Pericles Monarchos

Author(s): J. S. Morrison and A. W. Gomme

Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 70 (1950), pp. 76-77
Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/629294
Accessed: 25-02-2015 19:59 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The
Journal of Hellenic Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 147.52.9.57 on Wed, 25 Feb 2015 19:59:12 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

NOTES

76

the Boeotians cannot fairly be called 'allies' of Sparta

at this date, it should be remembered that, according to
Diodorus (XI. 81. 2-3), in the course of the Tanagra
campaign the Spartans restored Thebes to its old position
of supremacy in Boeotia. If this is correct, and there is no
reason why it should not be right, this restoration to power
may well have involved membership of the Spartan
confederation and therefore the duty of supplying troops.
The conclusion therefore is surely that there is no real
objection to acceptance of the evidence of Pausanias and
' Plato '. On the basis of this evidence it may be suggested
that the course of the campaign was more or less as follows:
(a) The first stage was that a small force of 1,500
Spartans and perhaps four or five thousand other Peloponnesians crossed the gulf of Corinth and dealt successfully
with the Phocians.
(b) Finding their retreat cut off both by land and sea
the Spartans moved into Boeotia, re-established the
power of Thebes, as stated by Diodorus, and were
reinforced by a contingent of Boeotian troops, making
their numbers up to the figures recorded by Thucydides.
(c) After the battle the Peloponnesian contingent went
off home via the Isthmus, leaving a rather battered
Boeotian army to be soundly defeated by the Athenians
soon after at Oenophyta.7
In support of this interpretation I would point out that
in the first place it agrees rather better with the general
trend of Spartan policy at this period, and secondly that
it makes much more comprehensible not only the reluctance
of the Spartans to force a way home via the Isthmus but
also the rather daring attempt of the Athenians to isolate
the expedition in Central Greece. It is of course quite
true that this interpretation also does involve a departure
from Thucydides' account, as it assumes that he has
referred to the beginning of the campaign figures for the
Spartan force that were true only at the time of the actual
battle.8 Nevertheless it seems to me that this is a considerably smaller departure than the one involved by the
usual theory, which attributes to the Spartans underlying
motives of which there is not the slightest hint in Thucydides'
text. If his account cannot be accepted as it stands, it
seems to me that the account here given is the most natural
and satisfactory one. In conclusion, it must be pointed
out that, if this interpretation of the Tanagra campaign
is correct, it removes all the force of the main historical
argument for Kruiger's proposed emendation of the text
of Thucydides I. 103, to make the fall of Ithome happen
gTE'

instead

of 'EK&rTC',

as given by all the

'rE-Tapr9T
MSS.
This, however, is a problem which requires more
discussion than is possible at the moment, and I hope to
be able to consider it in detail on some future occasion.
D. W. REECE.
Dept. of Classics,
King's College,
Aberdeen.

a lecture on the Working of

Pericles Monarchos.-In
the Athenian Democracydelivered to the Hellenic Society
at Burlington House on 3 May, 1949, Professor A. W.
Gomme attacked the view 'that povappxiaor principate
describes with sufficient accuracy, not only Pericles' actual
position, but Herodotus' and Thucydides' conceptions of
it '.' To the word iovapxiaGomme attached the meaning
of absolute rule, typified in fifth-century thought, and in
Herodotus, by the Persian kingship: by 'principate'
he meant the direct, single rule of an Augustus. To both
he drew the parallel of modern dictatorship in a totalitarian
I
For a similar case of a Spartan commander leaving
his allies in the lurch cf. the action of Menedaius after
the battle of Olpae (Thuc. III.1iog-I i i).
8 Athenian tradition was much more likely to have
good information on the Spartan strength in the actual
battle than about their original numbers when they first
left the Peloponnese.
1 Gomme's words.

