Aristides The Just, and the Rise of Athens - Pt 2
On the underappreciated figure at the center of Athen's rise to prominence, at the start of the Athenian Golden Age
Part One of this series introduced one of the most underrated figures in classical history, and ended with Aristides praying that the Athenians wouldn’t have reason to regret their decision to ostracize him for ten years.
As events turned out, the Athenians regretted their decision enough to recall Aristides, but also soon enough for him to be of service once more. In 480 BC, After the Battle of Thermopylae and as Xerxes’ huge armada bore down on Attica, the Athenians evacuated to the island of Salamis. Short on food and with the Peloponnesian Greeks wanting to abandon Attica and fortify the Isthmus of Corinth, Themistocles secretly sent a letter to Xerxes encouraging the Persians to sail around Salamis to trap the Greek fleet and keep it from escaping, thereby forcing the rest of the Greeks to stay and fight whether they wanted to or no. It was Aristides who, slipping through the Persian blockade, arrived on Salamis to break the news of the Persian encirclement to the Greek commanders. According to Herodotus, Aristides:
“Summoned Themistokles to come out, though he was no friend of his but in fact had been his worst enemy. Because of the magnitude of their present evils, however, he forced himself to forget the past and summoned Themistokles, wishing to converse with him.”1
The reconciliation with Themistocles undoubtedly helped smooth over the political factions within Athens, and strengthened Themistocles’ negotiating position with the other Greek city-states. Plutarch and Herodotus both indicate that Aristides clearly gave his support to Themistocles’ leadership amongst the rest of the Greeks.
During the battle of Salamis, the Greek fleet turned the narrow channel waters around Salamis into a charnel house, using their heavier triremes to smash into the more maneuverable Persian ships in a straight slug-fest. The Persians, (many of whose ships were actually Phoenician, Egyptian, or even Greek) under the towering gaze of the Great King enthroned on a hill overlooking the battle, had jammed themselves into the confined waters around Salamis far too eagerly, and soon lost all semblance of station-keeping between ships. So many wrecks washed up on shore than an oracle about local Greek women doing their meat-roasting on oars was fulfilled.2
Less well-known, however, is the fact that Aristides sailed to the small island of Psyttaleia in the middle of the channel, landed there with a force of Hoplites, and proceeded to kill every Persian they found.3 Clearing Psyttaleia prevented its use as a collection point for the fleeing Persians, and served as a refuge for damaged Greek ships and men thrown overboard. The Ancient Greeks traditionally erected a Trophy (“tropaion,” literally, the “turning point”) at the critical spot where a battle had been won or lost, and at Salamis, the Trophy was erected on Psyttaleia.4 Doubtless, Psyttaleia was chosen as the closest spot to the exact patch of ocean where the Persians had been defeated. Just as at Marathon, Aristides had found himself right in the center of things.
After Salamis, the Persian armada broke up, with Xerxes and the bulk of the fleet returning home (believe it or not, Xerxes likely managed to present the whole campaign as a great victory and demonstration of Persian power. He had, after all, burned Athens, the nominal goal of the campaign). Xerxes left behind, however, his general Mardonius and much of the Persian army, in order to consolidate Persia’s gains in Northern and Central Greece. Much of Greece outside of Attica and the Peloponnesus, had in fact submitted to Persia relatively quickly, making ritual gifts of earth and water to Persian ambassadors.5 It’s not widely appreciated that in the coming battle of Plataea, much of the heaviest fighting would feature Greek hoplites fighting against each other.
As the Plataea campaign shifted things back to the land in 479 BC, Themistocles’ drops out of much of the action for a while, and Aristides instead steps to the forefront. Aristides, evidently much better trusted by the Greek allies, played a role in negotiating forces for the coming campaign with Sparta, and was elected general of 8,000 Athenian hoplites.6 At Plataea, he would be the Athenian ground commander, and would tactfully diffuse several different potential crises amongst the allies (the Greeks, as a whole, were incredibly fractious, as each city-state guarded its liberty jealousy, and invariably had age-old grievances and mutual suspicions with various rivals).
