Aristides the Just, and the Rise of Athens - Pt 1
On the underappreciated figure at the center of Athen's rise to prominence, at the start of the Athenian Golden Age
You can tell the entire story of Athen’s rise to power at the start of its golden age through one man, and it’s a figure that even a fair number of enthusiasts for ancient history are hardly familiar with. The workings of Athenian Assembly Politics, the epic battles against Persia that launched Athenian greatness, and the formation of the Delian League that would create an Athenian empire, all feature the same individual playing key roles time and again. While the names of Cleisthenes, Miltiades, Themistocles, Cimon, and Pericles all dominate this age, you can learn most of the key historical events in Greek history during the early 5th century, just by following the life of Aristides of Athens, son of Lysimachus. What’s more, Aristides is one of the few figures in all of history to earn the title of, “The Just,” and by all accounts, he appears to completely live up to the sobriquet. In covering the life of Aristides, and trying to understand why he is so much less famous than he deserves, we can also make a few observations about rewards to virtue.
(Blog update - Hello Everyone, and welcome back to the start of regular articles once again here at Gruntled History Teacher. After a longer-than-expected hiatus, you can expect articles once or twice a month going forward. The second half of this series on Aristides will publish later this week.)
An Athenian statesman from an aristocratic background, Aristides (530-468 BC) is rarely given a foremost role in histories of Athens at the start of its golden age. It’s possible to tell the basic story of the rise of Athens, the epic defeat of Persia, and the formation of the Delian League, without even mentioning him. Cleisthenes founded the Democracy, Miltiades won Marathon, and Themistocles was the architect of Athen’s naval program and greatest victory over Persia. With a quick nod to the founding of the Delian League, you can move right along to Pericles and the Peloponnesian War. You’ll sometimes see Aristides mentioned as the politician who wanted to distribute the funds from the Athenian silver mines at Laurium to the citizenry, only to have his proposal defeated by Themistocles’s plan to build ships (Aristides was then ostracized by Themistocles some time later). If this is all you know, Aristides comes off as unimportant, at most the foolish rival who failed to understand Themistocles’ farsighted plan to prepare for the great Persian invasion. Aristides may finally pop up at the end of things, with his name mentioned alongside the formation of the Delian League. At least, this is roughly how much I knew about Aristides from my own education, and even some further reading in Greek history after college.
But, if you follow the life of Aristides directly (Plutarch is most helpful here, though Herodotus and Plato mention him a few times), he starts popping up all over the place, and always at key moments.
First off, Plutarch introduces Aristides as a friend of Cleisthenes, the famous reformer and “Father of Athenian Democracy.” After the overthrow of the Pisistratid family of tyrants, Cleisthenes reorganized the ten tribes of Athens, expanded the franchise and trial-by-jury court system, and increased the authority of the boule council, which presided over legislation. Plutarch doesn’t say anything specific here, except that Aristides and Cleisthenes were friends, but it’s worth noting that Aristides seems to have been close with such a famous and important Athenian1.
