Death in Athens (Essay)

 An essay on Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War.

Anyone would want to live in the Athens of Pericles' funeral speech, and many choose to die for it. But when one reads of the perils and depravity of the Athenian plague, one wonders what happened to Pericles’ shining image of the city. The reader is forced to reconcile the apparently vast divide between the glorious Athens of the speech and the ruinous one of the plague. We will try to make sense of these two passages by looking at death, which is the focal point of the funeral and the driving force behind the plague. How does death change between the funeral and the plague, and what effect does this have on the Athenian character?
Before we answer this question, however, we must first consider Pericles, the author of our first account. One might be tempted to dismiss his speech as a sort of thoughtless call-to-arms having only rhetorical value, but we have two strong reasons to believe that his words hold more weight than this. The first is that Pericles does not always replace true words with beautiful ones. Instead, he is often willing to trade the role of statesman for that of philosopher or historian, setting his sights on truth rather than praise. We see this from the outset, when Pericles points out a fault of his audience: namely, that if an Athenian “hear aught above the pitch of his own nature, ... the hearer presently through envy thinks it false” (II.35). A flatterer would hardly be so blunt.

A nuance here is that Pericles admits to a line he must walk. He “shall hardly get the truth firmly believed” if he doesn’t make himself “answerable to the desires and opinions of everyone of” the multitude (II.35). Does this mean he will twist his words to make them happy? Perhaps, but beneath his rhetoric we can find truth.

In Thucydides’ words, he does not “humour [the multitude] in his speeches but durst anger them with contradiction” (II.65). This brings us to the second reason to trust Pericles: Thucydides himself admires him for his “dignity and wisdom” (II.65). This means that Pericles’ and Thucydides’ conception of Athens may not be as far apart as they seem. Having tentatively established Pericles’ legitimacy, let us examine his speech.

The traditional purpose of the speech is to praise the Athenian soldiers who died in battle. But this is not where Pericles begins. Instead, he first praises Athens’ history and form of government, only later “descending” (II.36) to the soldiers. The order of Pericles’ speech reflects his understanding of cause: Athens’ history brings about its form of government, and its form of government brings about the soldiers.

Our first question is how the soldiers came to be. In other words, how does an Athenian become willing to die for his country? We will start with Pericles’ most immediate cause: Athens’ form of government. The Athenians are free, “not only ... in the administration of the state but also with another” (II.37). But their citizenship is less about untethered freedom than it is about public responsibility. For this reason, their freedom in private affairs is checked by written laws “for protection against injury,” and unwritten ones that “bring undeniable shame to the transgressors” (II.37). Thus, the Athenian is “obedient always to ... the laws” because he “stand[s] chiefly in fear” of their consequences (II.37). From this passage we learn that, without the forces of fear and shame opposing it, individual freedom of action could expand without limit. The average Athenian is good not internally and intrinsically, but rather externally and accidentally. Using nomoi (which Hobbes translates as ‘law’ or ‘custom’), the state suppresses the citizen’s nature.

The same applies to the soldiers. On the battlefield these men “fled from shame, but with their bodies ... stood out the battle” (II.42). Even their courage is born of fear. And Pericles admits that many of the soldiers are not, strictly speaking, good men. But by “profit[ing] the state ... more than they have hurt it,” they have “abolished the memory of their evil” (II.42). The soldiers knew that dying in battle could redeem them.

This tells us that fear and shame do not fully explain the soldiers’ self-sacrifice. To make someone obey the law, fear is sufficient, but to make someone die for his country, he needs glory. This is why Athens practices the “ancient custom” of the funeral speech, which honors the soldiers killed in battle (II.34). Honor, like fear, is an external force that brings the Athenians to virtue. But honor is on a higher level than fear. It does not merely prevent selfishness; it encourages sacrifice. Fear pushes, but honor pulls.

But why is dying for Athens so honorable? Our first clue is that Athens itself is glorious. Its constitution is a “pattern to others” (II.37), its economy “all-sufficient in itself” (II.36), and its citizens “disposed to most diversity of actions, yet with all grace and decency” (II.41). But what good is Athens’ glory to a dead man? The answer lies in the following sentence: “Such is the city for which these men, thinking it no reason to lose it, valiantly fighting have died” (II.42).

To understand the soldiers’ self-sacrifice, we must first understand the phrase ἀφαιρεθῆναι αὐτὴν, which Hobbes translates as “to lose it,” and Smith translates as “for it to be taken from them.” How can a dead man have anything taken from him? The answer is, he cannot. In dying for Athens, the soldiers cannot lose it. To lose Athens would be a great tragedy.

