Why This Conversation Matters
Modern democracies have an uneasy (at best) relationship with exceptional leaders. We celebrate them while worrying about them. We praise political talent while distrusting anyone who seems too successful at acquiring influence. While we tell ourselves that institutions or the people matter more than individuals, yet we continue to search for men and women capable of changing history.
The Athenians wrestled with precisely the same tension; certainly they were the first to do so in a consciously democratic system, one much more democratic than our own. No figure embodies it more completely than Pericles. He spent decades shaping the destiny of democratic Athens, yet he never became a king, a tyrant, or even the holder of a permanent office, because he couldn’t be. He remained, in theory and often in practice, one citizen among thousands. How can one person lead a democracy without ceasing to be its servant? And did Pericles do that?
Throughlines
One of the pleasures of talking with Paul Cartledge is that he has spent a lifetime resisting the temptation to make the ancient world resemble our own. He is perfectly willing to explain Greek democracy, but he has no interest in pretending that it looked anything like Westminster or Washington. As we talked about Pericles, I found myself repeatedly struck by how strange Athens really was, and by how difficult it is to fit Pericles into any familiar political category.
Take the word “demagogue.” Today it is almost entirely an insult. To call someone a demagogue is to accuse him of manipulating popular opinion, flattering crowds, or appealing to prejudice rather than reason. Yet Cartledge reminds us that the Greek dēmagōgos originally meant nothing more sinister than “leader of the people.” Whether such leadership was admirable or dangerous depended less on the word itself than on what the leader did with the confidence he had earned. Somewhere along the way the office became a slur.
That small linguistic shift says something larger about democracy itself. Democracies need leaders. They cannot function without individuals capable of persuading, organizing, negotiating, and occasionally inspiring. Yet they are also suspicious of those same individuals, for the successful democratic politician always seems in danger of becoming too influential. The line between leadership and manipulation is rarely obvious while events are unfolding, and it’s clear from even the limited extant sources Pericles lived on precisely that line. He may even have enjoyed living there.
Athens was a direct democracy. There were no political parties, no permanent ministries, no elected parliament sitting throughout the year. Thousands of citizens assembled in person to debate and vote. A politician succeeded not because he commanded a bureaucracy as an executive but because, time after time, he persuaded his fellow citizens to follow his advice.
That makes Pericles all the more remarkable, because his influence rested almost entirely on reputation. Every proposal had to survive debate. Every military command required election. Every policy remained vulnerable to reversal. Even the most respected citizen governed—or remained resident in the city— only so long as other citizens wished him to do so
It is tempting, therefore, to describe Pericles as the architect of Athens. Certainly later generations often have. The Parthenon, the Long Walls, the empire, the flowering of drama and philosophy—all have become “Periclean.” Yet Cartledge repeatedly urges caution. Athenians built the Parthenon. Athenians voted the funds for building projects. Athenians maintained the empire. Pericles influenced these decisions, but influence is not quite the same thing as authorship.
One of the most revealing moments in our conversation came when we considered the counterfactual: what if Pericles had never existed? There might indeed be a Periclean-shaped hole in Athenian history, but Cartledge argues that Athens itself would still remain recognizable. That is perhaps the highest compliment one can pay both to Pericles and to Athenian democracy, although perhaps a backhanded one.
Another paradox emerged in Pericles’ private life. Publicly he championed a citizenship law restricting political membership to those born of two Athenian parents. Privately he formed a lifelong partnership with Aspasia of Miletus, a foreign woman who could never become his legal wife under the very legislation which he championed. Cartledge suggested something more interesting than simple hypocrisy. Pericles appears repeatedly as a man willing to violate social convention while defending political principle. Whether that makes him admirable or merely eccentric remains open to debate.
Perhaps the greatest surprise, however, is how little we finally know about him. The buildings survive. Thucydides preserves speeches. Plutarch collects anecdotes centuries later. Comic playwrights mock the shape of his head. But the man himself continually retreats behind the evidence. Toward the end of our conversation I asked whether this is not the fate of every biographer and every biographical subject. Cartledge agreed in part, but insisted that ancient historians face an even greater difficulty. We possess no private correspondence, no journals, no intimate reflections. We know Pericles almost entirely through the public traces he left behind.
That helps explain the haunting remark with which Cartledge concludes his biography. According to tradition, Pericles said on his deathbed that “no citizen ever put on mourning because of me.” It is an extraordinary statement, especially after a life spent directing wars, navigating political struggles, embroiling Athens in the “final conflict” with Sparta, and in a city devastated by the plague that was killing him. What did he mean? Was he claiming moderation? Defending his conscience? Reflecting on justice? We cannot know. The sentence survives, but the mind behind it remains elusive.
Perhaps that is why Pericles continues to fascinate. Not because he solves the riddle of democratic leadership, but because he embodies it. Democracies depend upon institutions, laws, assemblies, and constitutions. Yet every so often they also depend upon the judgment of particular men and women whose gifts cannot be legislated into existence. Pericles reminds us that democratic government has always required both strong institutions and exceptional citizens—and that the relationship between the two is never entirely comfortable.
Questions for Reflection
Why has the word demagogue acquired such a negative meaning when its original sense was simply “leader of the people”?
What qualities made Pericles successful within a direct democracy rather than despite it?
How does Athenian democracy differ from representative democracy in ways that affect political leadership?
Can a democracy benefit from extraordinary leaders without becoming dependent upon them?
Why are counterfactual questions—what if Pericles had never existed?—sometimes useful to historians?
What does Pericles’ relationship with Aspasia suggest about the tension between public principle and private life?
Why do some historical figures remain strangely unknowable despite extensive study?
What kinds of evidence would change our understanding of Pericles if they suddenly appeared?
Why do later generations repeatedly remake Pericles in their own image?
Does democracy ultimately depend more upon institutions or upon the character of its citizens?
For Further Investigation
Paul Cartledge, Pericles: Statesman, Demagogue, Eccentric (Reaktion, 2026)
—, Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Jennifer T. Roberts, The Plague of War: Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for Ancient Greece (OUP, 2019)
—, Herodotus: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2011)
Herodotus, Histories, translated by Walter Blanco, edited by Walter Blanco and Jennifer T. Roberts (W.W. Norton, 2013)
The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, translated by Robert Crawley, edited by Robert B. Strassler (Simon and Schuster, 1998)
Donald Kagan, The Peloponnesian War (Penguin, 2004)
Josiah Ober, The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece (Princeton University Press, 2016)
Brook Manville and Josiah Ober, The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives (Princeton, 2023)
Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk, “The Democratic Disconnect,” Journal of Democracy (July 2016)
Related Episodes
The Forgotten City: Paul Cartledge on the city of Thebes, its myths, wars, and place in the “fateful triangle” of ancient Greece
Forever War: Jennifer T. Roberts on the war between the Greeks, and its long shadow
Athens and Sparta: Adrian Goldsworthy on how the two rival Greek city-states shaped the world around them
Civic Bargain: Brook Manville and Josiah Ober on democracy, self-rule, and civic renewal
Tags
Ancient Greece • Athens • Pericles • Democracy • Peloponnesian War • Persian Wars • Classical Greece • Political History • Paul Cartledge