Eros:  under construction

Mutability, memory and memorials  [a draft in progress]

Pericles demands that the Athenians take events by the throat.  They have already conquered undreamed of amounts of territory and left memorials of themselves.

In Pericles’ last two speeches in Thucydides (2.35-46, 60-64), the theme of memory becomes powerful and moving.  The Athenian dead have procured for themselves a kind of permance, by dying in the epiphany-like moment of 2.42.4.  Note the recurring words for permanence:

2.43.2 ageron, aiei, aieimnestos
2.43.5

here Pericles poses against the fear of change and caducity his praise of permanence and stability, albeit spiritual, not physical.
 

The world of international relations is often portrayed as wholly anarchic, and Pericles presents the harshness of this world in an almost violent fashion, stressing first that chance and coincidence—terms that occur in all three of his speeches in Thucydides—are constant threats, and second that personal whim and irrationality are always present. [REDO]  For this reason, failure is a constant theme in all three speeches (the Greek very sphallomai and its relatives appear in each speech).  Again and again, Pericles says that events turn out against expectation, contrary to reason: para logon.  Hatred and envy, of Athens by others and of Pericles by Athenians, are inevitable.

This parallelism, between Athens in the international world and Pericles within the city, is reinforced at several points:

Envy

Arche

Often, Pericles seems to envision the world as a binary system, in which the forces of mind and will, of gnome and logos, are pitted against the intractable realities of events, against personal whim and irrationality.  There is nothing particularly novel about this world-view: up to a point it is shared with various Spartan leaders (Archidamus).  Men perform in a vast unfamiliar terrain, unable to predict human behavior or master the surprises of war.  The Spartan response is to elevate prudence, sophrosune, to a primary virtue, a global behavioral norm:  the ideal Spartan citizen tends to resemble the grandfather in Peter and the Wolf.

The Periclean response to this hostile world is wholly different.  First of all, he stresses the importance of intellection: "Think!" he commands.  "Think of yourselves as islanders" (2.64.3)

But thoght is not Pericles’ only response.  He also uses four other word-groups in positive senses in each of his three Thucydidean speeches:

Persuasion or conviction (peitho)
Hope (elpis)
Daring (tolma)
Risk (kindunos)

Nearly every other Greek author regards persuasion, hope, daring and risk as dangers.  Only Pericles seems to use them all in positive ways.  Each of them helps to bridge the chasm between intellect and action, enabling action at moments of uncertainty.   Thus in the Funeral Speech the Athenians subjugate the known world to their daring, (2.41.4);  they "commit to hope the uncertainty of final success,"  gladly choose "the most beautiful of risks" rather than hope for survival, showing their conviction in themselves (2.42.4).    [redo xxx]

Mutability

Again like the Spartans, Pericles recognizes that chance and change are universal and unavoidable, but in all three of his speeches he urges his audience to stand above contingency, refusing to change and urging the same course on others.  He promotes two ways of overcoming change and chance.  First, he repeats in almost incantatory fashion the two points of the imperialist credo:  land and sea are the elements we have completely subdued. Power, for Pericles, is self-justifying: none need complain if they lost to us, they fell to deserving victors (2.41.4).

Even if Athens falls, she will endure in the mind’s eye.  Over and over again, pericles uses the adverb "always" (aiei);  the praise the dead have garnered is "ageless,"  ageron epainon  (2.43.2);  their fame will always be remembered.

In each of his last two speeches (the Funeral Speech and 2.60-64) he accepts the transience of Athens’ earthly achievement, arguing forcefully that this transience is irrelevant beside the permanence of Athenian achievement in the memory of future generations.  Here, in the realm of memory, lies an immutable achievement.  Autochthonous Athens, continually inhabited from the dawn of time, will now win ageless praise, her fame will outline all momentary hatred. (2.64.5)

Thus the living will attain the same status as the dead, whose glorious death also acquired a permanent fame. If one set of parallels in this suite of speeches links Pericles and Athens, another links Athens with the heroic dead.  In this way Pericles makes the Athenian empire permanent in the mind while he admits its physical caducity, the likelihood of failure, in the real world.  He does this first by incessant and forceful repetition of the language of memory and second by setting the imperial achievement in the traditional framework of Greek gnomic poetry (see the general statements throughout the last speech, esp. in chapter 2.64—not useful for IH 51).  Appropriating this long tradition of aphoristic generalization, Pericles again urges, again and again, those most attractive of Greek alternatives to mortality: fame and glory.  In so doing he ennobles Athens, offers her a reason to go on striving, promises something to cling to in this world of change and contingency.

But if these passages are ennobling they are also chilling.  Nicole Loraux says, "the only good Athenian is a dead one."  Living Athenians are told that their "success" depends upon imitating the dead, on departing this life in a blaze of glory, trusting only in the prospect of future memory.  Is the appeal of nobility in death, then, the ultimate seduction?  Does the idealizing language of the speeches seduce not only the Athenians but scholars like us—always suckers for such talk—into buying in?

It is a truism in greek thoguht that only change is permanent.  [something here about intellect vs. mutability]

Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel 133:

Pascal called the imagination the mistress of the world.  But as he seems never to have spoken well of it, it is certain that he did not use this phrase to speak well of it. He called it the deceptive element in man, the mistress of error and duplicity and yet not always that, since there would be an infallible measure of truth if there were an infallible measure of untruth.  But being most often false, it ives no sign of its quality and indicates in the same way both the true and the false.

Pericles constantly takes into account the likelihood of failure. He mentions the overwhelming power of Athens (1.143.4, 2.41.4, 2.62.2).  But the likelihood of failure gives him all the mor reason the emphasize a "spiritualized" attitude toward Athens, her memory, intelligence, a greatness that will remain, whatever happens in the future (1.140.1).  "Even if we fail, a memory will be left over," mneme kataleipsetai,  2.64.3.  "Our fame (doxa) will last, longer than hatred," 2.64.5.

Athens’ record cannot be expunged or altered.  Conception is another key notion in all of the Periclean speeches.  "Conceive of Athens as an island, forget your land and houses, guard the sea and don’t let your anger get the better of you," [first speech, 1.140-144].

The speeches provide a web of words: the drama is fought out on the plane of language, between and within characters.