The historian Thucydides, a fifth century Athenian, compared his native city with its foremost Greek rival, Sparta, in this way:
Suppose the city of Sparta to be deserted, and nothing left but the temples and the ground-plan, distant ages would be very unwilling to believe that the power of the Spartans was at all equal to their fame. Whereas, if the same fate befell the Athenians, the ruins of Athens would strike the eye, and we should infer their power to have been twice as great as it really is.
Yet Athens was not always a city of great public buildings and magnificent temples. The Athens that repelled the Persian expeditionary force at Marathon in 490 B.C. was little more than a collection of mud-brick and fieldstone houses huddled at the base of the Acropolis, an imposing fortress mound of sheer rock cliffs and reinforced embankments, surmounted by a largely wooden stockade.
In 480 B.C., Xerxes, the King of Persia and of all Asia Minor, sent a massive army across the Hellespont to punish the Athenians and to subdue the other cities of Greece. As the Persian army came swooping down on Athens from the north, most Athenians fled from their city by ship, seeking refuge on nearby islands. A few elected to remain in the city, along with some of the priests. These barricaded themselves on the Acropolis behind the wooden walls. The historian Herodotus records the unhappy outcome:
The Persians encamped over against the Acropolis on the hill that the Athenians call the Areopagos and began the siege in the following way: wrapping their arrows in rags, which they then set on fire, they shot these against the wooden stockade, so that the besieged were betrayed by their own defenses. Nevertheless, though pushed to the extreme, the Athenians continued to hold out, so that Xerxes was long at a loss as to how to capture them. At length, a way out of the difficulty was discovered by the barbarian. At the edge of the rock, behind the gates and the entrance, where no guard was set, since no one expected that any man could climb up there, some succeeded in making the ascent, despite the sheer steepness of the spot.
When the Athenians beheld them already up, some hurled themselves over the wall and so perished, while others sought refuge in the inner room of the temple. But the Persians who had made the ascent turned first to the gates and after they had opened these, massacred the refugees. Then, when all were laid low, they plundered the temple and fired all the hilltop. Thus Xerxes became complete master of Athens.
The Oracle at Delphi had admonished the Athenians "to put their trust in wooden walls", and so it was that Themistocles persuaded the Athenians to sail against the Persian navy. In a remarkable sea-battle, the more maneuverable Athenian flotilla won a brilliant victory over the densely massed Persian ships in the narrow straits of Salamis.
Shortly thereafter, the combined Greek army, under the generalship of the Spartan commander Pausanias, met and defeated the invading Persian army at Plataea. Before going into battle, the participating Greeks swore an oath, which the ancient orators represented as follows:
I will not set life before freedom, nor will I desert my leaders alive or dead, but I will give burial to all the allies who die in the battle. And having conquered the barbarians in the war, I will not raze to the ground any city that has fought in defense of Greece, but all those who have chosen the barbarian's side I will tithe. And I will not rebuild any of the temples that have been burnt and destroyed by the barbarians, but I will let them be left as a memorial to those who come after of the sacrilege of the barbarians.
When the Athenians returned to their homes in the winter of 479 B.C., they found a rubble heap in place of a town. Except for a few brief stretches, the walls of the city had been pulled down; the houses lay in utter ruin; the shrines and temples had been burnt and their dedications either broken up or carried off. Even the public cemetery had been despoiled. Before the invasion, to celebrate their astounding victory over the Persians at Marathon, the Athenians had begun to erect a new Temple of Athena on the Acropolis. The Persians had leveled the new construction to its foundation. Keeping in spirit with the Oath of Plataea, the Athenians incorporated the ruined drums of the wrecked columns into the restored wall of the Acropolis, giving them a prominent position overlooking the city, as a kind of war memorial. The Athenians rebuilt their houses along the same narrow, winding lanes that had been used before. The houses themselves were kept simple. Whatever remained of the sanctuaries and temples and of the fortress walls were hurriedly patched. There was no attempt to reconstruct on a grand scale.
