Pericles the Athenian by Rex Warner

Author:Rex Warner [Warner, Rex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction
Published: 1962-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

10

Peace with Persia and with Sparta

For this very short time there was a considerable degree of cooperation between Pericles and Kimon. There was no secret of the divergence of their views about Sparta, and Pericles was more ready than Kimon to conclude an honorable and safe peace with Persia. There was a great difference in age between the two men, Pericles being now in his forty-fifth year while Kimon was nearly sixty. Nor was there any fundamental agreement on home policy. Kimon looked back to the days when every political leader except Themistocles had come from a noble family, and though Pericles certainly was no exception to this rule, his leadership, in Kimon’s view, had been all in the opposite direction. However, Kimon was capable of accepting at least some facts. He realized that, contrary to his expectations, the general effect of Pericles’s policies had been to strengthen rather than weaken the morale of the fighting forces, and he approved on the whole of Pericles’s plans for increasing the military and economic efficiency of the empire. He had more than an uneasy suspicion that in domestic politics he was less well equipped than the younger man, and since throughout his life his main effort and ambition had been concentrated on the war with Persia, he was willing enough to leave home affairs to Pericles so long as he himself was entrusted with what still seemed to him the most important of all commands.

In the reaching of this understanding a great part was played by Kimon’s elderly sister Elpinice and by her still more elderly husband Kallias, who was not only the richest but one of the most respected men in Athens. He was one of the few leading statesmen left who had fought at Marathon; he had won the chariot race at Olympia on three occasions; it had been by his money and influence that Kimon had been rescued from poverty and given those opportunities of which he had made such brilliant use. In the past Kallias had been, as was natural, closely associated with the policies of Kimon and, like most of his class, opposed to the aims and methods of Ephialtes and Pericles. But, unlike many of the rich, Kallias had a mind that was both intelligent and flexible. He saw that whether he liked them or not, the policies of Pericles had proved amazingly successful. Like Kimon, he was in favor of peace with Sparta, but he recognized that it was because of the resolution which Pericles had shown that this peace had been on terms so favorable to Athens. He was able too, I think, to sense that Pericles, once he felt Athens to be completely secure in the Aegean, was perfectly prepared to negotiate a peace with Persia, and though he was aware that his brother-in-law would oppose such a move, he was inclined agree with the general estimate of Pericles — that Athens, so long as she was prepared for war, would extend her power and influence more quickly and easily in a period of peace.

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