An Ordinary Young Athenian Aristocrat?

In the Politics, Aristotle defines the elite by a collection of characteristics that distinguishes it from the common people: good birth (eugeneia), wealth (ploutos), excellence (arete), and, finally, education (paideia). These were the various aspects, combined in different degrees, that defined social superiority in the Greek world. Pericles was clearly abundantly endowed with all those distinctive attributes. However, in a democratic context, such advantages could sometimes turn out to operate as obstacles or even handicaps. Not all forms of superiority were acceptable in themselves, but needed to adopt a form that was tolerated by the demos for fear of arousing its mistrust or even anger: in Athens, the forms taken by distinction constituted an object of implicit negotiation between members of the elite and the people.

Such compromises were evident at every level. Membership of a prestigious lineage was undeniably an advantage, provided that the people did not doubt the family's attachment to the new regime that Cleisthenes had set in place. Likewise, wealth was a blessing for anyone who wished to launch himself into political life, but only if that fortune was judged to be legitimate by the Athenians and if a considerable proportion of those riches was used to benefit the community as a whole. Finally, the asset of a refined education was of capital importance in a context in which influence was clearly associated with an ability to hold forth in the Assembly; but if that skill was employed in a thoughtless manner it could be taken for a form of cultural arrogance that the average citizen would not tolerate.

Pericles' entrance upon the Athenian political stage took place in the context of this generalized negotiation. His first dextrous steps into public life enabled him to win over the people by demonstrating that his superiority, at once genealogical, economic, and also cultural, was compatible with the democratic ideology and the practices that were taking shape.

The Trump Cards Held by the Young Pericles

Eugeneia: An Equivocal Ancestry

At the time of Pericles' birth, strictly speaking, there was in Athens no "aristocracy" in the sense of a system in which hereditary power was held by a few great families. Yet for a long time historians believed that in the Archaic period, the city was managed by a handful of lineages that monopolized all powers. In truth, however, that is a mistaken interpretation of the ancient sources, read through the deforming prism of ancient Rome. The city of Athens was, quite simply, not organized into gene. In the Archaic and the Classical periods, gene essentially designated families—or groups of families—from which the priest or priestess of a civic cult was chosen; and no more than a marginal political influence seems to have been exerted by those groups.

However, this does not mean that descent counted for nothing in early-fifth-century Athens. There were undoubtedly certain powerful families (oikiai) that played a primary role in city life. All Athenians belonged to lineages that it is possible to pick out thanks to the names borne by their members. Pericles was called "the son of Xanthippus," and his eldest son was called "Xanthippus, son of Pericles." The rules for passing a name down resulted in the eldest son acquiring the name of his paternal grandfather, thereby creating an interplay of recognizable echoes and conferring a cumulative aura upon patronyms. Pericles, the younger son of Xanthippus and Agariste, in point of fact came from a doubly prestigious line (figure 1), but was not a member of any kind of "nobility," in the sense that the word still carries today.

His father Xanthippus, son of Ariphron, led the Athenian and other Greek troops to victory in the battle of Cape Mycale, at the end of the Second Persian War. The author of the Constitution of the Athenians even calls him the "people's champion" (prostates tou demou), and his influence was considered sufficiently alarming for him to be ostracized by the Athenians in 485 B.C. However, contrary to one deeply rooted historiographical myth, he did not belong to the postulated genos of the Bouzygae: neither Herodotus nor Thucydides nor even Plutarch have anything to say about this. In reality, the belief rests upon a mistaken reading of a fragment from a comic poet, Eupolis, who had one of his characters declare: "Is there any orator that can be cited now? The best is the Bouzyges, the cursed one [aliterios]!" But, according to one ancient commentator, the poet, far from alluding to Pericles, was referring to a certain Demostratus, an orator who played a by no means negligible role in Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian War.

In truth, little is known about Xanthippus's clan except that its lineage was judged sufficiently prestigious for the Alcmaeonids to consent to give it one of their daughters in marriage (Herodotus, 6.131). So initially, it was actually through his maternal descent that Pericles came to the city's notice. The Alcmaeonids were certainly one of the most illustrious Athenian clans, but they did not constitute a genos since no hereditary priesthood was associated with them. All the same, theirs was a powerful oikos (the term used by Herodotus, 6.125.5), and that was no small matter. Their influence was already evident even before the establishment of Pisistratus's tyranny in 561 B.C. According to tradition, Alcmaeon, the eponymous ancestor of the lineage, was the first Athenian to win the chariot race at Olympia, thereby shedding glory upon his entire lineage. Then, a few years before Pericles' birth—in 508/7 B.C.—another Alcmaeonid, Cleisthenes, initiated a thorough reform of the civic organization, thereby establishing the bases of the future democratic system. And it was Agariste, the niece of Cleisthenes the lawgiver, who married Xanthippus and gave birth to Pericles.