In the years that followed the expulsion of the Persian army from mainland Greece, the Athenians forged an alliance of Greek cities, located in and around the Aegean, whose purpose was to contain Persian aggression. This alliance was known as the Delian League because it was headquartered on the island of Delos, sacred to the Greeks as the birthplace of Apollo. The members of the Delian League made yearly contributions to the cause, either in ships or in money. Most were content to contribute money, allowing Athens to furnish the fleet. As a result, Athens more and more came to dominate League affairs.
In 454 B.C., a League expedition to liberate Egypt from Persian rule was surrounded, besieged, and captured. More than 250 ships were lost. Fearing a possible Persian raid, the League treasury, consisting of some 9,700 talents, was moved from the Temple of Apollo on Delos to the Temple of Athena on the acropolis in Athens. Few cities protested at the time; but in 451 B.C., a League expedition to Cyprus succeeded in administering a decisive defeat to the Persians. In the following year, the Athenians and their allies concluded a treaty of peace with Persian which, according to Diodoros, stipulated the following: All the Greek cities in Asia are to live under laws of their own making; the satraps of the Persians are not to come nearer to sea than a three day journey, and no Persian warship is to sail into the Aegean. With the situation in the Aegean finally stabilized, the reasons for continuing the Delian League began to dissolve in the minds of the Athenian allies. Not surprisingly, contributions were immediately suspended. Thus Athenian domination over Aegean affairs was threatened, for with the collapse of the League, Athenian political and commercial power would more than likely vanish into the depths of the sea.
The Athenian general and politician Pericles, foreseeing the imminent decline of Athenian power, proposed a remedy. First, as Plutarch records, he persuaded the Athenians:
to summon all the Greeks in what part so ever, whether of Europe or Asia, every city, little as well as great, to send their deputies to Athens to a general assembly, or convention, there to consult and advise concerning the Greek temples which the barbarians had burnt down, and the sacrifices which were due from them upon vows they had made to their gods for the safety of Greece when they fought against the barbarians; and also concerning the navigation of the sea, they might henceforward all of them pass to and fro and trade securely and be at peace among themselves.
Nothing was effected of this embassy, nor did the cities meet by their deputies, as was desired; the Spartans, as it is said, underhandedly crossing the design, and the attempt being disappointed and baffled first in Peloponnesus.
Frustrated by the universal rejection of the proposed Panhellenic conference, the Athenians thereupon met among themselves to decide what course to steer. Pericles dominated the assembly of 449 B.C. He persuaded the Athenians to pursue a two-fold policy. With regard to foreign affairs, Athens would continue to maintain the Delian League, by force if necessary. Enough money would be set aside to maintain the Aegean war fleet and to add ten ships each year. Pericles reasoned that if Athens continued to provide the navy required by the terms of the Delian League for the purpose of maintaining freedom of the seas, she was entitled to use any surplus money as she saw fit.
With regard to domestic policy, Athens would embark upon a large scale building program. Five thousand talents would be drawn from the League funds, now held in the treasury of Athens, to finance the new construction. Plutarch lists the Periclean building enterprises as: (1) the Parthenon, (2) the statue of Athena Parthenos, (3) the Propylaia, (4) the Odeion, (5) the Telesterion at Eleusis, (6) the middle Long Wall. To this list modern scholarship has added (7) the Corn Stoa in the Piraeus, a purely functional building designed for the storage and sale of corn, (8) the Lykeion gymnasium, and (9) an unknown construction called simply "the Spring House."
