Bigham 1

Jacob Bigham

Phillips

HIST 113B

9 March 2018

Pericles and the Inevitable Fall of Athens

Perhaps no figure from ancient Athens enjoys the same renown and repute as Pericles:

Thucydides goes so far as to call him the “first citizen of Athens.”1 Pericles ascended to power

in the years2 following the Persian Wars, and he was responsible for many of the expeditions and

battles that firmly established Athens as an imperial power during that period. By the time of the

Great Peloponnesian War, Pericles was the preeminent orator and general in Athens, and Athens,

albeit reluctantly, adopted his strategy of avoiding land battles with Sparta until he died from the

plague of 429.3 Eulogizing Pericles, Thucydides posits that had Pericles not died of the plague,

Athens would probably have won the war.4 In other words, Thucydides argues that Athens would

have emerged victorious if its leaders had acted and strategized just as Pericles had. I strongly

disagree with Thucydides’ assessment. In this paper, I first consider Pericles’ strengths and

weaknesses as both a general and as a leader writ large. Then I examine a few events that led

Athens to lose the war, questioning for each event whether Pericles’ influence—considering

those strengths and weaknesses—would have altered the course of the war so drastically as to

secure an Athenian victory. Overall, I find that had Pericles survived the plague, Athens would

likely have suffered fewer casualties, but Athens would nevertheless have eventually lost the war

given its persistent inability to secure and maintain peace with the Spartans.

1
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.65
2
Namely, 498/7-431
3
Thuc. 2.65
4
Ibid.
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Undoubtedly, Pericles’ stability and measured temperament warrant his historical acclaim

and largely account for the reverence that Thucydides and later authors maintained for Pericles.

For example, Thucydides reports that in 439, with Pericles leading a force against the Samians in

Caria, the Samian navy attacked (and nearly defeated) an Athenian blockade elsewhere. 5 When

Pericles arrived, he swiftly defeated the Samians: “on the arrival of Pericles, they were once

more shut up.”6 What stands out about this depiction is that Thucydides spares his reader the

details, as it was apparently common knowledge to his audience that Pericles was so shrewd and

effective a naval commander that obviously his arrival would spell victory for Athens.

In another case in 431, the Spartan king Archidamus led the Spartans to conquer the Attic

city of Acharnae, infuriating the nearby Athenians, who wanted to retaliate in an armed land

battle.7 Pericles convinced the Athenians, through his “reasoned counsel,” to not engage in such

combat and to instead continually send small envoys to prevent destruction of their fields;

Pericles knew that the Spartan forces could not remain in Attica for long, for otherwise they left

the Peloponnese underdefended and susceptible to Athenian naval invasion.8 He steadfastly

convinced the Athenians to follow the same course a year later in 4309 and again in 429 as

Athens suffered extensively from the plague.10 Notable is that in all these cases Pericles’

strategy worked. Indeed, the Spartans so feared the Athenian navy that they were reluctant to

engage in any prolonged siege against Athens in Pericles’ time, even while the plague ravaged

the weakened Athens. In brief, Pericles tempered Athenian impulses to retaliate against Sparta

and, consequently, kept the Spartan threat at bay. Plutarch summarily notes that “there never had

5
Ibid., 1.115-117
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid., 2.21-22
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid., 2.56
10
Ibid., 2.61
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been a more moderate character” than Pericles and that the Athenians came to view him as “a

source of safety and protection” for Athens.11 It would seem, then, that had Pericles survived the

plague, his leadership and strategy would have prevented much of the conflict of the war and

spared countless soldiers.

A striking example of a time when Pericles’ wisdom and restraint would have all but

undoubtedly saved a great deal of Athenian lives is the blunder of Nicias in 413 at Syracuse.

Syracusan forces had taken control of the Athenians, whose defeat was imminent. Nicias, who

led the Athenian forces, was prepared to retreat, but an eclipse occurred. Nicias interpreted the

eclipse as a bad omen and forestalled the retreat; many of his men were killed in the ensuing

battles.12 Would Nicias under Pericles’ stewardship (or Pericles himself) have acted more

rationally and retreated despite the apparently ominous eclipse? Absolutely. Plutarch reports that

Pericles had once encountered an eclipse during a siege of Sparta. Afraid of the eclipse’s

portent, one of Pericles’ helmsmen became extremely anxious. To allay that fear, Pericles

covered the helmsman’s eyes with his cloak, emphasizing that there was nothing to fear of the

cloak and similarly nothing to fear of the eclipse.13 An earlier retreat would not have won the war

for Athens, but it would have saved all of Nicias’ crews.

And yet, for all his “curbing [the Athenians’] impetuosity,”14 Pericles by no means

sought any prolonged peace with Sparta, and this is perhaps the most obvious oversight by

Thucydides in gathering that Pericles would have inevitably won the war for Athens.15

11
Plutarch, Life of Pericles 39
12
Donald Kagan, The Peloponnesian War p. 310-312
13
Plut. 35
14
Ibid., 21
15
I find it at least worthy of mention that Pericles is partly responsible for the extent to which the plague affected
Athens: by encouraging the Athenians to remain in the city walls, Pericles artificially increased the population
density of the city, making the Athenians far more susceptible to any infectious disease. Perhaps it is an excessively
modern critique to say that Pericles should have been aware that such aggregation of the Athenian citizens made
them vulnerable to disease, but Plutarch (at Life of Pericles 34), writing in the second century AD, makes this
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Thucydides writes that Pericles “opposed at every turn the Lacedaemonians” and would not

“allow the Athenians to yield, but rather he continually impelled them to war [with Sparta].”16

Further, in a speech he delivered to the Athenian assembly, Pericles remarked, “There is one

principle, Athenians, to which I hold to through everything, and that is the principle of no

concession to the Peloponnesians.”17 Of course, wars end with peace treaties, and peace treaties

almost always come with concessions (and the many peace treaties over the course of the war

were rife with concessions for both sides). Yet, Thucydides maintains that Pericles, despite his

total unwillingness to negotiate with Sparta, would have brought an end to the war. This is not

logical. So, while Pericles would have mitigated the Spartan threat, he would not have

eliminated it altogether and certainly would not have instigated any peace with Sparta; he was

ostensibly more concerned with Athens’ dominion over Sparta than with peaceful compromise.

