Pericles of Athens by Vincent Azoulay Janet Lloyd & Paul Cartledge

Author:Vincent Azoulay, Janet Lloyd & Paul Cartledge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2014-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 9. Ostraka of Cimon (ca. 462 B.C.). From S. Brenne, 1994, “Ostraka and the Process of Ostrakophoria,” in W.D.E. Coulson et al., eds., The Archaeology of Athens and Attica under Democracy. Oxford, UK: Oxbow Books, 13–24, here fig. 3-4, p. 14.

The fact was that the Athenians not only set controls upon the Athenian elite by imposing numerous laws that affected them. They also did so by circulating rumors about their behavior that were first given expression in the theater and from there spread throughout the city. In this way, they exerted strong moral and ideological pressure upon those responsible for important duties.

Omnipresent Social Controls

The Invectives of the Comic Poets: Pericles on Stage

Comic poetry, which was full of allusions to contemporary political life, fulfilled a function of social control over the members of the Athenian elite. In the orchestra of the theater of Dionysus, at the time of the Great Dionysia or the Lenaea, the poets often directed personal attacks—onomasti kōmōidein—against the individuals most deeply involved in civic life. Politicians were directly named by the actors performing before the entire assembled people. Gibed at or even ridiculed, they were attacked as much for their public actions as for their lifestyles and their behavior in private.

Pericles was a particular target of such personal attacks. His relationship with Aspasia and his supposed sympathies for tyranny were frequently mocked on stage.47 Such accusations peaked at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. Plutarch certainly testifies to the growing hostility then surrounding the stratēgos: “Many of his enemies [beset him] with threats and denunciations and choruses sang songs of scurrilous mockery, designed to humiliate [ephubrizontes] him, railing at his generalship for its cowardice and its abandonment of everything to the enemy” (Pericles, 33.6). In view of all this, it might seem but a small step to assuming that comedy—and, more generally, simply rumors—played a part in the stratēgos’s removal from power in 430/429. But that is a step that should not be taken.

In the first place, there were limits imposed upon the freedom of speech (parrhēsia) of the comic poets. The ancient sources even record certain episodes of censure in which Aristophanes and other comic writers were targeted, at particularly delicate moments in the history of Athens.48 Although the cases brought against comic poets are by no means all confirmed,49 a decree aiming to ban personal attacks in the theater does appear to have been passed in 440/439 at the instigation of Pericles; no doubt, the stratēgos hoped in this way to put a stop to the most virulent attacks launched against him while the city was engaged in the lengthy siege of Samos. However, this measure that had been approved within the context of a crisis was waived less than three years later;50 in the fifth century, no law restrained the freedom of speech of the comic poets for very long.51

Second, those gibes did not necessarily directly influence the Athenians’ voting in the Assembly. Even as he was being subjected to constant fire from

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