Next, in 490 BC, we come to the Marathon campaign. With a Persian expeditionary force of around 25-30,000 men camped a couple dozen miles away from Athens at Marathon, the Athenians sent their entire body of 10,000 hoplite citizens, along with 1,000 doughty Plataean allies, to confront the invaders. The Persians, however, with the former Athenian tyrant Hippias in tow, and a network of informants spreading gold around in the city, were content to wait and hope for the “Medizing” presence of turncoat Athenians in the city to eventually declare for Hippias and the Persians. Knowing this risk, and feeling the pressure to act quickly, the Athenian general Miltiades tried to persuade his colleagues to force a battle. The Athenian army, however, was an agglomeration of all ten tribes of Athenian citizens, and each tribe elected its own general, who had the right to command the army for a day in turn. This system was a terrible idea militarily, but a necessary political compromise in the face of factional distrust and suspicion among the tribes. Herodotus has Miltiades give an impassioned speech to the leading Athenian general, Callimachus, urging him to cast the deciding vote in favor of attacking.2 Yet Plutarch tells us that Aristides’ support for Miltiades was crucial in winning over the other generals, and that it was Aristides who voluntarily gave his day of command to Miltiades, setting a precedent that the other generals followed.3
For the battle of Marathon itself, Miltiades famously strengthened both wings of the Athenian formation by weakening his center, leaving it only four ranks deep. Command of the two Athenian tribes in the center was given to none other than Aristides and Themistocles. Even though the two generals were already strong personal rivals (Aristides generally favoring the Aristocracy, and Themistocles the populist party), they both “fought brilliantly, ranged side by side,” in the thick of what must have been the most desperate fighting.4 After the battle (or the day after), the Greek army pulled off the impressive feat of marching all the way back to Athens and arriving ahead of the Persian fleet, which was sailing around the Attic Peninsula and hoping to find the city undefended. The army had to travel light, leaving behind its wounded, baggage, and perhaps most importantly for morale, its plunder.5 To guard the camp, and most importantly, ensure nobody walked off with more than their fair share of the spoils, the army chose Aristides to stay behind.6 This is only the first of many stories about Aristides’ reputation for impeccable integrity and honesty.
It was as a public figure in Athens that Aristides earned his nickname of “The Just,” amassing a memorable collection of stories and anecdotes. Most of these stories are almost too good to check, in that you’d rather just believe that they’re true and try not to think too hard about tradition gradually turning history into legendarium. Our best source by far for Aristides’ life is Plutarch’s biography, which was written roughly five hundred years later, during the first century AD. Plutarch had access to other histories and biographies that haven’t survived to our day, so historians are left guessing as to how much of Plutarch’s writing reflects reliable information we’ve otherwise lost, and how much might be apocryphal. Herodotus, however, writing much closer to the Greco-Persian wars and plausibly interviewing eye-witnesses, explicitly calls Aristides “the best and most just of all the Athenians.”7 While Aristides doesn’t appear frequently in Herodotus’ Histories, his several cameos are entirely in keeping with his overall reputation. It’s plausible to assume, then, that like George Washington’s honest cutting down of cherry trees, Aristides’ touted exploits are on a line with what the historical record seems to suggest, making Aristides one of those larger than life figures about whom, if you heard an exalted story of his virtue, you at least couldn’t rule it out for sure. Even if some of the stories are exaggerated tall-tales, it should tell us something that people so readily believed them.
So then, Aristides the Just. A man who once put forward legislation for consideration, had it on the verge of passing, and then voluntarily withdrew it because he’d been persuaded by the arguments against it.8 A man who once prosecuted a lawsuit so convincingly that the judges wanted to skip the defendant’s speech and go straight to a guilty verdict, only to see Aristides leap to his feet in protest that the accused deserved due process and a chance to defend himself.9 A man who spent decades in public service, and yet died poor.10 A man who made a rival of Themistocles, one of the most famous Athenians of all time and the architect of victory at Salamis, and yet ended his life more popular with his people than Themistocles himself.
Themistocles was a populist eager to tell the public what they wanted, and who easily stooped to deception. It's interesting to note that almost all of the brilliant exploits Herodotus and Thucydides record about Themistocles, from the Athenian ship-building program, to maneuvering both the Greeks and the Persians simultaneously into fighting at Salamis, to his filibustering of the Spartans after the war during the construction of the Long Walls of Athens, involve deception and trickery. Themistocles was an extraordinary leader in times of crisis, but he also knew it, and his hubris finally led to his undoing. When Themistocles built a temple to Artemis of Good Counsel right next to his house, with a clear implication about exactly whose good counsel had saved the Greeks, he was finally ostracized.11
Yet, even Themistocles apparently understood the value of Aristides’ reputation. After the Greek victories at Salamis and Plataea, Themistocles:
“Declared to the people that he had devised a certain measure which could not be revealed to them, though it would be helpful and salutary for the city, and they ordered that Aristides alone should hear what it was and pass judgment on it. So Themistocles told Aristides that his purpose was to burn the naval station of the confederate Hellenes, for that in this way the Athenians would be greatest, and lords of all. Then Aristides came before the people and said of the deed which Themistocles purposed to do, that none other could be more advantageous, and none more unjust. On hearing this, the Athenians ordained that Themistocles cease from his purpose. So fond of justice was the people, and so loyal and true to the people was Aristides.”12
While the main point of this story usually serves to highlight Aristides, it’s worth calling attention to just how shockingly brazen Themistocles’ proposal is, to knife the Greek allies in the back and leave Athens as the only major Hellenic naval power.