state. Since he cited me as subscribing to this view in its

most extreme form, in so far as I approved 2 of E. M.
Walker's remarks on the strategia in the CambridgeAncient
History and took Darius' arguments in favour of a
monarchy for Persia in Herodotus iii 8o-2 as ' Herodotus'
own justification for Pericles' unique position at Athens ',4
I feel that I should make some reply; and am grateful
to the editor of the Journal for this opportunity of doing
so. I am also grateful to Professor Gomme for letting me
consult his MS. so that I have been able to take up the point
with him on a surer foundation than that of memory, and
have had the privilege of a second acquaintance with a
brilliant lecture.
What I said, in fact, was this: 'The growth in importance
of the board of generals and in particular the virtual
domination of Athenian public life by Pericles during the
twenty years which preceded the Archidamian war had
led to a new theory of the principle of government. The
Cleisthenic theory had been that the city's will would be
done if an indiscriminate selection of the equal people
ruled in turn. On the new theory, the people, still holding
the supreme power in its hands, is advised and led by the
men who are most suited for leadership by talent and
position.5 The theory is certainly undemocratic in the
Cleisthenic sense; but it would be rash to say that the
people was any less powerful under Pericles than it was
before: it was rather that the means of exercise of popular
power had changed, either to meet new conditions or
because the Cleisthenic theory had proved unsatisfactory
in practice.' I hold this statement to be essentially a true
one, even if one phrase, at least, is obscure and misleading.
By saying that the new theory was 'undemocratic in the
Cleisthenic sense ' I meant that it was democratic but not in
the Cleisthenic sense: I did not mean that it was really
undemocratic and regarded Pericles as a tyrant or as an
aristocratic or oligarchic ruler. In fact, we know well,
Pericles was none of these. The new theory arose to
explain an actual situation, the ascendancy of Pericles in
a democratic state. He was not an aristocratic ruler, like
some of Pindar's patrons. The Cleisthenic constitution,
with its election of the archons by vote and its powerful
Areopagus, was more aristocratic than the Periclean.
Indeed, to the next generation the Cleisthenic constitution
seemed an aristocracy.6 Neither was Pericles a tyrant like
Peisistratus. To assert that Pericles' position could be
accurately described as a povapXiaor principate would be
rather more misleading than to say that Churchill's or
Roosevelt's position during the last war could accurately
have been described as a dictatorship. But, at the same
time, if we can gauge the spirit of the Cleisthenic democracy
from the device of ostracism which, according to Ephorus,
Theopompus and Aristotle was originally designed to
the ascendancy of Pericles must be regarded
check 0TrEpox,'7
as clean contrary to that spirit. Such a development was
a modification in the practice of democracy produced by
the special circumstances of the time. Churchill's war
premiership and Roosevelt's war presidency are close
analogies.
Gomme's second point was that Herodotus and Thucydides
could not have thoughtof Pericles' position in terms of a
povapxia or principate. I had proceeded to assert that
the debate in the third book of Herodotus 'is plainly
designed to lay the Athenian public by the ears; it dramatises the constitutional struggle which was being fought
out at Athens in the first decade of the second half of the
fifth century between the supporters of the Cleisthenic
democracy, the oligarchical party under the leadership
of Thucydides the son of Melesias, and the supporters of
Pericles '. The ground for this assertion was the remarkable
similarity in terminology between the descriptions of
2

C.Q. XXXV I941: p. IIff.

3 iv 155-6.
4 Gomme's words.
5 'AOrr.I. 3.

6 See Plut. Cin. 15: T-rv Trri

KXEto'0vou
SEyEipEtV aptrToAlso Busolt Gr. Gesch.II2 430 n. I.
KpaTriav
I See
Sandys on Arist. Const.of Ath. 22. i. The principle
of rotation in office had the same intention.

This content downloaded from 147.52.9.57 on Wed, 25 Feb 2015 19:59:12 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

NOTES
democracy 8 and oligarchy 9 in Herodotus and current
political phraseology at Athens; and the striking way in
which the po6vapXos
is described: nothing could be better
than the one best man, who, being best also in intellectual
ability, would be a blameless guardian of the people's
and whose head would be the safest repository
interest' to10
of the plans for the defeat of the city's enemies
..
Democracy (of the kind described) leads not to rivalry in
the practice of virtue but to conspiracy in the practice of
T
wickedness:- roUro5 TotoTro yiVEral s 6 av wpoord7'as
TOo S flpovU TO1J