Nevertheless, the Alcmaeonids' reputation was, to say the least, equivocal. Although they enjoyed great fame, it was to some extent of a pernicious nature: they were accused not only of being polluted (enageis) by the impiety of their ancestors but also of maintaining suspicious relations with the tyrants of Athens. The accusation of impiety, first, dated from the earliest days of Archaic Athens. In the 630s B.C., a certain Cylon, a victor in the Olympic Games, intoxicated by his success, attempted to seize power in Athens, aided by the tyrant of Megara. His attempt proved to be a lamentable failure: besieged by the Athenians, the conspirators took refuge on the Acropolis, close to the statue (agalma) of the goddess, assuming the posture of suppliants who, as such, enjoyed the protection of the gods. Having agreed to leave this sanctuary, following assurances that they would be spared, they were nevertheless massacred, at the instigation of the Alcmaeonids, who, because of this, contracted a taint that would be passed down from generation to generation.

This episode acquired an ambivalent meaning: a glorious one if the emphasis was laid upon the Alcmaeonids' opposition to tyranny, but a shaming one if it was laid upon the impiety implied by the murder of suppliants. Indeed, the Spartans had no hesitation in invoking this old story as grounds for insisting on two occasions that the Alcmaeonids, whom they judged to be embarrassing, should be exiled: the first time was in 510 B.C., when King Cleomenes demanded, successfully, that Cleisthenes be banished (Herodotus, 5.72); the second time was in 431, just before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, when the Spartans demanded, this time unsuccessfully, that Pericles be exiled (Thucydides, 1.126.2).

Over and above that original misdeed, the Alcmaeonids were also accused of maintaining equivocal links with tyrants. To be sure, on several occasions they opposed Athenian tyrants, not only at the time of Cylon's abortive attempt but also when Pisistratus seized power. Furthermore, the Alcmaeonid Cleisthenes was one of the main instigators of the fall of Hippias, the city's last tyrant, in 510 B.C. However, far from simply representing resistance to tyrants, the Alcmaeonids were associated with them through close matrimonial relations. Even after clashing with Pisistratus, the Alcmaeonid Megacles had no qualms at all about proposing his own daughter as a wife for him (Herodotus, 1.60). And it should also be said that Megacles himself had married the daughter of yet another tyrant, Cleisthenes of Sicyon, after a determined struggle to win her hand. According to Herodotus, this was the marriage that made the Alcmaeonids famous throughout the whole of Greece. Nor is that all, for Cleisthenes had not always been a fierce opponent of tyrants. Before he was exiled, he worked in close collaboration with the Pisistratids, for he had been elected archon during the period when they were in power. This smoldering reputation dogged the family right down to the Persian Wars: at the time of the Battle of Marathon, in 490, the Alcmaeonids were accused of attempting to betray their country at the point when Hippias, who had lived in exile since 510, made the most of the Persian invasion in an attempt to return to power in the city. And in the course of the years between the Persian Wars, several members of the Alcmaeonid family fell victim to the newly introduced procedure of ostracism, which was designed to remove Athenians who aimed for a return to tyranny.

This dubious notoriety is reflected in a condensed form in the story of Agariste's dream, which Herodotus relates (6.131). According to this historian, just before the birth of the future strategos, the mother of Pericles dreamed that she gave birth to a lion. If regarded as a sign sent by the gods, the dream seemed a mark of special favor, prefiguring an exceptional destiny for the child about to be born. However, this was a sign that was, to say the least, ambiguous: in the first place, because that dream evoked legends surrounding the births of certain tyrants, in particular that of Cypselus of Corinth; and second, because the dream's content was in itself equivocal. Ever since Homer, the lion had been associated with royal power and, as such, clashed seriously with the imaginary representations of democracy. In Athens, it sometimes happened that politicians were described as "the people's dogs" because they were the faithful guardians of its interests; however, they could never be compared to lions without running the risk of ostracism!

On his mother's side, then, Pericles came from a lineage that was certainly illustrious but whose fame was problematic. To invoke its prestige was to risk being reproached not only for impiety at a religious level but also for tyrannical aspirations at a political level. Within a democratic context, a prestigious birth was certainly a double-edged weapon that had to be handled very carefully indeed, humoring the people's touchiness as much as possible.