Themistocles ended his life in Asia Minor in service to the Persian court, while Aristides, too poor to provide for his own funeral, was given a tomb at public expense.13 Aristides’ son was voted public land and money, and his daughters were given marriage dowries from the Prytaneum (a sort of City Hall, where notable citizens and winners at the games were given free meals for life). Readers of Herodotus may recall that, according to Solon in his famous conservation with King Croesus of Lydia about Tellus of Athens being the happiest man in the world, a public funeral was one of the greatest honors a Greek citizen could win.14
It might’ve comforted Aristides to know that justice would ultimately win out between himself and Themistocles, because for much of his career, Themistocles’ cunning and guile seemed to be winning against Aristides’ plain honesty. Themistocles’s ship-building program defeated Aristides’ proposal to dispense the proceeds of the new silver vein at Laurium among the citizenry15, and Plutarch claims that Aristides sometimes took to introducing legislation under the name of a proxy, to avoid provoking Themistocles’ partisan ire.16 Eventually, Themistocles succeeded in engineering the apparent downfall of Aristides, by spreading a false rumor that Aristides intended to shut down the public courts and arrogate legal judgments to himself personally.17 In a political showdown, Themistocles’ party managed to produce the six-thousand votes needed to ostracize Aristides, leading to perhaps the ultimate “Aristides The Just” story. According to Plutarch, an “unlettered and utterly boorish fellow” came up to Aristides and asked for his help in writing Aristides’ name on his ostrakon (a pottery shard):
“He, astonished, asked the man what possible wrong Aristides had done him. "None whatever," was the answer, "I don't even know the fellow, but I am tired of hearing him everywhere called 'The Just.' " On hearing this, Aristides made no answer, but wrote his name on the ostrakon and handed it back.”18
Exiled from Athens for ten years, but allowed to keep what little he possessed besides his virtue, Aristides departed the city, but not without pausing to pray that the Athenians wouldn’t have cause to regret their decision.
Part 2 of this series will publish later this week, as the length was a little too long for a single post. Part 2 will look at Aristides’ role leading the Greeks during the Great Persian Invasion, and in Founding the Delian League. There are more “too good to check” stories about Aristides, and a remarkable number of connections between Aristides and other famous Athenians. Thank you for reading, and please consider passing this along to any interested parties.
Plutarch, Life of Aristides, online Loeb edition, pg 217
The Landmark Herodotus, 6.109
Plutarch, Life of Aristides, pg 225.
Plutarch, Life of Aristides, pg 227
I’m of the opinion that this forced-march back to Athens in a single day while under arms, is the “real Marathon” race. The more celebrated story about Pheidippides racing back to the city only to drop down dead after gasping out “Nike,” doesn’t appear in Herodotus, and as far as I can tell, is a much later accretion. That this story overshadows things is a bit of a shame, since not only is the army’s march back to Athens very impressive, but Pheidippides has a much longer and more impressive claim to fame, when he ran to Sparta and back to Athens in only a matter of days before the battle. All on foot, and without dying.
Plutarch, Life of Aristides, pg 227
The Landmark Herodotus, 8.79
Plutarch, Aristides, pg 219
Plutarch, Aristides, pg 221
Plutarch, Aristides, pg 291
Plutarch, life of Themistocles, online Loeb Edition, pg 63
Plutarch, Aristides, pg 283
Plutarch, Aristides, pg 297
The Landmark Herodotus, 1.30
Plutarch, Themistocles, pg 13
Plutarch, Aristides, pg 219
Plutarch, Aristides, pg 231
Plutarch, Aristides, pg 235
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