The Austere Demagogue: Thucydides on the Uses and Abuses of Periclean Rhetoric

In this article I draw attention to the way Thucydides characterizes Pericles as a leader who manipulates public passions to produce both passivity and dependence. To elicit this view of Pericles, the student of Thucydides needs to pay attention to the text's key instances of Periclean rhetoric, which the historian has crafted most assiduously. Whether the historical Pericles actually applied rhetoric in this manner is beside the point; it is the historian rather who conveys a characterization of Periclean leadership in this way. Nor is it a coincidence that this characterization draws attention to rhetoric: It is the rhetorical manipulation of the public, after all, that poses a grave threat to democracy, in this view. Interpreted in a certain, defensible, way, Thucydides' text casts a pessimistic light on the relationship between rhetorically gifted leader and the public. In addition, the text affords us insights into a variant of subtle demagogic manipulation that has been rare and rather elusive. The portrait I draw here, of Pericles as an austere demagogue, shows us that it is not always easy to distinguish between the demagogic manipulator of collective desires and the ostensibly rational leader of a people in crisis. It is not only extravagant speech that poses a threat in democracy; so does an austere rhetoric, if applied by one as skillful as Pericles. Ultimately, the historian's view of Periclean rhetoric, and of Periclean leadership, underlies a pessimistic assessment of the prospects for public detection of demagogic uses of rhetoric.