nm0007: let me make a couple of announcements thank you has everybody all 
second years got a seminar pack yeah let me make a couple of announcements 
first of all we need to have a representative from this group for the staff-
student committee which is going to meet at the end of the term you're probably 
used to this by now each er course has a representative to feed back views 
about the course or any other er things you want to tell us about to the 
committee so i will ask you next lecture whether there's a volunteer or you 
want to whether you want to coordinate or volunteer so bear that in mind it 
will meet in the second to last term for an hour and it's a chance to give the 
views of students to the department one other announcement er an article we we 
talked couple of weeks ago about the influence of Plato on Plutarch and we 
talked about er a little bit about his theo-, Plato's theory of great natures 
that is that who well who can remember what Plato said about great natures in 
The 
Republic 
sf0008: they will either lead to a lead to a really good person or a really bad 
person 
nm0007: fantastic yes that people with what Plato calls great natures that is 
great potential er in their in their nature and remember we said that character 
is your nature and and then added to it the action of your environment or 
education on it and Plato said people with great natures will either turn out 
very good or very bad depending on the environment that is brought to bear on 
them and in particular dependent on their education this theory is particularly 
important for some of Plutarch's Lives the negative lives he introduces the 
theory at the start of the Lives of which two people where does Plutarch talk 
about great natures 
sf0008: Antony 
nm0007: yes er Mark Antony and hi er there's handouts there Mark Antony and the 
Greek paired with Mark Antony is Demetrius not one that you're likely to meet 
and we're also going to meet in a couple of weeks another of Plutarch's great 
natures and that is Alcibiades who's paired with the Roman Coriolanus 
now i've written an article on all of this which has just appeared and which 
i'm going to put in the seminar library and it's also in the library now it's 
called Plutarch Plato and Great Natures and if you type into the computer my 
name you'll find it it'll be in the seminar library yes 
sf0009: when is your book available in the library 
nm0007: i don't know er i've ordered it and they don't seem to have it er 
sf0010: it says in bindings on the in binding 
nm0007: really 
sf0010: yeah 
nm0007: well if you go in and er keep asking them for it maybe they'll do it 
quickly but it takes them a long time unfortunately 
sf0011: is the box is there a box-file in there er 
nm0007: there sh-, yeah there's a box-file in the seminar room 
sf0012: 
nm0007: has anybody ha-, have you f-, has somebody found it 
sf0013: yeah 
sf0014: i don't know 
nm0007: so far 
sf0014: 
nm0007: okay but it is y-, it is there is it okay it is in there if you ask the 
secretary er he will point it out to you are there any questions before we go 
into this lecture okay er well last time we did a brief run-through of 
what most people say what the general approach is to the life of Pericles the 
Athenian statesman Pericles and he's going to be the subject of our thoughts 
for the next two lectures this lecture and next lecture and the seminar and we 
did a a brief uncontroversial run-through of what you'll find written about 
Pericles in history books and in this lecture we're going to take that picture 
apart a bit and this lecture is entitled how important actually was Pericles 
and you'll gather from the very fact we're having a lecture on this that we're 
going to be arguing that the importance of Pericles who's presented as the 
figure of fifth century Athenian democracy in all the books you read we're 
going to be arguing that Pericles was actually not so important and that the 
importance of Pericles has been exaggerated by one person the historian 
Thucydides and that this exaggeration has got into the er literary and 
historical tradition ever since until our lecture now 
where we're going to challenge it so how important was Pericles Pericles tends 
to be seen as the representative figure the embodiment of Athenian democracy 
you can find studies of Pericles er in the history books we talked about last 
time that are on the handout this er exaggeration this this sense of Pericles 
as the most important figure starts off in the historian Thucydides who of 
course is contemporary with Pericles can anyone tell us or guess what sort of a 
a family or what sort of political background Thucydides came from 
sf0015: aristocrat 
nm0007: aristocrat right all ancient writers pretty much are going to be 
aristocratic to have the time and the leisure to write you are by definition 
rich which in classical Athens means an aristocrat you own lots of land and 
what happened to Thucydides what big event allowed him to write the History 
sf0016: was he exiled 
nm0007: he was exiled he was exiled by the Athenian democracy does anyone know 
why he was exiled 
sf0017: he was on some sort of campaign and he failed
nm0007: yeah that 
exactly he was on campaign and failed he failed to save the city of Amphipolis 
