{"id":5339,"date":"2021-10-09T00:24:22","date_gmt":"2021-10-09T00:24:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/?p=5339"},"modified":"2024-12-13T18:49:03","modified_gmt":"2024-12-13T18:49:03","slug":"the-athenian-golden-age-pericles-aspasia-and-all-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/the-athenian-golden-age-pericles-aspasia-and-all-that\/","title":{"rendered":"The Athenian Golden Age: Pericles, Aspasia, and All That"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Ah! The Golden Age of Athens!<\/p>\n

“Golden age” arguably sounds classier than “the good old days.” But either way, it’s a bygone era that nostalgia says was so very much better than today.<\/p>\n

Folks living in a golden age may or may not know what they’ve got. Or they do, and don’t like it. Take the Athenian Golden Age, for example.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>The Golden Age of Athens<\/h3>\n

\"William<\/a>
\n(From William R. Shepherd’s 1926 ‘Historical Atlas;’ via the Perry-Casta\u00f1eda Library Map Collection; U. of Texas, Austin; used w\/o permission.)<\/span>
\n(The Achaemenid\/Persian Empire, around 500 B.C. \u2014 before the Delian league liberated the Aegean.)<\/p>\n

The Golden Age of Athens began between 508 and 460 B.C. or thereabouts.<\/p>\n

It started when Cleisthenes launched Athenian democracy. According to some historians.<\/p>\n

Other scholars say it began when the Delian League evicted the Achaemenid Empire from the Aegean.<\/p>\n

Or the Athenian Golden Age dawned when Pericles started running the place. Those were good times. He renovated the Acropolis and had the Parthenon built.<\/p>\n

Or some maybe it started at some other time. It depends on preferred temporal landmarks.<\/p>\n

Folks who say the Athenian Golden Age is the Age of Pericles narrow it down a bit. Their option starts in 495 or 461 B.C. \u2014 when Pericles was born. Or, more practically, when he exiled Cimon.<\/p>\n

Cimon was an Athenian noble who opposed democracy. As such, he could have made trouble for Pericles.<\/p>\n

The ‘Athenian Golden Age as the Age of Pericles’ version’s end is less iffy: 429 B.C. \u2014 when Pericles died.<\/p>\n

Uncoupling the Golden Age of Athens from Pericles opens the field considerably. I could argue that it kept going until Aristotle died. That was in 330 B.C. or thereabouts.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

But wait! I’ve got more!<\/p>\n

<\/a>Solon, Sappho, Peisistratos and the Panathenaic Stadium<\/h4>\n

\"Singinglemon's<\/a>
\n(From Singinglemon, via Wikimedia Commons, Austin used w\/o permission.)<\/span><\/p>\n

I haven’t exhausted definitions of the Athenian Golden Age. Not even close.<\/p>\n

\"Peisistratos<\/a>It arguably started in 580 B.C. \u2014 give or take a decade or so. That’s when Solon laid the foundations for Athenian democracy.<\/p>\n

Or the Athenian Golden age began around the middle of the sixth century. If that’s my choice, then I’d say never mind Solon.<\/p>\n

Peisistratos organized the Hyperakrioi as a political party then.<\/p>\n

That was a smart move. His Hyperakrioi outnumbered the other two parties combined.<\/p>\n

They were also near the bottom of the economic ladder, so I figure they’d be enthusiastically pro-Peisistratos.<\/p>\n

I could say the Hyperakrioi should be called Diakrioi; since they lived in the Diacria hills. “Hyperakrioi” means beyond-the-hill people, roughly. Diakrioi means hill people, so I could also call them hillbillies, and that’s another topic.<\/p>\n

These versions assume that Cleisthenes merely picked up where Solon or Peisistratos left off.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

<\/a>A Sports Venue, Sappho and Uncertainty<\/h5>\n

\"M(e)ister<\/a>
\n(From M(e)ister Eiskalt, Wikimedia Commons, Austin used w\/o permission.)<\/span>
\n(The (almost) all-marble Panathenaic Stadium, early 21st century A.D.)<\/p>\n

I don’t know why Peisistratos is almost off the radar these days. He’s currently mostly famous for starting the Panathenaic Games.<\/p>\n

The Panathenaic Games may or may not be connected with the first official version of the Homeric epics.<\/p>\n

Athenian politico Lykourgos built or renovated the Panathenaic Stadium in 330 B.C., give or take a few years.<\/p>\n

Herodes Atticus, Athenian statesman or Roman collaborator, depending on viewpoint, refurbished the stadium somewhere around the year 140: in Pentelic marble, the the sort used for parts of the Parthenon.<\/p>\n

I gather that the Panathenaic venue is still the only (almost) all-marble stadium in the world.<\/p>\n

At any rate, I could pick Peisistratos and the Panathenaic Games premier as launching the Athenian ascendancy.<\/p>\n

Or I could ignore Athens and say that the Aegean Golden Age began and ended with Sappho, poet extraordinaire.<\/p>\n

She killed herself. Or maybe an angry mob killed her. The suicide version popped up a few centuries after Sappho’s time. The death-by-mob story was current in my youth, but sank without a trace somewhere in the late 20th century.<\/p>\n

Getting back to an Athenian focus, there might be a case for saying that the Athenian Golden Age endured until Alexander III of Macedon’s day. Then again, maybe not.3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

