And yet we said, if we recollect, that the man of knowledge at least, the one who is really a statesman, would by art do many things in his practice while taking no regard to his writings, whenever he thought other things were better contrary to the rules written and sent by him to his absent subjects. (300c–d)
These similarities raise questions about the criticisms of Socrates against Pericles and the Athenian democracy, for example in the Gorgias, where Socrates accuses four of the greatest Athenian politicians, Themistocles, Kimon, Miltiades, and Pericles of “gratifying their own pleasures and the pleasures of the people” (τὸ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας ἀποπιμπλάναι καὶ τὰς αὑτοῦ καὶ τὰς τῶν ἄλλων, 503c, cf. 502e).39 In Thucydides’ portrait, on the other hand, many of Pericles’ characteristics resemble those of the ideal ruler of the Statesman and in some sense also of the philosopher-king of the Republic. For example, Pericles never spoke with a view to the pleasure of the people but was able to contradict and anger them (2.65.8).
A most important task for the ruler in the Statesman is to ensure the proper mingling of the people so that the courageous and the moderate types do not separate (310c–311a). This is to be taken literally—that the moderate should reproduce with the courageous—and also in a larger sense, that the ruler’s task is to keep a proper proportion of the virtues in the people. One of the most important differences between the current age and the golden age that preceded it, according to the myth delivered by the Stranger in the middle of the dialogue, is that the mode of birth now is different from before. In the previous age, men arose from the earth and God was their shepherd (27le–272a), while in the current age men have responsibility for their own procreation and raising of the young (274a–b).
In the Republic too, knowledge of procreation and birth is a major responsibility of the ruler, and when the ruler loses the “nuptial number” the state inevitably declines (545e–547a). Like Plato (546a), Pericles recognizes that it is in the nature of things to decay (2.64.3), but Pericles does fail to provide for his own succession, which involves a new generation of births, and when the plague kills him there is no worthy leader to follow him. His failure here is the political version of what Socrates’ says in the Protagoras is a serious flaw in Pericles’ rule:
μὴ τοίνυν ὅτι τὸ κοινὸν τῆς [319ε] πόλεως οὕτως ἔχει, ἀλλὰ ἰδίᾳ ἡμῖν οἱ σοφώτατοι καὶ ἄριστοι τῶν πολιτῶν ταύτην τὴν ἀρετὴν ἣν ἔχουσιν οὐχ οἷοί τε ἄλλοις παραδιδόναι: ἐπεὶ Περικλῆς, ὁ τουτωνὶ τῶν νεανίσκων πατήρ, τούτους ἃ μὲν διδασκάλων εἴχετο καλῶς καὶ εὖ ἐπαίδευσεν, [320α] ἃ δὲ αὐτὸς σοφός ἐστιν οὔτε αὐτὸς παιδεύει οὔτε τῳ ἄλλῳ παραδίδωσιν, ἀλλ᾽ αὐτοὶ περιιόντες νέμονται ὥσπερ ἄφετοι, ἐάν που αὐτόματοι περιτύχωσιν τῇ ἀρετῇ. εἰ δὲ βούλει, Κλεινίαν, τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδου τουτουῒ νεώτερον ἀδελφόν, ἐπιτροπεύων ὁ αὐτὸς οὗτος ἀνὴρ Περικλῆς, δεδιὼς περὶ αὐτοῦ μὴ διαφθαρῇ δὴ ὑπὸ Ἀλκιβιάδου, ἀποσπάσας ἀπὸ τούτου, καταθέμενος ἐν Ἀρίφρονος ἐπαίδευε: καὶ πρὶν ἓξ μῆνας γεγονέναι, [320β] ἀπέδωκε τούτῳ οὐκ ἔχων ὅτι χρήσαιτο αὐτῷ. (Protagoras, 319d–320b)
Not, therefore, does is that which is held in common in the city thus, but in private the wisest and best of the citizens cannot pass on this excellence which they have. Then Pericles, the father of these youngsters, was educating them nobly and well in those things that closely relate to teachers, but, on the other hand, respect to those things in which he himself is wise, he neither educated them nor did he hand them over to anyone else [to be taught], but they run around as if set loose, on the chance that somehow automatically they might happen upon excellence. And if you wish, [considering] Kleinias, the younger brother of Alcibiades here, the one for whom this same man Pericles serves as guardian, [Pericles] separated him from that one, Alcibiades, fearing concerning him lest he be ruined by Alcibiades, set him up in Ariphron’s home and educated him. And before six months were up, Ariphron gave him back to Pericles not knowing what to do with him. (Protagoras, 319d–320b)
Pericles does not educate his dependents in his own particular, that is, political, virtue (319e). The result is so bad that Pericles recognizes that under his own guardianship Kleinias, Alcibiades’ younger brother, has been morally endangered by Alcibiades’ presence, the same Alcibiades whom Pericles himself is raising. In Gorgias, Socrates raises the same question in a different form: did Pericles make the citizens better (515d–516d)? For Plato the answer is that he did not, since Socrates says that Pericles corrupted the Athenians, and they became wilder and less just under his rule (515e–516c). Therefore, he was not even a good statesman (516d), let alone a philosophical teacher.
For Plato, Pericles failed as a leader because he had less than firm control over the people, and he left no worthy successor. For Thucydides, on the other hand, Pericles appears at first as the type of the ideal ruler, and “while he lived Athens was at her greatest” (2.65.5).40 In fact, however, as Thucydides portrays the situation, real flaws—and profoundly important ones—in Pericles’ statesmanship seem to be that he did not live longer or ensure a worthy successor, develop a party with worthy contenders, or produce a constitution with a structure for orderly succession and a separation of powers. These prove in the long term to be fatal flaws, as Athens lacked any senior, moderating legislative body. Once Pericles’ personal moderation was gone, with no worthy successor and no institutional moderation force, there was no way to restrain the people. This particular shortcoming, which had developed after the reforms of Kleisthenes, had been exacerbated by the measures of Ephialtes and his junior partner Pericles, and then continued unresolved during the ascendancy of Pericles as strategos from 446 BC until his death.41 The rise of the office of the strategos coincided roughly with the career of Pericles, though as we saw earlier, it began with Themistocles before the second Persian invasion.
It is remarkable that Thucydides presents the government of Athens under Pericles as a relationship of the one to the many, but the presentation seems to reflect the actual facts of his rule as Thucydides presents them. This is also, as the abstract version of the failure to provide a successor or moderating institutional power, Pericles’ great weakness, which was not readily apparent while he was alive because of the high level of his personal qualities. In addition, however, just as he does not educate his children, so he educates the people insufficiently, since he does not create laws as educators of a constitutional structure that would lead the people toward moderation.42 To repeat an earlier point, Thucydides is clear as to his view of the actual structure of the rule of Athens: “What was in word a democracy was becoming in deed rule (arche) by the first man” (2.65.9, translation mine). The plague exposes this and the other weaknesses in the polis. Then Pericles’ death and the subsequent failure of Athens to allow a leader of equal stature to arise at last set the state on a path to ruin (2.65.10, 12). It is ironic that the plague first attacked Athens in the Piraeus, the vital center of her naval dominance and the epitome of her technical superiority (2.48.2). Piraeus and the fleet were for Themistocles the center of Athens’ power (1.93.7), and Themistocles is for Thucydides the prototypical