from the Spartans in four-two-five B-C and it was taken by Sparta and he 
actually writes about about this in his History and just sort of when he's 
narrating the fall of Amphipolis he says that an an Athenian squadron from the 
island of Thasos al-, commanded by Thucydides it doesn't say commanded by me 
commanded by Thucydides er just failed to relieve the city and it gives the 
impression a poor guy er you know he did his best and er i-, i-, it didn't 
didn't quite get there in time of course we don't know whether that's quite 
true er he was exiled by the government in other words the people in Athens so 
these two facts the fact that he's an aristocrat and the fact that he's he 
suffered at the hands of the democracy would er lead us to expect that he would 
be somebody who had a rather negative might have a rather negative view of 
democratic power in Athens 
and might be rather well disposed towards aristocratic leaders er rather than 
er the rabble as he would see it of Athenian politics and that's one 
possibility of why Pericles gets such a good write-up from Thucydides they 
share the same political aristocratic background what actually though does 
Thucydides say about Pericles what events does Thucydides say Pericles was 
involved in well if you go through if you read Thucydides' History you get an 
impression of the overwhelming greatness and importance of Pericles the 
authority of Pericles where does that sense of Pericles' importance come from 
his speeches he gets a lot of speeches in the first two books of Thucydides a 
lot of times when the narrative stops Pericles comes on the stage and 
Thucydides gives us as it were a verbatim report of what Pericles said to the 
Athenian democracy probably not actually his original words probably a er er a 
write-up by Thucydides a fictionalized account but this gives us the 
impression of of that Pericles was the most important statesman we get words 
put into his mouth nobody else gets so many speeches so it gives the impression 
of this important person we also get occasional paragraphs of direct praise 
we're going to be looking at one of these er later on where per-, where 
Thucydides says Pericles was the best leader of the time and after his death 
Athens went downhill if we actually look however at events Thucydides says 
Pericles was involved in er there are very few and we'll come to that in a 
moment there are actually very few events Thucydides himself can pin on 
Pericles for all the praise for all the speeches he gets there aren't that many 
things Pericles is actually said to have done Thucydides sets the agenda then 
for how Pericles and fifth century Athens would be seen in later generations 
including in in the history books that you'll look at so the fifth century for 
Thucydides is the Persian Wars four-ninety four-eighty then 
the fifty year period between the Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War we've 
talked about Pentekontaetia then the Peloponnesian War so there's er 
Thucydides' view of the fifth century we've had cause already to question that 
how have we questioned that how have we said that view of the fifth century is 
really Thucydides' construction what what 
sf0018: everybody else thought of it as three separate words 
nm0007: yeah that's er this exactly so what you'll read in lots of history 
books is exactly what Thucydides said that you get er Persian War then this 
fifty year period of Athens growing power and then the Peloponnesian War and 
it's basically the end of the fifth century four-o-four 
er we've said well actually the Peloponnesian War you could this is an 
artificial construct of Thucydides' to say the Peloponnesian War is four-three-
one to four-o-four the they're fighting the Spartans and their allies as far 
back as four-six-one this is there are lots of other ways of presenting 
Athenian history similarly well Persian Wars er peace isn't made with Persia 
until four-four-six a peace treaty is signed with er a-, between Athens and 
Persia so already we're seeing that Thucydides constructs history in his way 
it's not wrong but it's just one way of setting out the events so another part 
of Thucydides' construction of the fifth century is Pericles as the leader of 
good moderate democracy when Pericles is in power democracy is basically good 
because there's an aristocrat in power at the head of it and after Pericles' 
death it goes 
downhill so this is how Thucydides presents it good democracy Pericles and 
before Pericles radical democracy in other words over the top democracy after 
Pericles' death why is he so fond of Pericles why does he give this such a 
positive picture of Pericles as we've we talked about at the start both 
Pericles and Thucydides are aristocrats Thucydides opposed to the developed 
democracy er we know of i-, it seems from reading Thucydides' treatment of the 
oligarchic coups in the Peloponnesian War that he approved of these right wing 
regimes he gives them quite good write-ups these times when democracy's 
overthrown briefly so therefore he's er emotionally inclined to be in favour of 
an aristocratic leader in the democracy and before the democracy became more 
democratic before it really took off towards the end of the fifth century this 
