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Title:       Plutarch's Lives
Book:        Pericles
Author:      Plutarch
Date:        c75
Translation: Dryden, Arthur Hugh Clough

Part I

     Caesar ^1 once, seeing some wealthy strangers at Rome, carrying up and
down with them in their arms and bosoms young puppy-dogs and monkeys,
embracing and making much of them, took occasion not unnaturally to ask
whether the women in their country were not used to bear children; by that
prince-like reprimand gravely reflecting upon persons who spend and lavish
upon brute beasts that affection and kindness which nature has implanted in us
to be bestowed on those of our own kind. With like reason may we blame those
who misuse that love of inquiry and observation which nature has implanted in
our souls, by expending it on objects unworthy of the attention either of
their eyes or their ears, while they disregard such as are excellent in
themselves, and would do them good.

[See Caesar: Caesar took occasion not unnaturally to ask whether the women in
their country were not used to bear children.]

[Footnote 1: Probably Augustus.]

     The mere outward sense, being passive in responding to the impression of
the objects that come in its way and strike upon it, perhaps cannot help
entertaining and taking notice of every thing that addresses it, be it will,
useful; but, in the exercise of his mental perception, every man, if he
chooses, has a natural power to turn himself upon all occasions, and to change
and shift with the greatest ease to what he shall himself judge desirable. So
that it becomes a man's duty to pursue and make after the best and choicest of
everything, that he may not only employ his contemplation, but may also be
improved by it. For as that color is most suitable to the eye whose freshness
and pleasantness stimulates and strengthens the sight, so a man ought to apply
his intellectual perception to such objects as, with the sense of delight, are
apt to call it forth, and allure it to its own proper good and advantage.

     Such objects we find in the acts of virtue, which also produce in the
minds of mere readers about them, an emulation and eagerness that may lead
them on to imitation. In other things there does not immediately follow upon
the admiration and liking of the thing done, any strong desire of doing the
like. Nay, many times, on the very contrary, when we are pleased with the
work, we slight and set little by the workman or artist himself, as, for
instance, in perfumes and purple dyes, we are taken with the things themselves
well enough, but do not think dyers and perfumers otherwise than low and
sordid people. It was not said amiss by Antisthenes, when people told him that
one Ismenias was an excellent piper, "It may be so," said he, "but he is but a
wretched human being, otherwise he would not have been an excellent piper."
And king Philip, to the same purpose, told his son Alexander, who once at a
merry-meeting played a piece of music charmingly and skillfully, "Are you not
ashamed, son, to play so well?" For it is enough for a king or prince to find
leisure sometimes to hear others sing, and he does the muses quite honor
enough when he pleases to be but present, while others engage in such
exercises and trials of skill.

     He who busies himself in mean occupations produces, in the very pains he
takes about things of little or no use, an evidence against himself of his
negligence and indisposition to what is really good. Nor did any generous and
ingenuous young man, at the sight of the statue of Jupiter at Pisa, ever
desire to be a Phidias, or, on seeing that of Juno at Argos, long to be a
Polycletus, or feel induced by his pleasure in their poems to wish to be an
Anacreon or Philetas or Archilochus. For it does not necessarily follow, that,
if a piece of work please for its gracefulness, therefore he that wrought it
deserves our admiration. Whence it is that neither do such things really
profit or advantage the beholders, upon the sight of which no zeal arises for
the imitation of them, nor any impulse or inclination, which may prompt any
desire or endeavor of doing the like. But virtue, by the bare statement of its
actions, can so affect men's minds as to create at once both admiration of the
things done and desire to imitate the doers of them. The goods of fortune we
would possess and would enjoy; those of virtue we long to practice and
exercise; we are content to receive the former from others, the latter we wish
others to experience from us. Moral good is a practical stimulus; it is no
sooner seen, than it inspires an impulse to practise; and influences the mind
and character not by a mere imitation which we look at, but, by the statement
of the fact, creates a moral purpose which we form.

     And so we have thought fit to spend our time and pains in writing of the
lives of famous persons; and have composed this tenth book upon that subject,
containing the life of Pericles, and that of Fabius Maximus, who carried on
the war against Hannibal, men alike, as in their other virtues and good parts,
so especially in their mild tnd upright temper and demeanor, and in that
capacity to bear the cross-grained humors of their fellow-citizens and
colleagues in office which made them both most useful and serviceable to the
interests of their countries. Whether we take a right aim at our intended
purpose, it is left to the reader to judge by what he shall here find.

     Pericles was of the tribe Acamantis, and the township Cholargus, of the
noblest birth both on his father's and mother's side. Xanthippus, his father,
who defeated the king of Persia's generals in the battle at Mycale, took to
wife Agariste, the grandchild of Clisthenes, who drove out the sons of
Pisistratus, and nobly put an end to their tyrannical usurpation, and moreover
made a body of laws, and settled a model of government admirably tempered and
suited for the harmony and safety of the people.

     His mother, being near her time, fancied in a dream that she was brought
to bed of a lion, and a few days after was delivered of Pericles, in other
respects perfectly formed, only his head was somewhat longish and out of
proportion. For which reason almost all the images and statues that were made
of him have the head covered with a helmet, the workmen apparently being
willing not to expose him. The poets of Athens called him Schinocephalos, or
squill-head, from schinos, a squill, or sea-onion. One of the comic poets,
Cratinus, in the Chirons, tells us that -

     "Old Chronos once took queen Sedition to wife;
     Which two brought to life
     That tyrant far-famed,
     Whom the gods the supreme skull-compeller ^2 have named."