Pericles' building program did not please every Athenian. The aristocratic party, led by the politician Thucydides, fought it in the Assembly. As Plutarch concedes:
That which gave most pleasure and ornament to the city of Athens, and the greatest admiration and even astonishment to all strangers, was Pericles' construction of the public and sacred buildings. Yet this was that of all his actions in the government which his enemies most looked askance upon and caviled at in the popular assemblies, crying out how that the city of Athens had lost its reputation and was ill-spoken of abroad for removing the common treasure of the Greeks from the isle of Delos, and how that 'Greece cannot but resent it as an insufferable affront, and consider herself to be tyrannized over openly, when she sees the treasure, which was contributed by her upon a necessity for the war, wantonly lavished out by us upon our city, to gild her all over, and to adorn and set her forth, as it were some vain woman, hung round with precious stones and figures and temples, which cost a world of money.
The democratic implications of Pericles' building program are obvious. Such an enormous expenditure of League funds on Athenian buildings constituted for the whole of Athenian society a massive public works program financed from abroad. Not only did the common citizens of Athens benefit, but foreign artisans from every part of Greece were drawn to the city. To return once again to Plutarch's account:
The materials were stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony, cypress wood; and the arts or trades that wrought and fashioned them were smiths and carpenters, moulders, founders and bronze-workers, stone-cutters, dyers, goldsmiths, silver-workers, painters, embroiderers, embossers; those again that conveyed them to the town for use, merchants and mariners and ship-masters by sea, and by land, cartwrights, cattle-breeders, wagoners, rope-makers, flax-workers, shoemakers and leather-dressers, road-makers, miners. And every trade in the same nature, as a captain in an army has its particular company of soldiers under him, had its own hired company of journeymen and laborers belonging to it banded together as in array, to be as it were the instrument and body for the performance of the service. Thus, to say all in a word, the occasions and services of these public works distributed plenty through every age and condition.
The entire building program could only be supported as long as Pericles continued to have the people of Athens behind it. The Assembly maintained its control by appointing a committee of five overseers each year while the work was carried on. They kept records of the money voted for the temple and the statue and how it was spent; they were responsible to the Assembly. The Assembly voted funds at the beginning of each year, and at the end reviewed how they had been spent. After the annual accounts had been approved, they were carved on stone slabs, fragments of which survive to this day.
Plutarch recites an anecdote that says a good deal about how Pericles manipulated the conflicting desires of his own party for economy and national recognition.
When the orators were at one time crying out, as their custom was, against Pericles, as one who squandered away the public money, and made havoc of the state revenues, he rose in the open assembly and put the question to the people, whether they thought that he had laid out much; and they saying, 'Too much, a great deal,' 'Then,' said he, 'since it is so, let the cost not go to your account, but to mine; and let the inscription upon the buildings stand in my name.' When they heard him say thus, whether it were out of a surprise to see the greatness of his spirit or out of emulation of the glory of the works, they cried aloud, bidding him to spend on, and lay out what he thought fit from the public purse, and to spare no cost, till all were finished.
Once the policy was initiated, Pericles' political opponents kept up their attack, both public and personal. Pericles remained ever on the defensive. In time, he was forced into defending Phidias, the chief sculptor, against charges of embezzlement. He was criticized by the comic poets for not hastening the completion of the middle Long Wall. And he was ridiculed by them for the innovative shape of the Odeion, which perhaps too closely mimicked Persian taste. His political foes did manage to fasten the unflattering sobriquet, "the New Peisistratids," on Pericles and his allies for their ambitious building program, after the deposed Peisistratid dynasty who had also sponsored public construction projects in the days before the Persian invasion.
As important as the building program was to strengthen and enrich the Athenian masses and to virtually assure Pericles of the supreme leadership of the burgeoning democratic party, it served a far more important purpose with respect to Athenian foreign policy. This can only be seen if one contemplates the international situation facing Athens at the time.
First of all, it is an acknowledged doctrine that a world naval power cannot afford to allow a rival or a combination of rivals to share the seas as equals, which means that any nation that aspires to secure and unimpeded maritime commerce must maintain a fleet larger than any one rival or any possible combination of rivals. It is a great expense to maintain a ready war fleet. The cost of maintaining a fleet large enough to patrol the Aegean could not reasonably be borne by one Greek city. Thus the Delian League was required to support the Aegean fleet, each member's contribution being apportioned according to size and wealth.
