Nevertheless, as a number of the chapters illustrate, nothing in this history was inevitable. Democracy is not preordained, nor is it guaranteed to survive. It is not a perfect form of government. Indeed, free systems have their own particular vulnerabilities, notably the lack of executive efficiency. This does not mean, however, that freedom is not worth the constant struggle to achieve and maintain. Winston Churchill famously remarked that “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time,” in an ironic reminder that the alternatives to this least worst kind of political system are not appealing.
In a coincidence, albeit a significant one, this book shares its name with the new generation of Israeli missile defense. While there are obvious differences between a missile defense program and a study in art history, both versions of David’s sling demonstrate how liberty inspires human ingenuity. The exceptional works examined here serve to illustrate what is at stake as we safeguard and celebrate freedom in our own time.
A Note on Creative Reconstruction
As mentioned in the introduction, there are creatively reconstructed dialogues throughout this book. It is impossible to know exactly what Aeschylus said to Pericles, or Rembrandt to Joachim von Sandrart, or Frederick Lander to Lincoln, but there are primary documents – inscriptions, drawings, diaries – that put these individuals together at key moments of this history, inviting an educated guess as to what they may have said. Dialogue is introduced only when we have evidence that such an interaction took place.
Ictinus, Callicrates and Phidias, The Parthenon, 447–32 BC.
The Parthenon and the Birth of Democracy in Athens
Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.
PERICLES, “Funeral Oration”
as quoted by Thucydides in the History of the Peloponnesian War
The Acropolis, Athens: 449 BC
Not one column remained standing, nor a single statue on its pedestal. The entire sacred precinct of Athens had been demolished with calculated thoroughness in two vindictive attacks, the first one in September of 480 BC. While most of the population had already been evacuated, a small force of temple stewards remained behind and fought valiantly, but unsuccessfully, to defend their sanctuary. Ten months later, the invaders came back to complete the destruction.
When the Persians attacked, the Athenians were in the process of rebuilding on the great rock that dominated their city. Some five hundred feet tall, with a surface area of almost eight acres, it had been inhabited for centuries and was known as the Acropolis, or “high city,” which functioned as both a citadel and a sacred space. The citizens were starting to construct a grand new temple to Athena, their special protectress, on top of it in thanks for their prosperity and freedom, but the Persians put an end to that project. While they had no love for any of the Greeks, they harbored a special hatred for Athens, which had been the first to assist the Greek colonies of Asia Minor in their rebellion against Persian rule. So they ravaged the entire city – perhaps frustrated by the paucity of human victims. Their devastation of the Acropolis was especially systematic and savage, leaving only the bases of temple columns and a thick layer of dust and ash.
It turned out to be a parting shot. When the small Greek city-states – usually more inclined to attack each other than band together in common purpose – had first begun resisting the mighty Persian Empire in the 490s, the effort seemed futile. But to everyone’s surprise, an unlikely alliance under the leadership of Athens defeated the Persians decisively and forced them out of Greece in 479 BC. The allies took an oath not to rebuild what the Persians had torn down, but rather to leave the ruins on their citadel as a reminder of what they had lost and of the need to remain vigilant in case the Persians returned.
Over the years, the Athenians went about fortifying and rebuilding much of their ravaged city, while the wreckage remained on top of the Acropolis. But after thirty years it was more of an eyesore than a memorial. Peace terms highly favorable to the Greeks had finally been reached with the Persians in 449 BC, and Athens had a leader who was determined to revive and expand the building projects that the Persians had derailed. He was the son of the politician Xanthippus, and his name was Pericles.
The Athenian Ecclesia – the popular assembly of male citizens who were eligible to vote in the city’s democratic system – was meeting in its customary place on the Pynx, an unkempt hillock at the foot of the Acropolis. Pericles had already made the case for a magnificent new complex of buildings and monuments on the citadel, centering on a great temple to Athena. This would only be fitting for the metropolis that was now the undisputed leader of Greece, he had argued. The question before the Ecclesia that day was how to pay for it.
Originally, Pericles had reasoned that the work on his various building projects around the city would provide a way for laborers to earn a share of the public wealth, just as warriors did. It was a savvy move that brought him a well-trained, disciplined workforce and broad political support.11 The Ecclesia had at first approved the expenditures with little question, but the staggering cost of the construction was becoming a scandal.
Plutarch, Pericles 12.
Pericles had enemies, particularly among the old guard – his father’s friends – and they smelled weakness. The traditionalists of Athens disliked the Acropolis rebuilding plan; they thought the rubble should be left as it was. They had even less appreciation for the efforts of Pericles to shift political power from the great families to the wider citizenry. They expected to bring him down a notch or two at this year’s vote over continued funding of the construction on the Acropolis.
When Pericles strolled to the center of the meeting space as if he had not a care in the world, the crowd immediately made room for him. A small man in his mid-fifties with a neatly trimmed beard, his most distinctive physical feature was his unnaturally large head. What was truly remarkable about Pericles, however, was his confidence.
“Friends, I have solved the problem of the building accounts,” he said in a tone so engaging that even his bitter enemies – of whom there were several in the crowd – might feel that he was speaking directly to them. “Surely you can all see it as plainly as I. Why else would Athena have brought us the treasury of the Delian League if not to use it in her honor?”
The assembly was shocked into silence. The money in the Delian treasury had been deposited by the various city-states in the league – the alliance that had expelled the Persians – in return for Athenian protection. Traditionally housed on the island of Delos, this money had recently been moved to Athens, ostensibly so it could be better secured.
Pericles’ enemies pounced. “Now you have gone too far!” thundered one old man, who by tradition spoke first because of his age. “They already suspect us for moving the treasury in the first place. What will they say when they learn we have used the money they have entrusted to us for waging war instead to bedeck Athens as if she were some whore, bedecked not with gems but with statues and temples?”22 The word “whore” was a personal insult to Pericles, an intensely private man whose divorce of his wife and longstanding affair with the foreign-born Aspasia were subjects of considerable public gossip.
Plutarch,