Before the battle, Aristides caught wind of a potential plot from several disaffected Athenian aristocrats who were considering joining the Persians. Aristides quietly arrested the ring-leaders, and allowed the others to save face by looking the other way, avoiding a larger crisis.7 Next, when preparing for the battle itself, the Tegaeans and Athenians argued over which city would get pride of place on the left-hand side of the line, opposite the Spartans on the far right (this may sound silly to modern readers, but Greek armies put a great deal of honor on who lined up where, as it determined prestige and rank of order. Military expediency played little role in Sparta taking first place on the right-hand side). Aristides, making a weapon out of bravery and humility at the same time, publicly intervened in the dispute and declared that:
“Valour is not taken away from a man, nor is it given him, by his position in the line. Whatsoever post ye shall assign to us, we will endeavour to maintain and adorn it, and so bring no disgrace upon the contests we have made before. We are come, not to quarrel with our allies, but to do battle with our foes; not to heap praises on our fathers, but to show ourselves brave men in the service of Hellas.”8
Naturally, the rest of the army was so impressed that they awarded the prestigious left-hand spot to the Athenians.
The Battle of Plataea was a confused mess that could easily have fallen apart for the Greeks multiple times. Suffice it to say here that, at the most critical points, the Spartans engaged the Persians directly, killing Mardonius himself, while the Athenians defeated the Thebans (Thebes was traditionally one of the leading and most powerful cities in Greece, after Athens and Sparta itself).9 After the battle, the Spartans and Athenians started arguing over who deserved to erect the victory trophy and where, and Plutarch claims that they might have come to blows, had not Aristides interjected again, and put the matter to the rest of the army to judge. A prudent Corinthian general suggested the plucky Plataeans should get the trophy and the prize for valor, and the compromise satisfied everyone’s honor.10
With the Persians broken in Greece, the war moved North and East, as the Greeks looked to scour the Persians from the entire Aegean. A joint allied force headed towards the Hellespont. As the traditional great land power of Greece, the Spartans were supposed to be in overall command under their king Pausanias, but due to Pausanias’ arrogance and heavy-handedness, and Aristides’ just and tactful diplomacy, the Athenians quickly emerged as the leaders among the rest of the Greek allies. According to Plutarch, “before the Lacedaemonians were aware, not by means of hoplites or ships or horsemen, but by tact and diplomacy he [Aristides] had stripped them of the leadership.”11 Before long, Pausanias would completely wear out his welcome and, back in Sparta, be indicted on charges of corruption and Medizing by the Persian Ephors. Gradually, Sparta disengaged itself from the expeditionary war against Persia, and attempted to return to its traditional non-interventionism outside of the Peloponnese. In Sparta’s absence, Athens naturally emerged as the new leader of the anti-Persian allies.
The Hellenic alliance against Persia had been an ad hoc affair initially. Now, a sort of Aegean NATO emerged,12 as the Greeks debated plans for a permanent alliance with member states contributing money and ships. The members of the new league met at Delos in the Aegean in 477 BC, where each ambassador dropped an iron bar into the ocean and swore their eternal membership to the new Delian League. The key figure helping negotiate much of the details, and traveling out to each member state in order to assess and fix their contribution amount was, of course, Aristides. Plutarch claims that the allied states voluntarily asked Aristides to assess them and fix their tribute amounts, and that his assessments were far lower and more just than the later dramatic increases imposed by the Athenians, as the Delian League turned into an Athenian naval empire.13 Naturally, Aristides returned from his expeditions to visit the allies no less poor than he had been to begin with. Much later, the text of the Peace of Nicias in 421 BC (which temporarily halted the Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta), as recorded by Thucydides, refers to Athenian allies as paying “the tribute of Aristides.”14
For over fifty years Athens became the leading power in Greece. At the head of the Delian League, Athenian naval power swept the Persians from the Aegean and sent naval expeditions as far away as Egypt. Athenian colonies and trading ports in the Aegean and Black Sea supplied Athens with grain, secure behind her famous Long Walls. Under the leadership of Pericles, who built the definitive version of the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis (mostly with funds from the League treasury, which he conveniently relocated from Delos in 454 BC), Athens would reach the height of her greatness. In Thucydides’ Funeral Oration, Pericles would boast “that as a city we are the school of Hellas; while I doubt if the world can produce a man, who…is equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility as the Athenian.”15 This would be the Golden Age of Athens, and the list of Athenian politicians, poets, playwrights, artists, historians, and philosophers during this period is a litany of creative genius with few rivals in history. If Pericles could claim that “we have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring,”16 then the foundations of that highway were laid down by duplicitous genius of Themistocles, and the honest word of Aristides.
