hubris here is quite clear. Pericles professes that freedom is the highest value but we wonder, not for everyone, not even for all Greeks? Political freedom that depends on the submission of others is an expression of power. Athens did not gain the leadership of the Greeks by enslaving her subjects but within forty years more some of her Greek subjects were chafing under her rule. Euboea and Megara revolted in 446 (1.114), Samos and Byzantium in 440 (1.117). There is also dramatic irony in Pericles’ statement that Athens’ subjects accepted her worthiness to rule, because Athens’ defeat inevitably raises questions about why Athens lost. Socrates’ serious criticisms of Athens underscore these questions.
Pericles’ eloquent invocation of the political life in Athens shares a respect for freedom, participatory democracy, and equality at law, unwritten laws, friendliness toward foreigners, free political speech, and open borders among other crucial aspects of a free society that is thoroughly modern.45 The ideas of parrhesia, isonomia, isegoria, and koinonia lead to these more complete political ideals. One important flaw, however, in Pericles’ political ideas was obviously that he did not see the danger that an aggressive and even destructive foreign policy that fostered manipulation of the Delian League from an alliance in to an empire would pose for the internal political life of Athens. As Madison (or possibly Hamilton) explains in Federalist #63,
An attention to the judgment of other nations is important to every government for two reasons: the one is, that, independently of the merits of any particular plan or measure, it is desirable, on various accounts, that it should appear to other nations as the offspring of a wise and honorable policy; the second is, that in doubtful cases, particularly where the national councils may be warped by some strong passion or momentary interest, the presumed or known opinion of the impartial world may be the best guide that can be followed. What has not America lost by her want of character with foreign nations; and how many errors and follies would she not have avoided, if the justice and propriety of her measures had, in every instance, been previously tried by the light in which they would probably appear to the unbiased part of mankind?
Yet however requisite a sense of national character may be, it is evident that it can never be sufficiently possessed by a numerous and changeable body. It can only be found in a number so small that a sensible degree of the praise and blame of public measures may be the portion of each individual; or in an assembly so durably invested with public trust, that the pride and consequence of its members may be sensibly incorporated with the reputation and prosperity of the community.46
Madison’s argument here is that the proposed new Constitution of the United States would remedy some inherent shortcomings in legislative government by a “numerous and changeable” body, an Assembly, if it had a Senate composed of members who were more permanent and more deeply connected to the “reputation and prosperity of the community” than an Assembly or House of Representatives. While most citizens in republics today would not want the original form of election of U.S. senators by selection of state legislatures, Madison’s argument is that a smaller body than a House or Assembly with longer terms and deeper connections to the long-term interests of the nation would more reliably lead to a spirit of honor and wisdom in relation to the judgments of other nations. The tension between a single Executive and a larger and very popular House or Assembly would more often lead to a failure to observe the need for the respect of other nations. Whether or not we agree with the solution as presented in the U.S. Constitution, the point seems well taken that some mediation of the inherent conflict between the one and the many is needed in regard to this issue as well as a number of others outlined in Madison’s essay. Pericles’ rule lacked a mediating representative chamber, a Senate. This then led to various suppressive acts by Athens toward her allies, which then weakened the fundamental appeal of Athens that Pericles proclaims rests on her many virtues.
This weakness in the structure of the government, if we consider Madison’s theoretical argument, developed historically as the strength of democracy grew in the late sixth and early fifth century BC. The complicated history of the development of the organs of representative government before Pericles’ rule, and the outcome of that development, fostered democracy but it also had the somewhat unplanned result of a very powerful role for the “generals,” the strategoi. After the major democratic reforms of Kleisthenes, the Assembly or ecclesia decided on proposals brought to it by a “random and representative cross-section of its own members.”47 The senior council had been the Council of the Areopagus since the time of Solon. Kleisthenes’ democratic reforms in 508–507 had reduced the powers of the Council of the Areopagus and moved them to the Council of the Five Hundred, or the boule.48 But the boule was either originally chosen by lot or switched from election to choice by lot shortly after its formation by Kleisthenes.49 The democratic forces in Athens promoted the reforms of Ephialtes in 462/461 that further reduced the power of the Council of the Areopagus, which was composed of former government leaders, the archons. The archons themselves had earlier been reduced in power when the method of choosing them for office was changed to election by lot in 487/86, though the precise motivations for this change in electoral procedure are unclear.50 In addition, the boule or Council, whose function was to initiate and propose legislation, had a membership chosen by lot from the citizens with a term of office of one year.51 Each of the ten tribes contributed fifty members to the boule, which meant that it represented the people (and not the elite) more than it had in the constitution under Solon. As power of the boule increased after the reforms of Ephialtes in 461 when it took over many of the functions of the Council of the Areopagus, the entire government became more democratic.52 The boule originated legislation by proposing it to the Assembly (the eccelsia), but because of its composition, it was inherently democratic and did not introduce (by design at least) a concern for the long-term values of the state that could curb the initiatives of the radical democrats or the leader of the city.53 Pericles was either opposed to continuation of the power of a mediating representative chamber, which the Athenians had had in the Council of the Areopagus, or did not have the foresight to see the need for such a power, or, if he did, he seems not to have had the ability to open the debate on such a subject. What Pericles did was to become a strategos, which was the position that rose in power starting with Themistocles’ policy of a large fleet in 483/482. This newly powerful force in Athenian government, the office of the strategoi, oriented the forces of democracy toward military power in the hands of one leader, who turned out historically to be Pericles. This change was the result of the need for a large fleet that Themistocles saw and persuaded the ecclesia to implement along with the fortification of the Piraeus (Thucydides 1.93.3).54
Thus, the Athenian government was complicated both in form, in the mid-fifth century BC, and in its history. It lacked a Senate but had as a substitute a formally very democratic body, the boule, to propose legislation and thereby to control the tendencies of the demos. This then, as we saw, left the government without a representative body that could promote the long-term, moderated, general interests of Athens as a whole. The office of the strategos took on that role, but inappropriately in some ways, as generals solve problems with war and weapons of war. This Pericles himself attempted to do in response to the growing power of Sparta. What Athens needed was a second reform of its government to moderate the powerful democratic forces in Athens and to control the powerful navy, which had the port, Piraeus, as its center, and the expression of military power as its goal. The central contradiction of the Athenian Empire thus became the confluence of powerful forces in the Piraeus, which was a center for resident aliens, commerce, and democratic politics that could be exported across the Mediterranean. But since the time of Themistocles, it had also been the center of Athenian military power. Athens exported an ideal of democracy, but its military power arose in the same place and grew without formal moderation. Pericles did not attempt a second reform on a level with Kleisthenes’ to make permanent some long-term perspective in the government and to control the military. Pericles himself became the control of the expression of Athenian military power, and though he did fulfill the role of general admirably and honorably, his death unleashed forces that had no institutionalized control. As the Stranger says in the Statesman, the art of the statesman is to decide whether something should be done or not (304d) while the art of
