He cultivated the image of a hardworking public servant. He was known for his politeness, which he maintained even when abused and insulted. Corruption and bribery were rife in the Athenian political system and Pericles made a point of his incorruptibility. He was careful not to make himself too familiar a figure in public life. He did not speak at the assembly on every possible occasion, as some politicians do, but addressed it only at long intervals. This meant that people did not tire of him and, second, he was not held responsible when things went wrong.
Power was in his hands, but there was nothing unconstitutional in the behavior of Pericles. He showed no signs whatever of aspiring to be a new Pisistratus. Every year he had to be reelected as one of the ten generals, or strategoi. These were the only major posts to escape the lot and were decided on merit. The senior executive officers of the democracy, they were coequal in their authority and there was no chief strategos. The competition for position was fierce. The ecclesia was in charge and could dispense with a man’s services whenever it wished. Power was on loan.
Pericles was an able orator and, according to Plutarch, he equipped himself with a formal style of speaking that “harmonised with his way of life and the grandeur of his ideals.” He made use of the philosophical and scientific ideas that he drew from the thinkers and scientists he knew personally. His addresses to the people were marked by a high seriousness and had something of the quality of lectures delivered by a well-informed expert. He refused to dumb down to his audience. This earned him credit, and even when he had something unpopular or disagreeable to say Athenians listened to him with attention.
He was very careful over his use of words and left none of his speeches or papers behind him in writing. He seldom used memorable phrases, although he once appealed to the demos to remove “that eyesore of the Piraeus,” the island of Aegina, and on another occasion said that he could already see “war rushing down at us from the Peloponnese.”
Pericles did not have a quicksilver temperament like Themistocles, open to human foibles, and the Athenians respected him rather than warmed to him. He was nicknamed the Olympian and, when he spoke at the ecclesia, the comic poets of the day made jokes about him thundering and lightning like Zeus, king of the gods.
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After the catastrophe in Egypt and the end of their brief domination of central Greece, the Athenians took stock. Casualties had been very high and they did not have the manpower to back overambitious military and naval schemes. Now they explicitly recognized the fact and concentrated on keeping what they still had—namely the Delian League, which had in effect become their empire. The league treasury was removed to Athens from the island of Delos in 454, the same year that Persia had regained its Egyptian province. The pretext was that the Great King had been greatly strengthened and his fleets might well decide to try their luck again in the Aegean. It was only a pretext, for Pericles had his eyes on the money.
In theory, the Peace of Callias meant that there was no longer any need for the league. Inscriptions survive which show the annual financial contributions that members made to the upkeep of the powerful allied fleet; but the quota list for 448 is missing and perhaps there was a temporary remission of fees. It is tempting to see this as a consequence of the end of the war with Persia.
From 447 onwards Athens worked hard to recapture its league income. This it succeeded in doing, but at the cost of causing considerable resentment. In fact, it would have been foolish to wind up the league, for the allied fleet ensured the freedom of the seas, something of value and profit to all trading states. Also in the long run Persia remained a potential threat and it was as well to remain prepared for trouble. Pericles was unrepentant. The answer he gave his critics, Plutarch wrote, was that “the Athenians were under no obligation to account for how the allies’ money was spent, provided they carried on the war for them and kept the Persians away. ‘They don’t give us a single horse, nor a soldier, nor a ship,’ he said. ‘All they give us is money.’ ”
A decree was passed in 448 regulating payments to the Athenian treasury. The proposer was Cleinias, a member of the Alcmaeonid clan and so a relative of Pericles. He had fought bravely at Artemisium in 480, captaining a ship he had commissioned and paid for, and was soon to lose his life at the battle of Coronea in 447 (see this page). Cleinias wanted to tighten up the financial administration of the league. This was not simply a question of making sure the assessed quotas were correct, but also that opportunities for fraud were reduced. Efficient management benefited the debtors as well as the great creditor.
To a certain extent the empire rested on consent, however painfully wrung from the island states of the Aegean. The fact was that the allied, or more accurately, the Athenian fleet, did keep the waterways open for trade and ensured peace and stability in the Aegean and the Black Sea. The city-states of Asia Minor knew well that the Persians, even if inactive now, lay in wait and their liberties depended on the Athenian hegemony. Few seriously doubted that in its absence the Great King would be back.
But in the last resort the empire was held in place by the implicit application of force. This was exerted not simply by the fleet, but also by the establishment of small colonies of Athenian settlers, the cleruchies. We have already encountered them in connection with the revolt of Thasos, but Pericles used them extensively as a control mechanism, paying special attention to guarding the grain route. There is evidence for at least twenty-four settlements and perhaps as many as ten thousand citizens emigrated as cleruchies (or as colonists of new or existing cities). Plutarch comments:
In this way he relieved the city of lazy busybodies or agitators, helped alleviate poverty and by imposing garrisons deterred rebellion.
In 436 Pericles staged an ambitious show of force in the Black Sea. He sailed there with a large and splendidly equipped fleet. His object was to display “the size of the Athenian forces, their confidence to go exactly where they pleased and the fact that they ruled the waves.” He negotiated useful arrangements with local states and barbarian kingdoms on behalf of the Greek poleis along the coastline.
Pericles left a permanent reminder of his visit. A force of infantry and thirteen warships helped a group of democratic exiles to expel a tyrant from the important Black Sea port of Sinope; when that was done, six hundred Athenian volunteers joined the inhabitants and divided among themselves the houses and lands that had belonged to the former regime.
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In 440 the threat of imperial violence was renewed. On this occasion the guilty polis was the island of Samos one mile off the coast of Anatolia and the rugged ridge of Mount Mycale. It was one of the very few league members that still supplied ships to the allied fleet rather than a cash subscription.
Samos was a rich and powerful Ionian state and was well known for its culture and luxury. Its wine was highly prized as was its red Samian pottery. In the sixth century the island had been governed by an ambitious tyrant, Polycrates, who was responsible for the building of an aqueduct, more than half a mile long and tunneled through a mountain, which supplied the capital city with fresh water. Being underground, it could not be detected by an enemy and the supply cut off. Famous Samians included the philosopher Pythagoras and the teller of fables Aesop.
The island was in hot dispute with the wealthy port of Miletus, which lay not many miles away near where the Maeander River debouched into the sea. The bone of contention was the small polis of Priene on the slopes of Mount Mycale.