picture has been influential then for later classicists this picture from 
Thucydides has been influential in later classicists in 
particular the classicists of the ancient world like Plutarch in other words 
people living centuries later looking back and admiring the classical world and 
thinking that everything from the classical world in other words the days of 
Athenian greatness and democracy was best ad-, admiring that world Plutarch 
having read Thucydides places Pericles at the high point of Athenian democracy 
and writes as we'll see next week a very very positive account of Pericles 
there's long sections in Plutarch's Life of admiration for what he calls er 
Pericles' aristocratic government now you can immediately see that is a 
contradiction in terms historically speaking why why i-, is that a 
contradiction in terms aristocratic government of Athenian democracy 
sf0019: because it was a democracy 
nm0007: it was a democracy that's right it was a democracy er so to talk of it 
as an aristocratic government is both incorrect historically speaking but also 
reveals what's going on in the minds of someone like 
Plutarch that democracy is bad democracy where the rabble have power is bad so 
er but Thucydides admires Pericles therefore it must have been something 
different it must have been although it was in name a democracy it was really 
led by aristocrats Plutarch like Thucydides puts the opponent of Pericles Cleon 
as a demagogue as something totally different from what Pericles is what 
Pericles was doing Pericles the aristocratic leader Cleon his opponent a 
demagogue in other words a rabble- rouser Plutarch whose takes on Thucydides' 
picture of admiration of er Pericles places Pericles at the centre of an 
intellectual movement er of his time and associates him with people like 
Anaxagoras an early philosopher pre-Socratic philosopher Pheidias who's 
responsible for the statue of Athena in the Parthenon er and other various 
intellectual figures contemporary sources don't in fact link Pericles with er 
hardly any of these figures er why however from our knowledge of Plutarch would 
you 
er expect him to l-, to link someone he wants to praise with intellectual 
figures why does this make sense to us why don't why don't we need to look for 
sources for this we can just actually say well this is what we'd expect 
Plutarch to say 
sf0020: trying to make him good by association 
nm0007: he's trying to make him good by association quite right and what's he 
associating him with what's what's the key point here about all these figures 
or wh-, what's Plutarch particularly interested in if he wants to praise 
somebody 
sf0021: virtue 
nm0007: virtue yes and on what is virtue dependent 
sf0022: education 
ss: 
nm0007: education exactly very good so we expect someone good for Plutarch to 
be associated with intellectual figures to have had a good i-, education to be 
interested in artistic pursuits and that's what we get there's not so much 
evidence so Plutarch's presentation of Pericles which we'll look at in much 
more detail next time influenced modelled on Thucydides that presentation then 
comes into the modern world er when in the nineteenth century historians 
started looking er in earnest at Ancient Greece people like er George Grote who 
wrote one of the early histories of Greece er were impressed by Pericles in the 
same way and er one can see why the presentation of Pericles by Thucydides 
appealed to these liberals of the nineteenth century because he wasn't a a 
monarch he wasn't er somebody a a kind of ruler that nineteenth century 
liberals would be opposed to he wasn't a monarch an emperor he was er in a a a 
state with a broader political base but he opposed according to Thucydides er 
the m-, the masses the rabble he wasn't a demagogue he was an en-, an 
enlightened leader controlling the masses in their own for their own good so 
Pericles gets a very good press from er intellectuals powerful people of the 
nineteenth century who ha-, who saw themselves as a bit like Thucydides' 
Pericles someone who could who was working in a kind of democracy but keeping 
the 
people in their place a democracy where the people respected their leaders and 
stayed in their place we've looked then at Thucydides' picture of Pericles and 
we've looked at the influence of that picture we've looked at the influence on 
Plutarch and later ancient writers and the influence on the modern on modernish 
er writers and through into the twentieth and twenty-first century we now go on 
to ask the question well what evidence is there actually for Pericles what what 
evidence is there for him being considered important in his own day well if we 
look at Thucydides what Thucydides actually associates Pericles with what 
actions Thucydides says Pericles did we see that there's very little concrete 
er that Pericles is associated with lots of speeches in Pericles' mouth lots of 
praise of what a great leader Pericles was but very little to actually put down 
to his agency so i've put down on the handout the list of what his great 
admirer Thucydides actually says 
about Pericles well he mentions him as commanding a fleet briefly on campaign 
in the four-fifties okay he was a he was a general one of ten generals in the 