EK 8E

ET I OJTOs

TOOTTro urO-ao"y
'OaT-)V
5i (rr6 --o0 5#jpou,
av CAWOCp(a
cocpa6pEvo;5' &v'
&vq powvapXos
E&. In the interpretation of this passage lies the
point
at issue between Gomme and myself. He regards the
language attributed to Darius by Herodotus as ' proper to
the rise of tyranny in Greece '.11 On the other hand it
seems likely to me that Herodotus, in telling this story,
made use of arguments that he had heard used in Athens
for and against the ascendancy of Pericles, and that
although he knew well enough that Pericles' leadership
was in fact quite different from an eastern despotism the
word p6vapxos gave the cue for his topical digression.
Gomme argued that the ideas connected with the words
p6vapXosand povapXi{were so utterly different from those
on which Pericles' ascendancy was based that he could
never have used the terms if he had been thinking of
Pericles. But p6vapXosis the most colourless of all the
words for 'ruler
Admittedly, in most cases it is used
'.12
of an absolute ruler
; but if Herodotus was speaking in
parables, words which were suitable enough in the apparent
context of the Persian story might surely hint at an
ascendancy of which Thucydides could say: ' EiyvT-r6
T
-rEAOYc? [Ev SrTlQoKpc-ria,
Epy5E'
avbp6s apxTI'.
O 1rrpCJTou
This hint would be all the UrrlTO
more easily
taken if Pericles'
enemies had referred to him as P6vapXos. Gomme admitted that ' people talked loosely of Roosevelt, during the
war, as dictator almost in the same breath in which they
spoke of Hitler and Mussolini'. It is not difficult to
imagine similar loose talk about Pericles. There was
in 422, at the moment when
certainly talk of
Povapxaupon his career.13
Alcibiades was embarking
In proof of his point that Herodotus could not have
hinted at Pericles with the word p6vapXosGomme quoted
a number of passages 14 witnessing the conventional contrast
between Greek republic and Persian, or absolute, monarchy.
Such a contrast was undoubtedly drawn. But it is equally
clear from the literature of the fifth century that the age
wrestled with another, and perhaps subtler, problem:
how personal leadership was to be reconciled with democratic institutions. Thus there is the contrast of the good
monarch with the tyrant. Creon in the Antigone and
Oedipus in the Oedipus Rex become tyrants before our
eyes, after an initial appearance as beneficent rulers; and
illustrate the corruption of power. In the Supplices
Euripides presents a solution to the problem. There
Theseus, who is described as ' a young and noble shepherd,

77

for the want of which many cities have perished lacking a

leader ', rules a democratic city.15 Euripides' solution lies
in the Periclean type of personal ascendancy, where the
people have the power, but in fact do what their' shepherd '
wants. In the debate of Theseus with the Theban herald
this constitution is placed in the strongest possible contrast
with tyranny. The play is, I think, a parable in which
Theseus figures the Periclean ruler, and its message a
lesson which the Athenians needed to be taught, that such
a ruler was indeed different from a tyrant. The theory of
the Periclean ruler may have been brought out again in
421 in connexion with the debut of Alcibiades, and was
the sort of anti-democratic, intellectualist, propaganda to
provoke the epithets of Aristophanes' chorus in the previous
Kai povapXias paa-'& '. A similar use,
year: ' c
piao68-PjE
or misuse, of
terms is probable in the 'forties, when with
Pericles, as with Pompey after 70 B.C., ' there was developing
the rule of the first man'. That a principate never
actually took shape at Athens was due partly, as Gomme
so clearly pointed out, to the resolute spirit of the Athenian
democrats; but partly also to the weakness of the Athenian
aristocracy, which bred for that hour no Caesar, but an
Alcibiades.
J. S. MORRISON.