Remember, Athens is responsible for its citizens’ “daily delight” (II.38)—so much so that the city's chief aim seems to be its citizens’ pleasure. Living to suffer the loss of this city (and presumably to become the slaves of its captors) would be worse than death, itself a thing “without sense,” and in which there is no misery to be had (II.43). In short, it is better to die for Athens than to see it fall. This explains Pericles’ claim that death for one who is still “in vigour and common hope, is nothing so bitter as after a tender life to be brought into misery” (II.43). And because man’s death is certain regardless, his choice is really between dying nobly now and dying miserably later. For these reasons, dying for Athens seems to be the obvious choice for the soldiers.

The Athenian who dies for his country also earns a place in its history. Everything an Athenian has to be proud of “was attained” by the “actions of war” of his ancestors and fathers (II.36). His ancestors won him Athens; his fathers won him empire. The average Athenian may be forgotten, but the self-sacrificing one becomes a lasting link in the chain of Athens’ history. He is to be admired by “both ... present and future ages” (II.41). Just as the promise of punishment is necessary to make an Athenian obey the law, the promise of remembrance is necessary to make him die for his city.

And thus, by honoring courageous soldiers, Athens produces more of them—for “where the rewards of virtue are greatest, there live the worthiest men” (II.46). But why would men so worthy even need a reward? It comes down to the distinction between a good citizen and a good human being. Athens produces the former, who are good within the context of the state, not the latter, who are good without qualification. This is not to say that punishment and reward by nomoi are the only causes of Athenian virtue, but rather that they are the primary causes of it.

The virtue of the average Athenian is conditional; change the conditions and it can dissolve. Without a funeral speech to praise his sacrifice, it is unlikely that the average Athenian would be willing to die for anything. Of course, some Athenians surpass the average. But if a truly good human exists in Athens, the state never made him so. Rather, he is good by his own nature and of his own accord.

There is no room for such a person in Sparta. This is because the Spartans do not distinguish between a good citizen and a good human being. The virtue of the Spartans depends not just mostly, but entirely on the state, and their nomoi are much more constricting than Athens’. This is why Pericles boasts that, unlike Spartan courage, Athenian courage comes “from ease rather than studious labor and upon natural rather than doctrinal valour” (II.39). We should be amazed that a people who “live remissly” face death just as readily as a people who are “ever toiling” (II.39).

But during the plague, the Athenians’ ease and natural valour fails them. Perhaps Spartan labor and doctrine would have proven more successful. This leads me to wonder: what if the plague had hit Sparta instead of Athens? Would they have fared better? I propose this hypothetical only to raise the following question: if Athens’ nomoi are necessary for its citizens virtue, are the nomoi at least strong enough to withstand a catastrophe like the plague?

With this in mind, we will compare the appearances of death at the funeral and during the plague. Before the plague, death was contained by nomoi. But when the plague hits, Athens’ burial laws are the first to be broken. The collapse of these laws precedes the collapse of the legal system itself. Thus, a city seems to be only as strong as its nomoi of death. We will try to understand what this means.

At the funeral, the soldiers were laid in “cypress coffins” to be buried in the “fairest suburbs of the city” (II.34). Death was something the Athenians could dedicate a day to and think about from afar, and rituals gave reality a rosy tint. But during the plague, human mortality becomes entirely “without form,” with dying men “tumbling one upon another in the streets” (II.52). Death, once neatly contained, is now everywhere and always. The sheer number of corpses meant that even those who wanted to follow burial customs “were forced to become impudent in the funerals of their friends” (II.52). Athenians either break their high ideals or have their high ideals broken for them. Too much death makes burial laws impossible to follow, making death become ever more visible and burial law seem ever less relevant. Nomoi that can neither be followed nor enforced are no longer feared, and the Athenian does not respect any nomos he does not fear. Respect for any particular nomos rests on respect for the source of nomos itself. Thus, when funeral laws crumble, law itself begins to lose its authority. Athens finds itself stuck in a feedback loop, with death replacing nomoi in the minds of men.

In a similar vein, when the dead and dying are strewn everywhere one looks, death itself begins to lose its punch. They who once “lament[ed] and mourn[ed]” (II.34) death at the funeral are now “no longer moved” (II.51) by it. The frequency and proximity of death makes men numb to it. Those who do not grieve even the deaths of their closest friends are one step farther removed from being real members of a polity.

