Reaktion (2026) p/b 224pp £15.99 (ISBN 9781836392002)
Over the years, perceptions of Pericles have changed dramatically. As C. observes, ‘from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century he was treated largely with disdain’, and it was only in nineteenth-century Britain that the process began which resulted in many modern ancient historians viewing him as a ‘great man’. Even in his own day Pericles excited conflicting reactions: while Thucydides (the historian) praised him (albeit describing his political role in ambiguous terms), many comic writers accused him of behaving like a tyrant, and Plato’s Socrates likened ‘all demagogues such as Pericles to mere pastry-cooks feeding the masses only unhealthy sweet pastries and other “goodies”’.
C., however, is in no doubt. ‘I’d say greatness is indeed a concept applicable to Pericles’, he writes in his conclusion, declaring that ‘what I hope to have added to the febrile historical mix is a more nuanced appreciation of just what sort of a politician Pericles really was, and whether and to what extent he deserves either credit or discredit for the policies that he advocated and that the Athenians en masse put into effect.’
So, this is neither a simple hagiography nor a straightforward ‘life and times’ biography of Pericles. Rather, having dispatched what we know (or think we know) about him in one chapter (‘The Historical Pericles’), C. dives deeper into specific areas in five further chapters (Pericles as demagogue, builder and intellectual as well as ‘Pericles in the Orbit of Love’ and the fictional/comic Pericles). Since each of these is intended to be able to be read individually, there is inevitably some overlap and repetition.
Much of the material is familiar, so what is of especial interest is how C. marshals his arguments, foregrounding the positive (Pericles’ penchant for philosophy; his rhetorical skills; his part in the building project that bears his name), while arguably downplaying the negative (from his leading—perhaps driving—role in precipitating the Peloponnesian War that would see Athens humiliated to his ruthlessness with regard to the defeated—no mention here of Duris of Samos’ account of his sentence of apotympanismos that followed that island’s failed rebellion.) Perhaps most interesting and useful are C.’s observations about Pericles’ family: his choice of the names Paralus and Pericles for two of his sons; the status and character of Aspasia, some of whose reputation for intellectual brilliance (C., sidelining Xenophon, seems to suggest) is a ‘kind of anti-democratic fantasy’ drawn from Plato’s problematic Menexenus (‘A foreign woman … would have been thought to have no place interfering in the exclusively masculine, properly political process’).
There is the odd unexpected slip or misleading ambiguity: Xanthippus’ prosecution of Miltiades did not fail (as C. seems to suggest it did)—the hero of Marathon died in prison; Pnyx Hill is not ‘below the acropolis’ but opposite it (albeit lower); and it is odd to read that Athens’ elite cavalry (foregrounded on the Parthenon Frieze) was ‘very inferior in the Athenian scheme of things’. There is also the occasional inconsistency: in one chapter C. describes the panhellenic congress of c. 448 as ‘doubtfully authentic’, while in another he refers without caveats to ‘the panhellenic congress called … by Pericles’. And, especially in the light of modern politics, readers might be forgiven for questioning C.’s thesis that Athens’ democratic constitution prevented Pericles from exercising extraordinary power as its ‘first citizen’ (whatever that term means).
But these are minor quibbles, and in the greater scheme of things they do not detract from this book’s undoubted value. Written with his trademark consideration, clarity and wit, C.’s ‘Pericles’, complete with 25 illustrations, a timeline, end notes, a fine bibliography and index, is a valuable addition to the corpus, will engage the general historian, and deserves to find a useful place in school and university libraries – though readers would possibly do well to heed C.’s own observation: ‘Perhaps we do all to some extent inevitably create the Pericles of our dreams—or our nightmares.’
David Stuttard