Plutarch expressly disagrees with this point of view, stating explicitly there “can be no

doubt that [the Spartans] would not have prolonged the war as they did, but would have soon

given up, as Pericles foretold form the outset,” had it not been for the plague.18 He assumes, as

did Pericles, that Sparta would forever feel too threatened by the Athenian navy to ever engage

in any extensive campaign against Athens. For several reasons, this is not a valid assumption—

and it is an especially egregious analytical error for Plutarch to make, given that he made the

assumption after the war was over. Consider first that the original reason Sparta entered the war,

at least according to Thucydides, was to protect itself against the growing power of the Athenian

empire.19 So, as long as Athens remained the dominant hegemonic power in the region, Sparta

criticism exactly. Also, disease would not have been the only threat to a densely-packed Athens: fire, flood, and,
obviously, a successful land invasion would have devastated Athens. Pericles was no oracle.
16
Thuc. 1.127
17
Ibid., 1.140
18
Plut. 34
19
Thuc. 1.142-143
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would maintain its impetus to go to war with Athens. Any “giving up” by Sparta would just

reset Spartan-Athenian affairs, with Sparta still fearful of Athens’ growing power. To be

succinct, until Athens was defeated, Sparta would have continued to war with Athens, fearful of

Athenian naval conquest or not.

An even more glaring oversight comes in Pericles’20 ignorance of Persia as an important

party, especially insofar as Persia’s navy aided Sparta in the latter half of the war. Xenophon

reports that Lysander recruited aid from Cyrus of Persia, who financed the Spartan navy and

ultimately gave Sparta the strength it needed to win the war.21 Given the tremendous impact

Persia had, it bears considering whether Pericles, had he survived the plague, would have been

able to recruit Persia to the Athenian war effort—it would seem that, if so, he would have

secured a defeat of Sparta so crushing that it may well have completely shattered Spartan morale

and achieved a true end to the war. It appears rather unlikely, however, that Pericles would have

been able to achieve this. Notably, Pericles was the son of Xanthippus, the famed Athenian

general of the Persian Wars who led the siege against the Persians at Sestos.22 Given his lineage,

Pericles more likely would have been convenient retaliatory propaganda for the Spartans to even

more easily recruit Persian aid.

And what about Pericles’ age? When he died of the plague he was sixty-five and had he

survived—even assuming a modern life expectancy—would have lived maybe ten more years.23

So, a man in his midsixties who just recently recovered from the plague would have had to first,

convince Athens to stop pursuing conquest of the Spartans (which was not an option considering

20
And, relevantly, also Plutarch’s and Thucydides’
21
Xenophon, Hellenica 2.1
22
Herodotus, 9.114-121
23
And even this is likely an overestimate given that his health would have been in a severely reduced state due to
the plague, even had he survived
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his “no concessions for Sparta” doctrine); second, convince the Spartans to stop fighting against

Athenian expansion and imperialism (which was only an option if Athens completely devastated

Sparta militarily, which it certainly could not do on land); and third, convince Persia to not

intervene again in the Delian League’s affairs and to not incite Sparta or neighboring poleis to

further rebel against the growing Athenian power. Pericles clearly could not guarantee these in

his prime,24 much less while moribund.

Of course, even with Pericles dead, Sparta and Athens were able to reach temporary

peace a few times throughout the war, but the peace did not last. In 421, for example, the two

city-states negotiated the Peace of Nicias and ceased fighting.25 26 In 415, though, Athens led an

expedition to take over Sicily from the Spartan-backed Syracusans.27 Apparently, Athens’

interventionist view of itself superseded the import of any peace treaty, and I find this ultimately

to be why regardless of whether Pericles survived the plague Athens would have lost the war. Or

maybe it would have won the war, but then another revolutionary war would have erupted, with

Sparta or Persia or Macedonia or members of the Delian League revolting against Athenian

hegemony. Athens was simply not content with peace: it had to extend its influence and flex its

military might wherever it could.

Overall, it stands to reason that Athens would have benefitted from Pericles’ survival

inasmuch as his pensive restraint was a trait many of his successors seemed to lack, often leading

to Athenian casualties. That said, while Pericles was a tremendous general and leader,

Thucydides is irrational to claim that Pericles alone would have won the war for Athens, since

24
He was, after all, alive during the First Peloponnesian War and at the beginning of the Great Peloponnesian War
25
Thuc. 5.13-24
26
One condition of the peace was that both sides would relinquish all the land they had conquered; if anything,
Pericles would have prevented this peace based on such a concession
27
Thuc. 6.1-18
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the obvious benchmark for the end of a war is peace, which Athens was unwilling to settle for.

Also, Pericles himself was by no means a pacifistic negotiator, and his anti-Spartan sentiments

would have likely fueled further warfare with the Peloponnesians. In effect, the only way to both

alleviate Sparta’s fears of Athenian expansion and to quell Athens’ insatiable desire to expand its

territory and influence was for Athens to lose the war. Pericles or no Pericles, there was no other

way for it to play out.

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Works Cited

Herodotus. The Landmark Herodotus. Ed. R.B. Strassler. Pantheon 2007. Print.

Kagan, Donald. The Peloponnesian War. New York: Penguin 2003. Print.