From time to time, various members, feeling the constraint of necessity or simply desiring to throw off the burdensome obligations of support, attempted to avoid payments. Obviously, if one city could escape payment by alleging a specious reason, others would quickly follow suit and the League would collapse. Athens resorted to force to hold the League together and to punish those cities that refused payment. Those cities that were subdued by force and those that wished to leave the League but dared not, all felt tyrannized by Athens.
This is not to say that Athens did not benefit from her position as leader of the Delian League. She most certainly did. No ports were closed to Athenian merchants. None dared to close their ports to so powerful an ally. Consequently, Athenian trade and commerce flourished. The Athenian middle class grew rapidly in size and political influence. Any politician who chose to align himself with the newly developing middle class could not advocate a policy that threatened to constrict Athenian trade. Pericles prudently realized that Athenian dominance of the Aegean must be maintained at any cost.
There was a further consideration of no less importance. Once Athenian hegemony ended, once the Delian League dissolved, those cities that had chafed under Athenian dominance would seek revenge. To abandon the League would be to invite backlash. Athens had the wolf by the ears and could not let go. Thucydides has Pericles admit as much:
You are bound to maintain the imperial dignity of your city in which you all take pride; for you should not covet the glory unless you will endure the toil. And do not imagine that you are fighting about a simple issue, freedom or slavery; you have an empire to lose, and there is the danger to which the hatred of your imperial rule has exposed you. Neither can you resign your power, if at this crisis, any timorous or inactive spirit is for thus playing the honest man. For by this time your empire has become a tyranny which in the opinion of mankind may have been unjustly gained, but which cannot be safely surrendered.
Pericles' building policy must be viewed as a vital instrument of his foreign policy. Once the Persian threat had passed with the signing of the Treaty of Kallias in 450/449 B.C., the reasons for continued support of Athenian hegemony by Athens' Aegean allies all but vanished. Continued Athenian domination would appear unjust in the eyes of the world. Athens had to supply a new rationale for hegemony, and the rationale provided by Pericles was the natural superiority of Athens herself as made manifest in her resplendent appearance.
Two facts make clear the international intention of the Periclean building program. In the first place, the building program aimed principally at embellishing the religious cults of Athena, Demeter, and Dionysos. These cults were identified with Athens, but they also appealed to outsiders. The festivals of Athena, Demeter, and Dionysos had acquired a following throughout Greece and drew observers from all over the world. The Parthenon and the new Propylaea would provide a spectacular setting for the conclusion of the Panathenaic procession. Likewise, the Odeion, or music hall, was designed to revive the musical contests, which added intellectual variety to the festival activities that elsewhere concentrated heavily on athletics. Set next to the Theater of Dionysos in its new position on the southeastern slope of the Acropolis, the Odeion could also be used during the Dionysian festival. It is obvious that Pericles' building program was designed to enhance the Panhellenic appeal of Athenian culture.
In the second place, Pericles quite deliberately slighted the old Athena Polias temple, which housed the holiest object in Athens, the wooden statue of Athena. Instead of refurbishing this small temple, he fixed upon erecting a new temple of Athena on the basis of the one that had been commenced just prior to the Persian invasion and whose foundations were still extant. In size and function the temple of Athena Polias did not appeal to Pericles for it simply would not serve his overriding political purpose. It was outclassed by temples elsewhere in Greece, especially by the temple of Zeus at Olympia. Moreover, the temple of Athena Polias was identified with numerous local cults, none of which were likely to evoke the veneration of non-Athenians.
Only by having her allies accede to her natural superiority could Athens hope to avoid a constant appeal to force to keep her empire in order. To quote from Pericles' Funeral Oration:
For in the hour of trial Athens alone among her contemporaries is superior to the report of her. No enemy who comes against her is indignant at the reverses which he sustains at the hands of such a city; no subject complains that his masters are unworthy of him.