen.

Hotchkiss, M. A. (2009). Legend of the unknown god. Tate Publishing & Enterprises.

Samons, L. J. (2014). What's wrong with democracy? From Athenian practice to American worship. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Tarnopolsky, C. H. (2010). Prudes, perverts, and tyrants: Plato's Gorgias and the politics of shame. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Spielvogel, J. J. (2009). Western civilization: Volume I. Australia: Thomson/Wadsworth.