Pericles
We call it the "Golden Age"—the period during the 5th century
B.C. when the Greek city-state of Athens experienced a cultural
flowering of extraordinary power and importance for Western
culture.
It is a period that still calls to us, still echoes, as we read the
plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides; gaze at architectural
wonders like the Parthenon; consider the wisdom passed down
from Socrates and Plato; or, perhaps most of all, consider the
origins of our own democracy.
The Age of Pericles uses the career of the leading Athenian
politician and general from c. 450–429 B.C. as a prism through
which to view this brief but remarkable era, and to ask why that
echo has persisted for so long.
In the generation that followed Pericles’s appearance on the
public stage shortly after the Persian wars, Athens rapidly
transformed the alliance of Greek states—an alliance first
created as a defense against the Persians—into a true Aegean
empire, dominated by the Athenians and their mighty navy.
But this dramatic increase in military power, cultural influence,
and prestige was also accompanied by something unique: the
growth of full participatory democracy.
This course examines the daily workings of that democracy and
the whole of Athenian culture, including:
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how Athenians were trained for citizenship
what Athenian democracy actually meant in practice
the profound role of religion in Athenian life.
Were there Stains on the "Golden Age"?
But in examining the lives of Athenian men and women, this
course also confronts aspects of the "Golden Age" whose echoes
are far less glorious. It asks, for example, what freedom and
autonomy really meant to a society that relied on slaves and
was ruthless in its treatment of its subjects.
To answer this and other questions, the course constantly
juxtaposes the striking accomplishments of Athenian culture in
such fields as philosophy, tragedy, comedy, sculpture, and
architecture with its equally striking flaws, including:
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the exclusion of women from public life
Athenian reliance on slavery, including the abuse of those
slaves
the cruel treatment of other Greek populations.
In following Athens from the height of its power to its defeat at
the hands of the far different Greek city-state of Sparta, these
lectures produce a portrait of a complex people and a
complicated culture whose ties to our own civilization are not
casual, but deeply meaningful.
The Living Dialogue that is History
Gandhi was once asked what he thought of Western civilization,
notes Professor Jeremy McInerney. He replied that he thought it
would be a ‘good idea.’
"In the world after September 11, we have come to realize that
there are those who loathe and despise everything Western,"
says Professor McInerney. "If that is so, then it is worth asking,
‘What is valuable in Western culture?’
"The Greeks demand that we learn about our own history, the
roots that connect us to the past, the avenues by which the past
has become the present. If our culture has real meaning, and if
notions of justice, freedom, and equality are to be a reality, then
we cannot live in a vacuum in which history is forgotten. We
have to be aware of the past and engage with the living dialogue
that is history."
The "Right" of Freedom?
As he leads you through daily life in Athens, Professor
McInerney not only weaves in the underlying beliefs that drove
those daily events, but also draws analogies with contemporary
ideas and events to reveal how we are both like and unlike those
ancient Athenians.
He reveals, for example, the origins of British common law in
the archives of Athens as he explores some of the legal testimony
left behind by the Athenians.
He also compares our conception of the term freedom with what
the Greeks understood it to be, including the role of their
stunning victory over the Persians in helping to amplify that
understanding.
And if you are surprised to learn that the ancient Athenians—
whom so many of us idealize as the spotless source of our ideas
about democracy—considered freedom to be simply a status, and
not a right at all, you’ll likely be even more surprised to learn
what comes next, for one of the Athenians’ most important
philosophical justifications for slavery was penned by, of all
people, Aristotle.
Equally troubling to our contemporary ears, though hardly
unexpected in the ancient world, was the position occupied by
women, no matter how high on the social ladder.
Much of that becomes clear in Professor McInerney’s argument
that Aspasia, the long-term mistress of Pericles—what we would
consider his common-law wife—and mother of his son, was never
a prostitute, as her origins are commonly portrayed.