<\/a>Pericles in Retrospect<\/h4>\n

\"'Perikles<\/a>
\n(From Philipp Foltz, via Wikimedia Commons, used w\/o permission.)<\/span>
\n(Philipp Foltz’s “Pericles’ Funeral Oration” (1852))<\/p>\n

I’m sure that many folks living in what’s now called the Age of Pericles didn’t feel like they were living in a golden age.<\/p>\n

Athenian equivalents of Boston Brahmans might, as individuals, have approve of Periclean reforms. But as a group they were getting disenfranchised. Or as disenfranchised as folks sitting on the socioeconomic ladder’s top rung can be rendered powerless.<\/p>\n

Periclean prestige may have depended on an individual’s perception of his domestic status.<\/p>\n

We’re pretty sure that Aspasia was the Athenian statesman’s significant other. Whether or not they were married may have depended on who was telling the story. I gather that Aspasia was a top-flight rhetorician and philosopher, brothel keeper and\/or hetaera.<\/p>\n

“Hetaera” \u2014 or “hetaira” \u2014 is a job title overlapping artist, dancer, showgirl and hostess.<\/p>\n

Assorted academics have said that since descriptions of Aspasia don’t line up, she doesn’t exist. Historically speaking.<\/p>\n

I see their point. But I’ve also been paying attention to American politics. If I assumed that descriptions of a public figure must be consistent, then I could argue that America’s last few presidents didn’t exist. Historically speaking.<\/p>\n

As I see it, Aspasia and Pericles knew each other well enough to produce Pericles the Younger.<\/p>\n

Lucien and Plutarch said Aspasia was smart and attractive. Let’s say that she was smart, articulate and politically influential. And good looking to boot. Small wonder that Athenian traditionalists were upset. And that’s yet another topic.<\/p>\n

Pericles’ wife, or courtesan, or girlfriend, wasn’t his only controversial issue.<\/p>\n

There’s the way Pericles got control, too.<\/p>\n

Ephialtes had been a successful leader of the Athenian democratic movement.<\/p>\n

Then someone killed him. With Ephialtes out of the way, Pericles started his three decades of well-documented achievement.4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

<\/a>The Ephialtes Hit: An Unsolved Mystery<\/h5>\n

\"Copy<\/a>We still don’t know who killed Ephialtes.<\/p>\n

Four decades after the crime, Antiphon (probably Antiphon the orator) wrote that the killer hadn’t been identified<\/p>\n

Nine decades after that, about 130 years after the murder, someone wrote a document we call the “Athenian Constitution.” Many scholars figure Aristotle wrote the document. Or maybe one of Aristotle’s students.<\/p>\n

Whoever it was, the author fingered Aristodikos of Tanagra. The Aristodikos scenario sometimes assumes that anti-Ephialtes oligarchs planned the murder.<\/p>\n

And sometimes Pericles is the chief suspect.<\/p>\n

Someone named Idomeneus said Pericles killed Ephialtes, motivated by envy. We know about him mainly because Plutarch brushed off the claim.<\/p>\n

Plutarch said that Ephialtes and Pericles were friends and allies, and everyone knows what a great guy Pericles was. According to Plutarch.<\/p>\n

Robert W. Wallace says the Ephialtes hit looks like an inside job.<\/p>\n

“…Assassination was simple. An attempt to ostracize a political associate and popular figure might have brought discredit or backfired. There is also no other satisfactory explanation for the silence surrounding the incident. Had the radicals not been involved, they could reasonably be expected to have raised a witch-hunt. Ephialtes would have become a martyr for the democratic cause. But there is no trace of this….”
\n(“Ephialtes and the Areopagos<\/a>;” Robert w. Wallace; Wadham College, Oxford (February, 1974) via Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies; Duke University<\/span>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ll grant that the cui bono, who benefits, principle points to Pericles. But as I see it, a high-profile case that remained unsolved after four decades may remain unsolved after more than two dozen centuries.5<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>Making Sense of the Past<\/h3>\n

\"Sanford<\/a>
\n(From Middlebury College Museum of Art, used w\/o permission.)<\/span>
\n(The Parthenon, about two and a half millennia after Pericles. (1869))<\/p>\n

If this was an ideal world, at least from an historian’s viewpoint, we’d know more about Aspasia, Idomeneus, Sappho and Themistocles.<\/p>\n

Themistocles? He was a war hero and populist whose political career crashed and burned in 472 B.C. \u2014 or maybe 471 \u2014 either way, he’d been called a traitor and booted out of Athens. He died in 459 B.C. of probably-natural causes.<\/p>\n

Pericles rehabilitated the Themistocles narrative a few years later and Thucydides said that \u2014<\/p>\n

“…Themistocles was a man who exhibited the most indubitable signs of genius; indeed, in this particular he has a claim on our admiration quite extraordinary and unparalleled….”
\n(“History of the Peloponnesian War<\/a>,” Thucydides (ca. 410 B.C.) trans by J. M. Dent (1910) via Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2014 and I’m drifting off-topic. Or maybe not so much.<\/p>\n

<\/a>History<\/h4>\n

\"Thomas<\/a>
\n(From Middlebury College Museum of Art, used w\/o permission.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Depending on context, history is a:<\/p>\n