four-fifties he mentions him as on campaign suppressing revolts in islands 
revolting from the Athenian empire in the four-forties Euboia and Samos so 
again a general of which there were ten at any one time he has him er involved 
in the negotiations and the decision about whether to go to war with Sparta in 
four-three-one and that seems to be there were mentions in comic poets of this 
as well of the fact that Pericles perhaps encouraged Athens to go to war for 
private reasons this kind of thing so that seems to be something Pericles is ac-
, actually associated with and we get him dying of plague in four-two-nine so 
this is what er the concrete events Thucydides actually er gives to Pericles we 
only get the impr-, we only get er evidence there for him ac-, actually at the 
centre of power making speeches in the Assembly having any part in decisions as 
opposed to being a general for a few years before and at the start of the 
Peloponnesian War 
what about in the next century what about as people as orators looked back on 
the fifth century in the fourth from the fourth century what did they say about 
Pericles well the really s-, this is the the really surprising fact but if you 
go through all the hundreds of speeches made by Athenian orators in the fourth 
century in a lot of which they look back to the fifth century and say to their 
audience we should stand up to Macedonia now because we're the people who stood 
up to the Persians we're the people who stood up to the Spartans and you've got 
to show yourselves worthy of your great ancestors when fourth century speakers 
make this kind of appeal to the past to the to the glories of the past er 
Pericles is hardly ever mentioned lots of other leaders of the fifth century 
Themistocles Cimon Aristides other people er that you could think 
of are mentioned lots we must do what Themistocles did against the Persians we 
must stand up for our rights Pericles almost never so from the point of view of 
fourth century democratic thinkers Pericles is not at all important can anyone 
think of a a sociological reason in other words a reason in terms of who was 
going to be the audience for these speeches of why Pericles might be not so 
important there in speeches 
sf0023: could be the fourth century leaders were less a-, aristocratic than 
nm0007: yes it's that er fourth s-, fourth century leaders of the democracy in 
general are less aristocratic that's quite right er also who are you speaking 
to if you make a speech in the Assembly who make up the majority it's not 
aristocrats is it 
sf0024: no 
nm0007: it must be did i hear 
sm0025: 
nm0007: er you're thinking of the Roman Assemblies er Athenian democratic 
Assemblies er who goes to the Assembly in ancient Athens 
sf0026: citizens 
nm0007: everybody everybody er so the majority are the poor so if you're making 
y-, a-, an audience for a speech is 
likely to represent much more a cross section of the Athenian population than 
the readership of a history like Thucydides' so when you get speeches er for 
delivery before a democratic audience made up of a cross section of the people 
Pericles is hardly mentioned so this reinforces our our view that A he wasn't 
so important as Thucydides makes out and B Thucydides is writing for an 
aristocratic audience from an aristocratic standpoint even centuries later even 
about the time Plutarch was writing it's quite possible to go through the great 
men of the Athenian past and not mention Pericles so Pausanias from the second 
century A-D who knows what Pausanias did or who Pausanias was 
sm0025: wrote a book about different places in Greece 
nm0007: yes wrote a book about places in Greece a kind of guidebook to the art 
of Greece in the second century A-D so designed for er an audience er of er 
aristocratic Greeks or Roman travellers coming to Greece and it mentions the 
statues you can see the temples 
this kind of thing as you go region by region around Greece and er there's one 
particular passage where he goes through the great men of the Greek past er 
who've done great deeds in Greek history and he mentions lots of people 
Miltiades who fought at the battle of Marathon Themistocles who also fought 
against the Persians Cimon who fought against the Persians er but not Pericles 
so we're getting here then a corrective to our picture that we get from 
Thucydides of Pericles as of greatest importance we're going to spend the next 
few minutes looking at some passages from these sources just to get a feel for 
what we're actually talking about so we're going to start by looking at some 
passages from Thucydides where we see this praise of Pericles which is so 
influential later and we'll also have a a quick look at what Aristotle said 
about Pericles under the influence of Thucydides so if we turn to er our 
handout now i noticed that for some reason the er when this was 
photocopied one page was copied twice so the second page of your handout er the 
one er not the not the first one which says personalities one-eleven but the 
next one which has in the middle Aristotle Constitution of Athens twenty-seven 
to twenty-eight that's repeated er a little bit further on so that one you want 
to draw a line through because it upsets the order of the passages is everybody 