But it is not just the number of deaths that changed between the funeral and the plague, it is also the type of death. Dying in battle is different from dying from disease; the one is noble and active, the other ugly and passive. It is telling that the Athenians first assume that they were poisoned by the Spartans (II.48)—they would have preferred to be. Because even though the plague “invaded Athens” like an enemy (II.48), it came with no opportunity for vengeance. An actual attack would have allowed Athenian soldiers to fight and die valiantly. It would have allowed Pericles to praise them. But Athenian courage is limited to the battlefield, or at least to situations where death is considered noble. This is the unfortunate consequence of Pericles’ claim, “they are only happy that die honourably” (II.44). When death is no longer honorable, no
one is willing to die.

This is why the statesman omits the gore that must have accompanied the soldiers’ deaths, but Thucydides the historian spares the reader no gruesome detail: bloody tongues, “mighty cough[s], ... bilious purgation,” and skin “beflowered with ... pimples and whelks” (II.49). The ugliness of death makes it no longer glorious, and thus the self-sacrifice we saw with the soldiers becomes impossible. The Athenians’ thoughts have been dragged away from the eternal and great to the temporary and small.

They who had once “opened unto [them] ... all seas and lands and set up eternal monuments on all sides” (II.41), are now reduced below the level of animals, as not even the “birds and beasts” would approach their corpses (II.49). The Athenians once thought themselves rulers of nature and other men, but the plague wipes away all of these illusions. In these conditions, man himself seems to be nothing great, and his city seems to be nothing at all. It is on the grounds of man’s isolation that we can say his city is nothing. Most Athenians die of the plague “forlorn,” in families “empty for want of such as should take care of them” (II.51).

Though the people die en masse, each man tends to die alone. Men who are isolated in this manner are neither political nor social animals, and it is these attributes that make a city. Of course, some men refuse to isolate during the plague, and perhaps this means that they can still be considered members of a polity. But these “honestest men” who continue to visit the sick “out of shame” quickly die themselves, “like sheep, infected by their mutual visitation” (II.51). The virtue that was once rewarded is now a deadly disadvantage, and Athens is deprived of its best men. Those who survive, presumably far from honest, emerge with a “light hope never to die of any other sickness hereafter” (II.51), as if convinced of their own immortality. So, by necessity, Athens’ honest men are replaced with hubristic ones. Another consequence of ubiquitous death, perhaps more fundamental than their loss of nomoi and community, is the Athenians’ loss of hope. Amidst the plague, the “greatest misery of all” was no physical symptom, but rather “the dejection of mind” (II.51). We can understand what role hope plays in Athens by returning to the soldiers, who “[put] the uncertainty of success to the account of their hope” (II.42). Hope gives them courage. But hope is useful for Athens only when “fortune inclineth neither way” (II.42), and the plague seems to incline their fortune totally towards ruin. When destruction seems certain, hope is impossible, and when hope is impossible, so is trying to avoid destruction. This is why the sick and dying “gave themselves over [to death] without making any resistance” (II.51). It is also why, in the same manner, even
the healthy Athenians are “overcome with the greatness of the calamity” and develop the same despair (II.51). If we compare this with the ‘light hope’ of the men who survived the plague, we will see that there is little ground for the Athenian between hubris during good times and hopelessness during bad ones.

We can see this hopelessness from another angle: knowledge. Knowledge, at least in a qualified sense, is something the Athenian yearns for. The citizen of the “school of the Grecians” (II.41) wants to know every problem’s cause and solution, and thus he is always planning and plotting. Knowledge makes the Athenian more daring. In this respect he is unlike other peoples, whose “ignorance makes them dare, and consideration dastards” (II.40). But Athenian courage is not just aided by knowledge; it is dependent on it.

What “hinder[s]” the Athenian most is to “come to [action] without instruction of words before” (II.40). We will see what happens when there exists no instruction of words to help him during the plague. The Athenian first turns to the doctors for answers, but these prove useless. Men became sick “without any apparent cause,” and “if [a medicine] did good to one, it did harm to another” (II.51). Even if the physicians could have been any help, they were the ones to “[die] fastest themselves” (II.47). Once he discovers that human beings can give him no answers, the Athenian turns instead to the gods and oracles.

