Persuasion in Ancient Greece
Andrew Scholtz, Instructor
Study Guides. . .
Plutarch's Life of Pericles
Readings Journal Entries, Class Debate
RESOLVED: Periclean democracy was democratic in fact as well as in name.
In-class debate; use the Plutarch Pericles and Thucydides 1 readings as principal evidence.
- That's to prepare you to argue either side of the question. Three teams will be chosen by lot: pro, contra, judges. Judges will choose winners; I intend to bring prizes. So this is serious!
Items possibly worthy of comment (an incomplete selection):
ITEM "He came to hold more power in his hands than many a king and tyrant" (Plutarch Pericles p. 183, sect. 15.3).
- Compare Thucydides on Pericles' leadership: "Athens was in name a democracy, but in fact was a government (arkhē, the word also means "rule," "empire," political or administrative "office") by its first man" (Thucydides p. 57)
ITEM Thucydides on Pericles' crisis in persuasion (2.21-22).
Though that passage won't be in our selection of readings from the historian, we'll have discussed it during the Thucydides 1 class. Remember the war policy Pericles persuaded the city to adopt, namely, to rely on the city's superior navy and to avoid pitched battle with the superior land forces of the Spartans and their allies.
"But that meant pretty much a free pass to the enemy to ravage the Attic countryside. And so the Athenians, who had evacuated the their farms and were holed up behind the city's impregnable walls, watched helplessly the destruction of their crops, homes, and so on. Restive and angry at Pericles, they wanted him to lead them out against the enemy. Pericles could see, however, that the demos, in no fit state to reopen debate on his strategy, must not be allowed to vote down his strategy. And so he succeeded (we're not told exactly how) in preventing an assembly from being held during this critical period."
ITEM Thucydides pp. 56-58 (sect. 2.65) Thucydides' assessment of Pericles.
But the list surely doesn't stop there; please find other items relevant to the question.
Who was Pericles?
Lived ca. 495-429 BCE
Aristocrat
Son of Xanthippus (Greek commander against the Persians)
Statesman, supporter - author, even - of the radical democracy at Athens
He was prostates tou demou (unofficial "leader of the popular assembly" plus "protector of the people") nearly without break from about the time of Ephialtes' death (461) until his own death (429)
General
The office of general - the strategia - was by Pericles' time largely of an administrative nature (though still military too)
Pericles held the strategia for a full 15 years or so, viz. from ca. 444-429 BCE (the year of his death)
Themes, Issues
Peitho: Sleuth out peitho as an issue or theme in the life and career of Pericles (as presented in Plutarch's biography of him)
How - and how well - does he go about persuading Athenians? What are his tools of control?
verbal?
nonverbal?
How does he deal with opponents and enemies (and how do they deal with him)?
Cimon?
Thucydides son of Melesias? (Not the historian!)
What policies does he tend promote, both at home and abroad?
In what ways is he demotikos, a supporter of radical democracy at Athens?
In what ways might he seem to be something other than demotikos? Does he ever resemble - or is he ever depicted as - a tyrant?
Who is Aspasia? What role doe she seem play in his life?
personal?
other?
Historical background
ca. 495 Birth of Pericles
477 Delian League established (under Athenian leadership, a confederation of Greek states dedicated to continuing the war against Persia)
463-1 Democratic Ephialtes influential at Athens; curtails powers of Areopagus (an aristocratic council)
461 Ephialtes murdered. Cimon sent into exile. Pericles (a democrat) begins to be influential at Athens. Alliance between Argos and Athens
454 Treasury of the Delian Confederacy transferred from Delos to Athens
451 Five-year truce between Athens and Sparta worked out by Cimon
451/50 Pericles' citizenship decree declaring that to be an Athenian citizen one must have both an Athenian father and an Athenian mother
450/49 Cimon leads naval operations around Cyprus; death of Cimon
449/8 Peace with Persia concluded; Athens invites Greeks to restore temples destroyed during the Persian wars
447 Parthenon begun; Athens loses the neighboring territory of Boeotia in the battle of Coronea
447/6 Athens quells revolt in the neighboring island of Euboea; Athens loses control of neighboring Megara
446/5 A Thirty-year Peace treaty concluded between Athens and the Peloponnesians (led by Sparta)
443 Thucydides son of Melesias ostracized (not the historian!)
440/39 Revolt of Samos and Byzantium against Athenian hegemony in the Delian League. Pericles' funeral oration commemorating the fallen in that war
438 Chyselephantine Athena set up in Parthenon
433 Alliance of Athens with Corcyra (against Corinth)
431 Pericles passes the Megarian Decree (trade embargo against Megara). War declared by the Peloponnesians against Athens. The Great Plague in Athens begins
431/0 Pericles delivers Funeral Oration
430 Pericles deposed from strategia, then restored
429 Death of Pericles (plague)