Epilogue

In the preceding study we have pursued four separate lines of inquiry into the history of sixth-and fifth-century Athens, choosing our subjects in the belief that they will prove mutually informative when balanced against each other. Pericles is of course the center figure in all of them, for this great representative of the Alcmeonids was Athenian democracy and, in addition, the resolute exponent both of Athenian imperialism and of consistent enmity to Sparta.

The importance, to him, of the Alcmeonid tradition should not be belabored. Whether or not Pericles was technically an Alcmeonid, he was definitely regarded as one by others, and presumably so regarded himself, and it is a heritage that helps to explain much about his public activity as well as the idiosyncrasies of his private life.

As we have seen, the family, apparently a latecomer in Athenian dynastic politics, attained unusual power by time and again departing in unexpected ways from the conventional interests of the aristocracy. That fateful course was partly predetermined by the stigma of guilt rashly incurred by the murder of the adherents of Cylon late in the seventh century. Cleisthenes was expelled from Athens because of it, and his grandnephew was charged, again by the Spartans, with the onus of the same curse in 431. In all probability, therefore, the invidious position in which the family found itself partly accounts for the pragmatism and renunciation of aristocratic solidarity indicated first by Megacles II when he married his daughter to Peisistratus, the inveterate

opponent of the aristocrats, and then by his son Cleisthenes, who served as archon under the sons of Peisistratus in 525/4.

For these actions the Alcmeonids must have paid a price that only reinforced the stigma of the curse. They had made enemies of the men of their own class. Therefore, the democratic reform of Cleisthenes, since it cut against the aristocracy, may not unjustifiably be taken to reflect these hostilities, just as it also confirms the implications of his earlier association with the tyranny. As to that, we see further signs of the connection between the houses of the Alcmeonids and the Peisistratids in the tradition of the traitorous behaviour of the Alcmeonids at the battle of Marathon.

The low fortunes of the family after Marathon were revived about a generation later by Pericles. His first years as a politician are difficult to date or to assess because of the highly problematical nature of the tradition surrounding him. Nevertheless, we see no reason to associate him with Ephialtes' reforms. In any case, his dominion over the public scene is securely anchored to the fifties, and it is marked (late in that decade) by his introduction of pay for juries and associated legislation. The bent of his policy is probably a sign that he continued the family tradition of antagonism to the main body of the aristocrats, for by his extension of the democracy the element of privilege lost all hope of regaining the status it had enjoyed in the time of Cimon. The unsuccessful career of Thucydides son of Melesias is a clear case in point. Pericles bought himself primacy by distribution to the people of the revenues of the empire and thus realized, as Aristotle might say, the latent implications of pure and direct democracy.

The democracy in its initial form had developed out of reaction against the body of aristocratic Athenians returned to power after the Spartan capture of the city in 511/10, and it is all too easy to overestimate the ideological component of this revolution. The new institutional framework set in place by Cleisthenes guarantees the participation in the government of all Athenian males resident in Attica; thus the achievement of the new government was to assure the triumph of the people as a whole over the reactionaries who had wished to install a narrowly based oligarchy. In a sense, therefore, Cleisthenes continued the tradition of Peisistratus, but transcended it by setting the rights of the people on a secure legal and institutional basis—the new tribal arrangement and the Council of 500. Although we can only speculate about Cleisthcnes' motives, the fact that he swept away an oligarchic government is cardinal; self-interest is also consistent with the prag-

matism he displayed in the attempt at rapprochement with Persia, something his own new government regarded as a betrayal of the cause.

Further development of the democracy, marked by Ephialtes' reform, coincides with a turnabout in foreign policy and the rejection of Cimon's leadership. For if, thanks to Cimon, Athens now had become an imperial city, that very fact provided the Athenians with the self-confidence, the experience and the resources to assert fuller control of the democracy and its policies. The Council of the Areopagus, which had been a bastion of aristocratic privilege and, more concretely, exercised effective control over the magistracies, was deprived of its powers, which were allocated among the people. But it was Pericles who took the next bold step by creating the enmisthos polis. This decision required access to the resources of the empire, and therefore marks a fateful turn in the destiny of Athens, for henceforth the empire and the democracy presupposed each other. The great speeches in Thucydides provide the best of all commentaries on the resultant ethical dilemma.

It is a nice question whether Pericles' appropriation of imperial revenue for domestic purposes represents an alteration in degree, rather than in kind, of the prevailing status quo. The Delian League had hardened into an Athenian instrumentality about a decade earlier than Pericles' entrance into politics. The suppression of the Naxian revolt c. 470, like the subjugation of Thasos in 465–463, points indisputably to Athens's use of compulsion, and this suits the ordinary definition of imperial control. Above all, the victory at the Eurymedon, achieved within this period, seemed (correctly) to end the Persian threat and to fulfill the ostensible purpose of the original league. The empire, explicitly or not, had acquired permanency. After Ephialtes' revolution and Athens's renunciation of alliance with Sparta, its value proportionately rose as a means of self-preservation, if not as a weapon, in the time of troubles with Sparta in the fifties. That, probably, is the real explanation of the Peace of Callias concluded with Persia: it served to protect Athens's exposed eastern flank at a time when warfare might be expected in Greece itself. The alternative view—that the peace marks a milestone in the transition from "league" to "empire"—has little to recommend it. The tribute-quota stele was already in place, and evidence is lacking to suggest that the early forties witnessed anything more than a regularization of prevailing imperial practice. Peace with Persia signifies Athens's abandonment of a policy of adventurism in the east. But the catalyst of the peace was the intention to compete in Greece with Sparta, a decision fired by the passionate patriotism of Pericles himself.

Spartan interference with Athens had commenced in 511/10 with the expulsion of Hippias. It intensified shortly thereafter with an attack both on Cleisthenes' person and on his government. But the Spartans evidently accommodated themselves to the new regime, which certainly constituted no threat to themselves so early as this, and they worked amicably with the Athenians during the Great Persian War. Since the Spartan government did not object even when the command over the Ionians was taken out of their hands in 478/7, when the Athenians organized the Delian League, the tradition of acrimony over the fortification of Athens in the winter of 479/8 can be regarded as a historical fiction. One element of the Athenian population unquestionably regarded Spartan supremacy with dislike and suspicion, but the traditionalist government associated with Cimon's name ensured good relations until the late sixties. A combination of factors then worked a radical change. The acquisition of empire had altered the political complexion of the city and changed the balance of power between the city and Sparta. Democracy, always implicitly anti-Spartan, now became virulent, while the weakness of Sparta, caused by the great helot revolt, encouraged Athens, fortified as she was by the empire, to engage in aggressive activities in the Peloponnesus.

Pericles epitomizes the new patriotic spirit. After the disaster in Egypt, he concluded peace with Persia in order to wage war at home, and he devised the strategy of the Long Walls so as to make the rule of the seas a means to survive and even win a conflict with the great land power. He amassed treasure, repressed a dangerous revolt undertaken by the hitherto autonomous city-state of Samos, and applied various pressures against members of the Peloponnesian alliance or their close connections. Megara was humiliated, Aegina was treated improperly, Potidaea felt the edge of Athens's hostility to Corinth, whose own hated enemy, moreover, Athens also took into alliance. Under these circumstances, which fostered the impression that Sparta was timid and impotent, undermining the basis of her leadership and security, Sparta declared war on Athens in 431.