Pericles of Athens by Vincent Azoulay

I am thoroughly enjoying this study of the iconic Pericles, the central figure of Classical Athens.

Azoulay spends a great deal of time discussing the opinions of the various ancient writers on Pericles, and how the strategos' reputation has evolved over the millennia.

Many of the ancients, including Plato, saw Pericles as nothing more than a demagogue who followed the whims of the Athenian masses.  Plato in particular saw the democratic experiment as nothing short of a disaster, expressing pity for Pericles, a victim of the rabble rousing public.

As such, Azoulay presents a well-rounded portrait, not simply lauding him as so many have over time, including the infamous Thucydides.

Azoulay goes to great lengths to explain that Pericles all but disappeared from the historical record for centuries.  Writers and philosophers through the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment barely mention him.  It wasn't until the late 18th/early 19th centuries that Pericles' reputation found him in the ascendancy.  

As the foremost symbol of democracy his reputation left him in the dustbin until democracy itself was revived following the American and French revolutions.  Coupled with (I imagine) the Greek independence of the 1820s and the rediscovery of the monuments and temples of Classical Athens, Pericles reputation has soared ever since.

Some quotes of note that I highlighted along the way:

• Military leader and orator: those are the two indissociable aspects of Periclean power.
• Once the Persian Wars were over, stratēgoi definitively supplanted the post of archon that had previously served this purpose: the polemarch was now marginalized and limited to ritual and legal functions.
• Ever since 487, archons had, on the contrary, been selected by lot, and they could not remain in power for more than one year, after which they were admitted to the Council of the Areopagus
• The stratēgos conceded that it was perhaps unjust to change the Delian League into an empire at the service of Athens. However, there could be no question of reversing the decision, for to do so would be to accept slavery, douleia.  His reasoning is subtle: it is necessary to defend an empire, even one that is acquired by coercion, for it would be too dangerous to give it up.
• However unjust it was, the people must continue to act tyrannically toward the members of the League.
• Although we should perhaps not impute to Pericles in particular the responsibility for the city’s slide into imperialism, Pericles certainly did take over this new order without compunction, both in practice and in the representations that he promoted.
• This, we should remember, converted all the citizens to brothers born from the same mother, the soil of Attica. The Athenians imagined themselves to be collectively endowed with a prestigious ancestry and consequently to stand on a footing of equality with one another; the hierarchies of birth gave way before the belief of an origin common to all. In this context, the law of 451 on citizenship made sense, voted in, as it was, on Pericles’ initiative. It chimed with the Athenian myth of autochthony, transforming the city into an endogamous community with no foreign additions. There can be no doubt that the stratēgos’s entire policy aimed to place civic fraternity above real kinship.