My difference with Professor Morrison can, I think, be

best expressed as follows. (I) In Herodotos' debate
there is no compromise between democracy and monarchy
(any more than between either of these and oligarchy),
no comfortable Polybian mixture of good elements.
Otanes especially is quite uncompromising: [Oi SOKEEl
'va
PtKE'TyEVEcreai[1v
oOTEy&piT5J
&aya8O6v
Povovapxov
oT
. T11PcE&V
. . ePXT
6oe vapxos
o hV "aPv
irotE
is autocrat
or
oVt5v, and so throughout. The
ponwvapxo
nothing. And the remarks of Megabyxos and Dareios
on democracy remind one of the Old Oligarch, no
friend to Perikles. (2) Although I agree of course that
it is Greeck thought and not Persian that informs the
debate, it is not for nothing that it is Dareios, the best of
[oCvapXot,who defends pouvavpxir;that is, at this stage
Herodotos has the Persian monarchy in mind. And (3), in
as much as it is Greek experience, not Persian, that is behind
Dareios' description of the failures of oligarchy and deit is Greek
mocracy that lead inevitably to iouvvapxirT,
EEa I
experience of the rise of
&?\\ort
'X0
y&?\a
tyranny--; EK 5E T()V
', ? CJ( a-TaaO-IESyyiyvovTal,
q6vog,
aTrlKVEOvTat,
EK5E TOO
J c6vOUaTrFE'T
and from
I
Uo-ra-ic,)v
democracy,
'SouvcapXirv;
5i
6
E
5
TOOTO TO=OUTO
yiVETai
&v
TOO [OU
rTrpoa-r&
"Ti
"ToU&
EK&5
E'lJTm)V
OvTOSSil UTro TOO
TOiOk/TOU&
Tra~I'YIO-1
5E&v'cbv q)vl povCvapXos
6TyJPOU,of
Ek
The enemies
00,)1a-rETai
v.
0opaP6pEvoS
Perikles likened him to Peisistratos and
his power to a
tyranny; but was Herodotos among these enemies? (Alkibiades might have read the last sentence quoted above as
his justification for 'aiming at a tyranny'). And not
Peisistratos, but other Herodotean tyrants are in some
measure like the oriental ioOvvapXos,
Kleisthenes of Sikyon
(compare him with Croesus) and Polykrates: does Heroi8
dotos
wish
to
pv
&PXE,
S,
OmEI
suggest that Perikles was like either of these?
uvov &PX
covo1iyT, "c
p&sP
a raE's -r
More particularly since he was a wise man and knew that
OAECpao a5iT 6
T6 KOWV6V&vaqEpEl. O~V
9
S5 Cvbp&)vT&)v
Xerxes
was
as
much a
as Dareios.
TOU1TOIO
1Es T
apioracv
ETri?av'rEs
po~jvapxo&-type A. W. GOMME.
-EV y&p
65 TO0To1o1
Kai 6ptMjirll
oaToI
TrEptOe4PEV-r
apior-ov
10

Kp&TO"
E &vSp&b)v
oIK&g

apl-Ta

OUAEOVCJpTpa
yiVE0alt.

&v a[o1lrcTCO)sTO\OTrN0OUS.
11I1ETITpOnTEUOl
quote here not from the lecture but from a

EVEUd6pEea.

15 Note
403 iff.

subsequent

letter and cf. Theognis 52: Colon

io, 3.
12 See the view of T.
J. Dunbabin The WesternGreeks
In
Plato
Politicus
385.
and again 349 ff.
p.
29Ie povapXia embraces both
pacAiKr and uvpavvIKT.
1a Aristophanes Wasps474.

14 Aesch. Persae
241-3, Soph. Antig. 736-7, Hdt. viii
24, Thuc. ii 37, Eurip. Supplices404-8.

o y#p apPXETa
?
iv6STrpbs&vbp6s,
&AX'
AVEu0pea
rr6AtS
Sfipos5' &vaata Stacoxia0 v v
apPEI

VIO'aiatOIV . .
86?ai 8E

T68E.
xp'3co Kai 6O
"r
"r&(a)
E0 AovAroS'
&AA&
TrO?6you
&v 8flPOV EUOEVEOTEpOV.
EXOlP'
Kai
yap KCXT?OT-rrlT
Tpoo8,0S
cTV E
SpovpXiav
EAEUOEpCtuaT1-rV'
i` u r ljpqov

6
66EI 08'

This content downloaded from 147.52.9.57 on Wed, 25 Feb 2015 19:59:12 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

rr6?w.