Ploutos: An Illegitimate Fortune?

Wealth too seemed an advantage for a young Athenian seeking to enter political life, but at the same time that fortune had to be regarded as legitimate by the demos. This it certainly was in Pericles' case, even if embarrassing stories continued to circulate about the lust for riches of his maternal family, the Alcmaeonids.

There can be no doubt that Pericles was rich, for he was a beneficiary of the "legitimate inheritance" that he held from his father (ton patroion kai dikaion plouton). What did this consist of? Land, essentially: the young man possessed country property as well as the house in which he lived in Athens itself. That estate was probably situated in the Cholargos deme, a few kilometers to the north of the town, and it was farmed profitably by a well-trusted slave. The size of this property must have been considerable, for at the time of the start of the Peloponnesian War, Pericles promised to hand over "his land and his farms" (ten khoran kai tas epauleis) if the Spartan king Archidamus decided to spare his properties on account of the links of hospitality by which he and Pericles were connected. Thucydides, who was a contemporary of these events, even refers to "his fields and his properties [tous de agrous tous heautou kai oikias]"—the plurals used here are significant. Young Pericles' fortune was thus shored up by the possession of land—a form of wealth that was judged to be particularly legitimate in the Athens of the early fifth century.

Another factor enables us to calculate the level of wealth that the family fortune comprised. While still a very young man, in 472 B.C., Pericles was rich enough to be expected to provide a liturgy—that is to say, a type of public service for which only the most affluent Athenians and metics were liable. In the fourth century, out of several tens of thousands of taxpayers, barely one thousand individuals were liable for liturgies; Demosthenes even declared that no more than sixty individuals contributed liturgies each year (Against Leptines [20], 21). Even if those figures represent an underestimate, they do convey some idea of the financial affluence of the young Pericles, who must certainly have been one of the pentakosiomedimnoi, the group of the richest men of Athens. Ever since the reforms attributed to Solon, the lawgiver, at the beginning of the sixth century B.C., the citizens had been divided into four census classes. These may well have been based on agricultural incomes, and the pentakosiomedimnoi constituted the very top category. The right to participate in civic institutions depended partly upon this classification, for the Council of the Areopagus was at that time open only to the two top census classes.

Wealthy though he was, Pericles had to face a number of troubling rumors about the manner in which his Alcmaeonid ancestors had acquired their fortune and had used it. An early anecdote recounted by Herodotus testifies to this latent hostility. In the mid-sixth century, Alcmaeon, son of Megacles, had assisted King Croesus when the latter went to consult the Delphic oracle. When the Lydian sovereign summoned him to Sardis in order to recompense his services, he offered him as much gold as he could carry away on his person. Thereupon, Alcmaeon had himself fitted out with made-to-measure clothes and boots that would accommodate as much gold as possible. Worse still, he had no compunction about rolling in a heap of gold powder so as to fill his hair with it, and he even stuffed his mouth with the precious metal, "resembling anything on earth rather than a human being, with his mouth crammed full and his entire body bulging." Alcmaeon consequently became a figure of fun to Croesus and thereafter also to Herodotus's readers. This anecdote portrayed the Alcmaeonids as individuals with an inexhaustible thirst for the riches obtainable from Eastern rulers, even at the cost of their dignity as citizens. Alcmaeon's attitude rebounded upon his descendants: at the end of his digression on the Alcmaeonids, Herodotus took care to remind his readers that Alcmaeon was an ancestor of Pericles, the son of Xanthippus (6.131.2).

That was not the only shady story that circulated about the Alcmaeonids' wealth. The Alcmaeonid Cleisthenes, who was rich enough to finance the reconstruction of the temple of Apollo in Delphi after this had been burned down in 548 B.C., was accused by hostile gossip (Herodotus, 5.66) of having corrupted the Delphic Pythia, bribing her with the family fortune to ensure that his lineage always received favorable oracles.

Pericles' ancestors thus formed an object of suspicion on the score not only of the origin of their fortune, but also the way that they handled it. Wealth, like birth, was an advantage that, to be effective, had to appear legitimate in the eyes of the Athenian people.

Paideia: A Rhetorical Athlete

One last element lay at the root of the superiority to which members of the Athenian elite laid claim: education (paideia). This was a capital asset that was not inherited, but acquired. Far from being innate, eloquence resulted from a lengthy apprenticeship. As one comic fragment put it, "Speaking is a gift of nature, speaking well a product of art [tekhne]." It was therefore essential to benefit from a careful—and often costly—education in order to acquire such competence as was indispensable in a democracy in which speech was playing an increasingly important role.