But religion is of no more use to him than science, because believers and nonbelievers “alike ... all perished” (II.53). The Athenian wants order, yet he finds none besides the equality of death. He does not like this order. So, when not even the oracles can give him a solution, he grows “careless both of holy and profane things alike” (II.52). The plague, by eluding his understanding, makes the Athenian lose hope. Athenian hopelessness is related to a deeper sickness, something Thucydides calls “the great licentiousness” (II.53). No man is “forward in any action of honour,” and each “durst now do freely” whatever pleases him most (II.53). This is the antithesis of everything Pericles praises in his speech. What caused the Athenians to fall so far? Thucydides' answer is that the people saw a “quick revolution of the rich dying and men ... inheriting their estates” (II.53). But even before the plague, the rich still die and the living inherit their estates. This revolution—that is to say, death—is not new, it is only faster than before. The great licentiousness is not new either, it was just too slow before the plague to see clearly. When death moved slowly, the Athenians had time to endure some pain to get more pleasure later. Their “computation of profit” (II.40) has always existed—it was only more sophisticated before the plague. Some types of profit, like honor, were possible to attain even after one’s death. But when the revolution of death and estate speeds up, so does the Athenian appetite. They want to take every piece of profit and pleasure they can grab, while they still have time.

And it is crucial to understand that the Athenians believe their time is running out. Their license is not just a product of greed, but also of hopelessness. No one thought his life would “last till he received punishment,” so “neither the fear of the gods nor laws of men awed any man” (II.53). For someone who thinks to hold his life “but by the day” (II.53), nothing outside oneself and one’s present seems to matter. Their futures seem not just short, but also determined.

The Athenians are convinced that “there [is] now over their heads some far greater judgement decreed against them” (II.53), so in effect they are doomed no matter what they do. Lawful or unlawful, pious or impious—the end is always the same. What do men under these conditions have to hope for, and what do they have to fear? The soldiers of Pericles’ speech were courageous, but these men are fearless, and the difference is essential. The latter have no regard for nomos. In a word, the Athenians’ hopelessness makes them fearless, so their virtue—which we know is founded on fear—falls apart.

Now, the Athenians’ dejection may seem at odds with their license, but in fact it causes it. Their hopelessness does not stop action altogether, it merely shrinks their actions’ scope by confining it to the day. It is no great injustice that leads to Athens’ moral decline, but petty and daily grasps at profit by the many.

Thus we conclude our inquiry about death, and with it we have uncovered something deeper about the Athenian character. We can see over the course of the plague a basic trend of the state’s nomoi retreating and the individual’s desires taking their place. Every affair is now a private affair, and Athens suffers for it. Pericles, the voice of the Athenian state, is totally absent from Thucydides’ account of the plague. Athens indeed was “in name a state democratical, but in fact a government of the principal man” (II.65) before it fell apart. The city's success is in the hands of the statesman, and its ruin in the hands of the people. So, what happened to Pericles' city on the hill? Pericles left, and with him, the nomoi that once held the people in check. The plague is Athens’ accidental trial of true democracy, and it is a trial that fails spectacularly. All this is to say, the Athenians need a Pericles.

What Pericles does for the Athenians is made clear in his speech. He knows that the people have always been capable of a great licentiousness, so this is exactly what Pericles uses his speech to deter. Despite what the statesman says, Athens does need “a Homer to praise it” (II.41). This Homer glorifies Athens and those who die for it, extending each individual’s thoughts beyond himself. He makes death itself seem to be nothing so terrible, because it is one’s city, not one’s flesh, that matters. He speaks on the scale of generations, centuries, and eternity, but never the day. He does not quell the Athenians’ insatiable appetites, but rather elevates the objects of their appetites from the pleasurable to the honorable, their scope from the temporary to the eternal, and their end from the self to the state. By making them see themselves as parts rather than wholes, Pericles kept the Athenians from destroying themselves—but only as long as circumstances allowed.

The plague revealed Athens' nature; it did not alter it. But a question we are left with is whether Athens can recover. The honestest men have died, and Pericles is soon to follow. Those still living have seen every nomos lose its meaning, and their shining city on the hill has lost its luster. In truth, Athens lives. This is but the first of a thirty-year war. But it is not a stretch to conclude that the Athens that survives can never be the Athens that once was. Death has taken too much from the Athenians, much more than just their lives. It has taken their laws and their virtue—it has taken their souls.

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Thucydides. Peloponnesian War. translated by Thomas Hobbes, edited by David Grene,
    University of Michigan Press, 1959.
Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War, Volume I: Books 1-2. Translated by C. F. Smith.
    Loeb Classical Library 108. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919.