ecclesia
meetings on the Pnyx], shouted, uttered abuse and made speeches with his clothes hitched up [so that he could move about more easily], while everybody else spoke in an orderly manner.
During this decade, a series of prosecutions against the associates of Pericles was brought. Their purpose was to destabilize his position and we may suppose that they originated in this new opposition. According to Plutarch, one of the sculptors working for Pheidias accused him of embezzlement in regard to the statue of Athena in the Parthenon. Pericles ordered that the gold plates attached to the sculpture be removed and weighed. It was found that the weight was correct and no gold was missing. Pheidias was also accused of having sacrilegiously or at least improperly carved a self-portrait among the figures on the goddess’s shield and, half hidden, a likeness of Pericles.
It would appear that Pheidias was acquitted or else fled the country. He is next heard of at Olympia where he created for the temple of Zeus a colossal chryselephantine statue of the god enthroned. It was listed among the Seven Wonders of the World in tourist guidebooks of the second and first centuries B.C. By a remarkable chance the remains of Pheidias’s workshop at Olympia have been found. Pieces of ivory, tools, and terra-cotta molds have been recovered, and a mug inscribed “I belong to Pheidias.” The floor plan is the same size as that of the temple’s cella and is where the statue was assembled.
Opponents of Pericles ventured even closer to home. They attacked Aspasia. Although we do not know the details, she faced two charges: impiety and pimping freeborn women for Pericles (unless the latter offense qualified as impiety). Prejudice against her, especially in the light of rumors about her role during the Samian revolt, meant that a fair trial might be difficult. Pericles was so alarmed that he came to court in person and, breaking down in tears, pleaded, successfully, for his lover’s acquittal.
As we have seen, the Olympian and his circle had a reputation for advanced thinking, which offended religious conservatives. In 438 a certain Diopeithes, whose head was well stocked with ancient prophecies, introduced a law to the effect that “anyone who did not believe in the gods or taught theories about celestial phenomena” should be prosecuted. He presumably had Pericles in mind.
Probably in 437/6 Pericles’ friend the scientist Anaxagoras was charged with impiety by Cleon and it appears that Pericles defended him in person. He narrowly avoided the death penalty, was fined five talents and expelled from Athens. He ended his days teaching at the city of Lampsacus on the Hellespont.
The real target now came under direct fire. The ecclesia approved a bill instructing Pericles to make his public financial accounts available to the boulē (lucky that he had paid no attention to the advice of young Alcibiades on the subject of accounts) and, under an unusual religious procedure likely to ensure a conviction, to answer a charge of stealing sacred property. However, an amendment was passed to have the case heard before a jury of ordinary citizens, who had long admired and trusted Pericles. An acquittal could now be confidently expected and no more was heard of the accusation.
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So the Olympian rode out the attacks on his leadership. Having followed his guidance for more than two decades, the demos was not about to abandon him now. But these domestic dissensions coincided with, and may have been caused by, a deteriorating international situation. Sparta and its Peloponnesian allies had been watching with alarm the rising power of Athens. For a long time they were unsure how to counter it, but a drift towards war was increasingly evident—although, as one was a land power and the other a sea power, it was hard to see how it could be waged.
Thucydides had little doubt that a breakdown in relations was inevitable. In the fifty years since the Persian Wars, he writes, the Athenians
succeeded in placing the empire on a firmer footing and greatly added to their own power. The Spartans were fully aware of what was happening, but only opposed it for a little while and remained inactive for most of the period. They were always slow to take up arms and in any case were hampered by wars at home. In the end, the growth of Athenian power could not be ignored when it began to encroach on their allies. At this point they could no longer tolerate the situation.
Pericles did not want war, but he too believed it was coming and had a plan for fighting it. Since the debacle in Egypt and the collapse of the land empire, he had discouraged any further foreign adventures. In the coming conflict with Sparta and her Peloponnesian allies he wanted to avoid needless risks and did his best to delay hostilities. He ran a secret fund of ten talents a year; officially it was “for sundry purposes,” but in fact he spent it in Lacedaemon on calming key personalities.
Looking ahead, he developed a strategy that he said would guarantee victory. Sparta could field a large confederate army of thirty thousand first-rate hoplites without counting reserves, to which Athens could only respond with thirteen thousand (an additional sixteen thousand were needed for various garrisons and the defense of the city itself). So there was no point offering battle on land. The Spartans were likely to invade Attica and they should not be resisted. Farmers and their households were to abandon their fields and retire behind the city’s defenses, which included the Long Walls to the Piraeus and could easily resist any siege. Command of the seas would ensure food imports. The city would not starve. In a sense, Pericles was offering a rerun of the policy of Themistocles during the Persian Wars—abandon the land and rely on the navy.
Athens’s strength did indeed lie in its ships and their well-trained oarsmen. In addition to flotillas contributed by league members Lesbos and Chios, it had three hundred triremes of its own. Most crew members were probably Athenian citizens, but there were not enough of them to man the fleet and many were recruited from the Greek islands. Of the Peloponnesian alliance only Corinth had a fleet, but it was small, inexperienced, and outclassed.
Pericles said of his fellow-citizens: “If they bide their time, look after their navy, refrain from trying to add to the empire during wartime and do nothing to put their city at risk, they will prevail.” In 434/3 strict limits were set on public expenditure and the city’s finances were placed on a war footing. In the Parthenon treasury there were substantial reserves of coined silver. “If the worst came to the worst,” he added, “they will even be able to use the gold on the statue of Athena herself.”
According to Pericles, Sparta would give up on any war long before Athens ran out of money. Provided that the demos was patient, victory or at least a safe draw with few casualties was more or less guaranteed.
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Epidamnus was a place of no importance, but it lit the greatest military conflagration of the age.
Built on the slope of a hill that descends into a picturesque valley, the polis enjoyed a superb setting and commanded one of the largest harbors on the eastern coastline of the Ionian Sea (today it is Durres in Albania). High stone walls protected the city. However, it was off the beaten track and on the way to nowhere. Its inhabitants traded with native Illyrian tribes in the hinterland. They bartered Greek goods such as pottery, weapons, fabrics, and furniture in return for foodstuffs, wood, pitch, copper, and slaves. Epidamnus remotely thrived.
Or it would have done so were it not politically unstable. The city lost a war with the Illyrians and entered a time of political and economic decline. Then, shortly before 335 there was a democratic revolution and the aristocratic ruling families were expelled. They made common cause with neighboring tribes and launched a series of piratical attacks on their own homeland. It looked as if civil war would destroy the city.