with us the se-, so the second pages of sources 
sf0026: that 
nm0007: the whole thing the whole side 
sf0027: like that 
nm0007: so both columns 
sm0028: so back page just not needed then 
nm0007: er the back page is needed it's the second page 
sf0029: no 
sm0030: there's nothing on the back 
sf0029: it's just the yeah it's the same 
sf0031: yeah it's the same 
nm0007: it's the same it's come out twice 
sf0032: 
sm0033: 
nm0007: so no no not the back page keep the back 
sf0034: that just that page and then that page and then that page 
nm0007: yes 
sf0034: that one then that one then that one 
sf0035: it goes 
nm0007: exactly 
sf0036: 
nm0007: there's four pages and we're missing out the second 
sf0037: i've only got 
nm0007: which is the same as the last but it's important to miss out the 
second not the last because it's the order is correct so cross it out now and 
then we won't be confused it took me a while of confusion to work out what had 
happened so what we have then is printed out here is a speech put into 
Pericles' words into Pericles' mouth by Thucydides from his History and it's 
the last speech that Pericles gets in Thucydides' History and it's advice about 
how they should fight the war can anyone tell us what Pericles' advice was 
about the war how they should fight the Peloponnesian War 
sm0038: stay inside the city 
nm0007: to stay inside the city yes and 
sm0039: not to come out 
nm0007: not that's right not 
sf0040: use the fleet 
nm0007: and use the fleet that's right those are the two elements so don't go 
out and fight them on land er we've got our fleet we can supply ourselves by 
sea and use the fleet to er attack them on their coasts and to keep the empire 
so this speech l-, lays out all all of this in great detail so here's an 
example of er the impression Thucydides 
gives us of Pericles' great importance and wisdom er giving this these er this 
advice for the war as we've noted there's nothing actually concrete here of of 
things Pericles did this is words er at the end of that speech so we're missing 
out the page where i told you to miss out we come to Thucydides' final 
judgement on Pericles and this is one of the most important passages of 
Thucydides' whole History and one that you should root in your mind as being 
important for Thucydides' view of the Peloponnesian War and for Pericles and 
for Alcibiades and this is the last er paragraph er on here so left hand column 
the last paragraph in this way Pericles attempted to stop the Athenians and 
this is paragraph two- sixty-five book two paragraph sixty-five of Thucydides 
and let's read what Thucydides said and we're looking for this admiration and 
praise of Thucydides er some of the er the words are a bit faint on the left 
hand side unfortunately in this way 
Pericles attempted to stop the Athenians from being angry with him and to guide 
their thoughts in a direction away from their immediate sufferings the war has 
just started in fact and they're they're suffering cooped up in the city so so 
far as public policy was concerned they accepted his arguments sending no more 
assembl-, assembassie-, ass-, embassies to Sparta and showing an increased 
energy in carrying on the war as private individuals they still felt the weight 
of their misfortunes the mass of the people had had little enough to start with 
and had now been deprived of even that the richer classes had lost their fine 
estates with their rich and well equipped houses in the country and which was 
the worst thing of all they were at war instead of living in peace in fact the 
general ill feeling against Pericles persisted and was not satisfied until 
they'd contem-, condemned him to pay a fine not long afterwards however as is 
the way with crowds they re-elected 
him to the generalship and put all their affairs into h-, into his hands so 
there we have a little chink in what Thucydides says about Pericles that he 
admits at this particular point he gets deposed from office by the Assembly 
fined and put back into power er what does that suggest about who ran Athens we 
g-, have a picture from Thucydides of Pericles as the leader 
sf0041: not Pericles 
nm0007: not Pericles right the people they don't like something he's done 
depose him from office by a vote in the Assembly fine him put him back in power 
again and say carry on but watch it we're in control so we have a a er a a 
chink in this this wall of of silence about Pericles this this assertion not 
really with evidence but this assertion from Thucydides that Pericles is so 
great here we have he's admitting that well it's not always quite so much by 
that time people felt their own sufferings rather lass less acutely and so far 
as the general needs of the state were concerned 
they regarded Pericles as the best man they had indeed during the whole period 
of peacetime when Pericles was at the head of affairs the state was wisely led 
and firmly er 
sf0042: guided 
nm0007: governed what 
sf0042: guided 
nm0007: guided could be guided yes er er and it was under him that assen-, 
Athens was at her greatest says Thucydides when the war broke out here too he 
appears to have accurately estimated what the power of Athens was he survived 