Thucydides wrote near the end of the 5th century BC, and his references to Aristides (who pops up in a minor diplomatic role supporting Themistocles’ deception of the Spartans during the construction of the Long Walls) are almost the latest one we get from a classical era primary source. the legislation that granted state funds to Aristides’ children was put forward by none other than Alcibiades, one of the most memorable Athenians of all time. Plato mentions Aristides a few times in passing in several dialogues (for instance, the Gorgias), generally to hold up Aristides as an example of a great man of rare virtue and leadership.17 Finally, according to Plutarch, Aristotle, in a lost work called “On Nobility of Birth,” relates that Aristides’ granddaughter Myrto became the second wife of Socrates.18 Yes, that Socrates.
It’s rather extraordinary to see one man connected with so many pivotal events in Athenian history. Even though Aristides rarely emerges as a decisive figure in charge of grand events, his ability to be close to the pivotal moment of action over and over again is astonishing. One is reminded a bit of Churchill’s career, managing to get captured during the Boer War, serve as First Lord of the Admiralty in two separate World Wars, then become Prime Minister during World War II and again in the 1950’s. George Washington also comes to mind, so closely bound up in events from the French and Indian War, all the way through to the Constitutional Convention and first Presidency. In fact, Aristides and Washington have further similarities, in that both were chosen over and over again for leadership positions based primarily on their temperaments and personal virtues of character. Washington didn’t really distinguish himself as a great commander (defined by battlefield victories at least) or lawgiver (his Presidency wasn’t noted for many great legislative accomplishments). Instead, Washington repeatedly demonstrated character such that people simply wanted him in command. Aristides appears to be similar similar, and I think this type of “great leader” is arguably rarer than a general, conqueror, or political founder. I also wonder if it is harder to cultivate.
We so often think of honesty and integrity in statesmen as liabilities which might have to be compromised towards Machiavellian ends, but Aristides managed to turn his reputation for honesty into his greatest asset, gaining trust and loyalty that gradually won him higher and higher responsibilities and honor. Understandably, we often dismiss politics as a grubby process beholden to cynicism and sold honor. Against cynicism and guile, we frequently hold up pure virtue and honesty as goods in and of themselves, and admonish students to pursue them in spite of the possible costs to worldly power and reputation. Virtue must be willing to sign its own name on an ostrakon sometimes.
But, in the right circumstances, where open and rules-based communities align individual self-interest with the common good, honesty and integrity are in fact genuine assets, as any business or institution that cares about protecting its brand name and reputation can attest. It may well be that “great” men often overshadow honest men, because pride and ambition demand attention and attempt to outshine all rivals, as with Themistocles. But so many tragic outcomes in history often turn on the failure of a leader’s moral courage, leading to a betrayal or collapse in trust between allies or friends. Aristides’ career was filled with moments where an aggrandizing or ambitious leader with even more talent, might have destroyed his city.
If great generals and compromised politicians are over-represented in the historical record, then custodians of history ought to consider looking for more examples such as Aristides to highlight, especially as students and young careerists are naturally drawn towards more towards the generals and politicians to begin with. In a future essay, I plan to look at how and why the historical record probably underrates the prevalence of "passive” virtue, in favor of active accomplishment.
I am indebted to Plutarch for so much of the content in this essay, and so we might as well give him the last word. Musing on why so few men pursue justice and virtue instead of conquering epithets, Plutarch notes that, of the features of divinity (immortality, power, and virtue), the only one truly attainable by men is virtue, through the exercise of reason. And when it comes to the gods, humans tend to envy their immortality, fear their power, but honor and reverence their virtue:
“And yet, although men are thus disposed, it is immortality, of which our nature is not capable, and power, the chief disposal of which is in the hands of fortune, that they eagerly desire; while as for virtue, the only divine excellence within our reach, they put it at the bottom of the list, unwisely too, since a life passed in power and great fortune and authority needs justice to make it divine.”19
The Landmark Herodotus, 8.79
Herodotus, 8.96
Herodotus, 8.95
Plutarch, Life of Aristides, online Loeb edition, pg 239
Herodotus, 7.132
Plutarch, Life of Aristides, pg 245
Plutarch, Life of Aristides, pg 253
Plutarch, Life of Aristides, pg 251
Herodotus, 9.67
Plutarch, Life of Aristides, pg 277
Plutarch, Life of Aristides, pg 283
No implications regarding current geopolitical events intended with this reference.
Plutarch, Life of Aristides, pg 289
The Landmark Thucydides, 5.18
Thucydides 2.41
Thucydides 2.42
Plutarch, Life of Aristides, pg 297
Plutarch, Life of Aristides, pg 231
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Sincerely,
Isabelle Pham