Dr. McInerney uses the famous case of a woman named Neaera
to show how many different forces (particularly the concerns of
property and citizenship, including Pericles’s own role in
redefining the latter) combined to sharply limit the role of
women in ancient Athens. One of the most striking examples of
that came in the famous funeral oration given by Pericles to
honor the fallen of the first year of the Peloponnesian War
against Sparta.
In an address otherwise remembered as an expression of the
ideal of moderation—and perhaps the closest thing we have to a
statement of the ideology of classical Athens—Pericles also
reveals that for Athenian men, a public image was a source of
pride, while for women such an image was cause for shame, as it
went against the idea that women should be only in the
background.
A Window on Ancient Athens
This well-rounded portrait of almost every aspect of Athenian
life during the Golden Age includes:
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The different ways Athens and Sparta raised their
children. Including the Spartan practice of giving girls
only the lightest of garments, the idea being to inure them
to the cold to make them healthy and vigorous enough to
raise the next generation of Spartans.
The fate of Athenian girls as mothers and managers of the
household. Their figures on pottery have lighter skin—
evidence of a life properly spent indoors—while Athenian
boys received an intensely rich education.
Young Pericles's role in bringing Aeschylus’s masterpiece,
The Persians, to the stage, what it meant to his own career,
and what it said about the obligations of the very rich in
Athens
Why did Spartans reject the aid of Athens in putting down
a slave revolt? The public humiliation over the rejection
later led to the 10-year banishment of Cimon, the leading
politician in Athens.
Solon, the Athenian lawgiver, introduced reforms
including an important shift to wealth—which could be
acquired—rather than birth as the determining factor of
one’s place in Athenian society.
Examining Thucydides’s terrifying description of the
Plague’s physical and social impact on Athens—including
the death of Pericles—and its possible role in the ultimate
defeat of Athens by Sparta.
Athenians organized their busy lives around two distinct
calendars, secular and religious; discover the Panathenaea,
an extraordinary festival and procession that honored
Athena. As one scholar has described that special day, "The
city would have been resounding to the bellowing of cattle
being dragged off to their slaughter. The acropolis, by the
end of the day, would have been drenched in blood, flowing
all over the rock, from the animals that had had their
throats cut."
An Obsession with Property
The Athenians were obsessed with protecting the value of a
family’s property, and laws about marriage and inheritance
created constant legal manoeuvring.
Professor McInerney outlines the detailed record of a legal case
that gives us a glimpse of the actual property and real goods of a
well-to-do Athenian family, and the role of slavery in sustaining
those families in their wealth.
He also describes Greek ideas about death and the way to honor
both ordinary citizens and fallen heroes, including mourning
processions that became so overwhelming that laws had to be
passed to limit their size and cost; terracotta tubes leading into
a burial mound to permit blood libations to be offered to the
spirits; and the possibility that the bones brought back to Athens
by Cimon—which he claimed to be those of Theseus, slayer of the
Minotaur—might have been those of a dinosaur.
Art in the Age of Pericles
You examine the details of how some of the greatest plays of the
Athenian stage were brought to life, such as:
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Prometheus hurling defiance at the gods after giving fire
to mankind in Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound
the surprising interpretation Professor McInerney gives to
Euripides’s Medea, revealing deeper meanings than those
of the traditional reading of "Hell hath no fury"
the vigour and openness of Athenian comedy, in which no
subject and no person, no matter how powerful, was above
criticism and the most pointed satire imaginable.
A "Complex, Complicated Civilization"
The Age of Pericles tells the story of a time and people to whom
we are inextricably bound. As Professor McInerney notes, "the
Greeks established democracy, valued the rule of law, and
articulated definitions of freedom and virtue. At the same time
they owned slaves, denied women a public voice, and asserted
their racial superiority.
"They were a complex, complicated civilization, and we are
their descendants. These lectures examine that relationship,
exploring much that was good and bad in the Golden Age of
Pericles. By engaging with the Greeks, we may come to
understand our own world more fully."