the outbreak of war by two years and six months and after his death his 
foresight with regard to the war became even more evident Pericles had said 
that Athens would be victorious if she bided her time and took care of her navy 
if she avoided trying to add to her empire during the course of the war and if 
she did did nothing to endanger the safety of the city itself but his 
successors did the exact opposite and in other matters which privately had no 
connec-, which apparently had no connection with the war private ambition and 
private profit led 
to policies that were bad both for the Athenians themselves and for their state 
such policies when successful only brought credit and advantage to individuals 
and when they failed the whole war potential of the state was in-, was impaired 
great praise there for Pericles' war policy er what did we say last time about 
this policy about how good a policy it actually was 
sf0043: it wasn't that good 'cause they all got the plague 
nm0007: it wasn't that yes it wasn't that good they all got the plague er for 
one thing cooped up in the city quite right er what about the yes 
sf0044: well he allowed like the Spartans to get help from the Persians which 
did drag the war on 
nm0007: yes that's right his policy was we wait and see we stay in the city we 
use our fleet to supply ourselves we make little raids against Sparta but we 
don't go out and fight them well that policy meant the war lasted for thirty 
years and in the end Athens lost in the kind of war of attrition against Sparta 
and er they they the main one of the the decisive reasons for this was the 
entry of Persia into the war on the Spartan side 
or at least er aiding the Spartans financially so this policy er er couldn't 
have worked certainly if you took the possibility of Persia wanting to see the 
end of the Athenian empire which it surely did if you take that into account it 
wasn't a very sensible policy and a much more sensible one might have been the 
policy of other leaders like Alcibiades which aimed to strike Sparta decisively 
and to do things like the invasion of Sicily er 
which failed unfortunately but some historians now argue that er this er m-, 
actually would have had more chance of success than Pericles just do nothing 
and wait till we get worn down so we take this praise of Pericles with a pinch 
of of salt it's not self-evident er the reason for er the er the greatness of 
Pericles the reason for his er er wisdom for the success of his war policy 
according to Thucydides was that Pericles because of his position his 
intelligence and his known integrity could hold could respect the liberty of 
the people and at the same time hold them in check so here we've got this idea 
of the aristocratic leader who can hold the democracy in check who is respects 
their liberty he's not a tyrant but he he kind of controls them well we've just 
seen him being demoted and fined from office so this is not quite so simple as 
it sounds it was he who led them rather than they who led him and since he 
never sought power from any wrong motive says Thucydides er there's no way of 
knowing that er he was under no necessity of flattering them in fact he was so 
highly respected that he was able to speak angrily to them and contradict them 
so Pericles as someone who led the people and didn't flatter them well what was 
it that Plato said about Pericles we looked talked about this last week to do 
with flattering the people what what er 
sf0045: he called him a demagogue the others 
nm0007: he called him a demagogue like all the others like other leaders of the 
democracy and peric-, and Plato associated Pericles with one particular er 
event one particular er deed political deed 
sm0046: jury pay 
nm0007: jury pay introducing pay for the juries which er Plato saw as flattery 
of the people in other words that you're giving the people cash for something 
which rich peop-, sitting on juries which should in the view of aristocrats 
like er Plato be done for free by rich people and Pericles gives money and 
Plato saw 
this as flattering the people to win power to win votes so here we say have 
Thucydides denying he flattered the people and we can see therefore that it's 
not quite so simple so again we have Thucydides' praise of Pericles not er as 
straightforward or as objective as we might think certainly when he saw they 
were going too far in a mood of over-con confidence he would bring bring to 
them a sense of their dangers and when they were discouraged for no good reason 
he would restore their confidence so in what was nominally a democracy power 
was really in the hands of the first citizen really a wish of Thucydides of how 
it should be how a state should be you should have power in the hands of the 
first citizen er not necessarily how it actually was but his successors were 
more on a level with each other and each one of them aimed at occupying the 
first place adopting methods of demagogy well we saw Plato thought Pericles was 
a demagogue which resulted in their losing 
control over the actual conduct of affairs such a policy in a great city with 
an empire to govern naturally led to a number of mistakes amongst which was the 
Sicilian expedition now we think Thucydides is going to say they shouldn't have 
