to a harmony of the individual and the city rather than a simple focus on a narrow political aim. Nor in his three other speeches (including the speech reported in indirect discourse in Book 2), although they are more concerned with specific issues and problems, does Pericles attempt to achieve a private good for himself. He always has his eye to some extent on what is good for the state.
How the Funeral Oration can approach an ideal of political discourse in Thucydides, and what type of ideal Pericles aims it to be, or even if it is an ideal or a kind of flawed ideal, are questions closely related to what is true and universal in it.31 It first claims universality in the connection it draws between the Athens of 431 and the Athenians’ ancestors (2.36). The Athenians of today, Pericles says, are one in spirit with their forebears, who gave them what they now have. The city is also universal in its relation to its own citizens, for Athens is democratic, even though all are preferred to public positions on the basis of their abilities (2.37.1). All contribute to the formation of policy even if they cannot lead (2.40.2). Pericles alternates between the public and the private in order to unite the private interests for the public good (cf. 2.37–2.39 especially). For Pericles’ ideal citizen, the polis is paramount. This proves to be an extremely dangerous relationship in a democracy just as it can be in an aristocracy.
This primary interest in the polis appears most clearly in Pericles’ respect for debate or logos, which is the means by which every citizen may participate in the political life: polupragmosune develops from free public debate. Polupragmosune is thus an expression of the universality of logos in respect to the Athenian citizens. Each citizen has a share in the logos that precedes action, and in Athens all actions are prepared by debate (2.40.2). Polupragmosune also expresses the universality of the state in respect to its citizens,32 for each Athenian is involved in some way in government. For Pericles, as for every other citizen, the state is paramount. It encompasses the prosperity or failure of the individual (2.60.4).
In order to draw out some of the implications of this position, it will be helpful to compare Pericles (and Thucydides) with certain aspects of Plato’s discussion of the polis and its relationship to the individual. To begin with, Pericles’ concept of the primacy of the polis resembles Plato’s in the Republic, where justice of the whole arrangement of the polis is the highest goal, and the individual is subordinate to the state (Republic 504c–505b, cf., 433c, 443c–444a).33
On the other hand, for Pericles “happiness” (τὸ εὔδαιμον) is “freedom” (τὸ ἐλεύθερον, 2.43.4), while in Plato’s ideal state happiness depends upon justice. Glaucon’s question to Socrates near the beginning of Book 2 frames the question of happiness as a relationship between justice and injustice. The subjects here are the two men Glaucon proposes to Socrates: On the one hand, Glaucon says, take the man who is perfectly just, but who has no success in life, and moreover has a reputation for injustice, while on the other hand he suggests a man who, although perfectly unjust, leads a successful life and is regarded as a model of justice.
The question is, which man is happier?
ἀλλὰ ἴτω ἀμετάστατος μέχρι θανάτου, δοκῶν μὲν εἶναι ἄδικος διὰ βίου, ὢν δὲ δίκαιος, ἵνα ἀμφότεροι εἰς τὸ ἔσχατον ἐληλυθότες, ὁ μὲν δικαιοσύνης, ὁ δὲ ἀδικίας, κρίνωνται ὁπότερος αὐτοῖν εὐδαιμονέστερος. (361c–d)
Let him go on without a change until death, seeming to be unjust through [his] life, but being [really] just, so that when both have come to the very end—one of justice, the other of injustice—they can be judged, whichever of the two is happier. (361c–d)
The rest of the Republic is in part Socrates’ answer to this question and a demonstration that the just man, no matter what the rewards for his justice, is happier. Thucydides does not ignore justice, however. In addition to its place in many of the speeches, there are the questions of the justice of Athens’ empire, whether Athens ruled that empire justly, and whether for Thucydides justice has any role in an empire at all. The answers to these questions are complicated. We will begin by returning to the examination of the Funeral Oration in detail.
A most serious charge that can be made against Athens is a lack of moderation, and this deficiency is manifest in the city’s desire for universal rule.34 Pleonexia, the unlimited desire for possession, did finally overcome Athens and was the emotional agent of her destruction (4.17.4, 4.21.2, 4.41.4, 6.13.1). Yet it is precisely in this point that Pericles personally is distinguished from his successors, especially Cleon and Alcibiades, though there are important issues surrounding how much Pericles’ ideas and rhetoric encourage limitless desire. Still, under Pericles’ personal rule Athens took a “moderate” (μετρίως) and “safe” (ἀσφαλῶς, literally, “not falling or failing”) direction according to Thucydides (2.65.5). Even at the beginning of the Funeral Oration, Pericles declares his intention to speak “moderately” (μετρίως, 2.35.2) when he criticizes the law that someone must deliver a Funeral Oration for those killed in battle. The audience will be hard to please: the one who is well-disposed to the dead and who knows what they have done will think that the speech is insufficient in its praise, while the one who does not know their exploits may feel envy if he hears of something beyond his powers (2.35.2). Pericles’ difficulty will be in finding a middle ground that will satisfy the wishes and beliefs of each citizen (2.35.2–3).
In the Funeral Oration, Pericles elevates and redefines certain important concepts of Greek politics.35 The Athenians are opposed to what is commonly reckoned as arete (2.40.4).36 Athens, Pericles asserts, gains friends by conferring benefits, not by receiving them, because she has an abiding faith in the liberality with which she bestows favors (2.40.4–2.40.5). Pericles says he believes that foreign affairs should be conducted without a calculation of advantage, although this is not the way of the tyrant city that Athens became. Athens in Pericles’ time was a special kind of democracy, in which the demos did not rule absolutely, and high public estimation depended on virtue, not rank (2.37.1). Pericles here claims that Athens is a true aristocracy with rule by the best. For the encouragement of bravery, Athens relies more on the habits and character of her citizens than upon laws (2.39.4). This is a very significant point, meant to show a contrast with Sparta, but also revealing a view of the role of government that accords with what Plato presents in the Statesman.
In the Statesman, one of the subjects the Stranger and the younger Socrates discuss is the different political constitutions, concluding that in the best constitution the statesman-philosopher rules in accordance with his art (300c), and not by laws (294a–b, cf. 303b). Laws are ignorant of the particular situation (294b–c) and can never rule in accordance with the good. Laws thus represent true opinion, imitations (μιμήματα, 300c) of the truth but not knowledge, and one can never legislate true virtue.37 In this sense, the laws are like works of art in Plato’s epistemology as outlined in the Republic (X.595a–607c). In Pericles’ Athens, on the other hand, there are laws, but Pericles represents them in the Funeral Oration as pertaining to private disputes and arrangements (2.37.1). Pericles is then, in Platonic claims at least, making what amounts to a very high claim, to be a philosopher, since he implies that he has fostered Athens and Athens has become a polis where rule in accordance with the good is possible. This implied claim, to the extent that we can view Thucydides as presenting Pericles arguments fairly, likely accounts in part for the antipathy between Plato and Pericles. The solution to the conundrum would seem to be depend on the extent to which Plato actually believed that a philosopher could rule in this world in which we live. A stubborn realist might argue that even though some rulers sometimes make legitimate approaches to philosophical rule, these approaches are always temporary and fortuitous. Therefore, Plato cannot mean that philosophers will rule. But in the Republic, it is quite clear that the rule of a philosopher-king is envisioned as