sent out a fleet they should have abided by Pericles' policy not er try to 
expand the empire they should have just stayed and er bided their time but he 
doesn't actually say that though in this case the mistake was not so much an 
error of judgement with regard to the opposition to be expected as a failure on 
the part of those who were at home to give proper support to their forces 
overseas people think this bit er must have been added after er the 
Peloponnesian War towards the end of the Peloponnesian War when Thucydides 
changes his view about the way the war was going and actually he seems to 
suggest there that decisive action overseas might have been the best idea once 
Thucydides himself writing his History 
has actually seen Persia come into the war he's changing his his view there so 
this sentence if not more of it is thought by scholars to be an insertion by 
Thucydides that ah well maybe the Sicilian expedition wasn't such a bad thing 
after all maybe the idea was quite good maybe Alcabiades who led the expedition 
could have defeated the Spartans and the mistake was that it wasn't supported 
properly from home and they recalled Alcabiades and the the expedition went to 
pot er so just you could just mark that as a later insertion by Thucydides 
probably from the context because they were so busy with their own personal 
intrigues picking up the passage again for securing the leadership of the 
people they that is post-Pericles leaders allowed this expedition to lose its 
impetus and by quarrelling amongst themselves began to bring confusion into the 
policy of the state and yet after losing most of their fleet and all of the 
other forces in Sicily 
with revolutions already breaking out in Athens they nonetheless held out for 
eight years against their original enemies which were now reinforced by the 
Sicilians against their own allies most of which had revolted and against Cyrus 
son of the King of Persia who later joined the other side and provided the 
Peloponnesians with money for their fleet and in the end it was only because 
they'd destroyed themselves by their own internal strife that finally they were 
forced to surrender so overwhelmingly great were the resources which Pericles 
had in mind at the time when he prophesied an easy victory for Athens over the 
Peloponnesians alone so we can see there Thucydides changing his ground a bit 
that it's not that Pericles' policy was correct er Thucydides has seen the 
failure of Pericles' policy the Persians enter the war it's that well he left 
Athens very strong and the fact they survived for so long proves it but not 
that his war policy was great so the 
second half of that passage at least is a retrospect by Thucydides taking into 
account later events in the war Thucydides two-sixty-five is the passage for 
the later history of the image of Pericles so very important to fix that one in 
your mind and p-, and we'll see next lecture Plutarch exploiting this passage 
if we return briefly to the actual handout of the lecture just run through 
briefly one or two other things about the importance of Pericles we've looked 
at what Thucydides says about him the praise of Pericles and yet the lack of 
hard evidence of Pericles being important we've looked at one example of this 
praise er Aristotle very much carries on this idea of Thucydides plainly relies 
on Thucydides has read Thucydides he associates him with two measures the 
citizenship law the introduction of jury pay these two wo-, the one of which we 
mentioned just before and sees sees this as part of Pericles' rivalry with er 
his with other aristocratic leaders 
so Aristotle presents these measures by Pericles like the introduction of jury 
pay as a means of winning popular support as a a means of of bribing the people 
you give them money for the jury you restrict citizenship so the citizens get 
the benefits of the the money pouring into Athens so for Aristotle though 
influenced by Thucydides there's there is this sense of Pericles as a demagogue 
as not so different from later leaders you don't have this sense of everybody 
was worse than Pericles it went downhill after Pericles with Aristotle Pericles 
is the start of it going downhill with these measures to bribe the people as as 
Aristotle would see it i've put just there finally you can read it that there's 
basically no other legislation associated with Pericles there's even an attempt 
by 
er one historian Mattingly er to redate a lot of the er measures concerning the 
Athenian empire preserved on i-, the evidence for these is inscriptions from 
the four-forties when Pericles could have had something to do with them to the 
four-twenties and this is a very technical argument about the letter styles of 
inscriptions er but you could just file that away in your mind that somebody 
reckons that even some of the events of the four-forties to do with the 
Athenian empire which could have possibly been associated with Pericles there's 
no evidence for it might not even have happened till after his death anyway so 
we leave it there we've talked about th-, Thucydides and his influence on later 
tradition next time we look at Plutarch's biography of Pericles as always there 
are back handouts for previous lectures here if you missed any