[Footnote 2: Kephalegeretes, a play on Nephelegeretes, the cloud-compeller.]

And, in the Nemesis, addresses him -

     "Come, Jove, thou head of gods."

And a second, Teleclides, says, that now, in embarrassment with political
difficulties, he sits in the city, -

     "Fainting underneath the load
     Of his own head; and now abroad,
     From his huge galley of a pate,
     Sends forth trouble to the state."

And a third, Eupolis, in the comedy called the Demi, in a series of questions
about each of the demagogues, whom he makes in the play to come up from hell,
upon Pericles being named last, exclaims, -

     "And here by way of summary, now we've done,
     Behold, in brief, the heads of all in one."

     The master that taught him music, most authors are agreed, was Damon
(whose name, they say, ought to be pronounced with the first syllable short).
Though Aristotle tells us that he was thoroughly practised in all
accomplishments of this kind by Pythoclides. Damon, it is not unlikely, being
a sophist, out of policy, sheltered himself under the profession of music to
conceal from people in general his skill in other things, and under this
pretence attended Pericles, the young athlete of politics, so to say, as his
training-master in these exercises. Damon's lyre, however, did not prove
altogether a successful blind; he was banished the country by ostracism for
ten years, as a dangerous inter-meddler and a favorer of arbitrary power, and,
by this means, gave the stage occasion to play upon him. As, for instance,
Plato, the comic poet, introduces a character, who questions him -

     "Tell me, if you please,
     Since you're the Chiron who taught Pericles."

     Pericles, also, was a hearer of Zeno, the Eleatic, who treated of natural
philosophy in the same manner as Parmenides did, but had also perfected
himself in an art of his own for refuting and silencing opponents in argument;
as Timon of Phlius describes it, -

     "Also the two-edged tongue of mighty Zeno, who,
     Say what one would, could argue it untrue."

     But he that saw most of Pericles, and furnished him most especially with
a weight and grandeur of sense, superior to all arts of popularity, and in
general gave him his elevation and sublimity of purpose and of character, was
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae; whom the men of those times called by the name of
Nous, that is, mind, or intelligence, whether in admiration of the great and
extraordinary gift he displayed for the science of nature, or because that he
was the first of the philosophers who did not refer the first ordering of the
world to fortune or chance, nor to necessity or compulsion, but to a pure,
unadulterated intelligence, which in all other existing mixed and compound
things acts as a principle of discrimination, and of combination of like with
like.

     For this man, Pericles entertained an extraordinary esteem and
admiration, and, filling himself with this lofty, and, as they call it,
up-in-the-air sort of thought, derived hence not merely, as was natural,
elevation of purpose and dignity of language, raised far above the base and
dishonest buffooneries of mob-eloquence, but, besides this, a composure of
countenance, and a serenity and calmness in all his movements, which no
occurrence whilst he was speaking could disturb, a sustained and even tone of
voice, and various other advantages of a similar kind, which produced the
greatest effect on his hearers. Once, after being reviled and ill-spoken of
all day long in his own hearing by some vile and abandoned fellow in the open
market-place, where he was engaged in the despatch of some urgent affair, he
continued his business in perfect silence, and in the evening returned home
composedly, the man still dogging him at the heels, and pelting him all the
way with abuse and foul language; and stepping into his house, it being this
time dark, he ordered one of his servants to take a light, and to go along
with the man and see him safe home. Ion, it is true, the dramatic poet, says
that Pericle's manner in company was somewhat over-assuming and pompous; and
that into his high bearing there entered a good deal of slightingness and
scorn of others; he reserves his commendation for Cimon's ease and pliancy and
natural grace in society. Ion, however, who must needs make virtue, like a
show of tragedies, include some comic senses, ^3 we shall not altogether rely
upon; Zeno used to bid those who called Pericles' gravity the affectation of a
charlatan, to go and affect the like themselves; inasmuch as this mere
counterfeiting might in time insensibly instill into them a real love and
knowledge of those noble qualities.

[Footnote 3: Three tragedies represented in succession were followed by a
burlesque, the so-called satyric drama, which has no connection, it must be
remembered, with the moral satire of the Romans, but takes its name from the
grotesque satyrs of the Greek woods.]

     Nor were these the only advantages which Pericles derived from
Anaxagoras' acquaintance; he seems also to have become, by his instructions,
superior to that superstition with which an ignorant wonder at appearances,
for example, in the heavens possesses the minds of people unacquainted with
their causes, eager for the supernatural, and excitable through an
inexperience which the knowledge of natural causes removes, replacing wild and
timid superstition by the good hope and assurance of an intelligent piety.

     There is a story, that once Pericles had brought to him from a country
farm of his, a ram's head with one horn, and that Lampon, the diviner, upon
seeing the horn grow strong and solid out of the midst of the forehead, gave
it as his judgment, that, there being at that time two potent factions,
parties, or interests in the city, the one of Thucydides and the other of
Pericles, the government would come about to that one of them in whose ground
or estate this token or indication of fate had shown itself. But that
Anaxagoras, cleaving the skull in sunder, showed to the bystanders that the
brain had not filled up its natural place, but being oblong, like an egg, had
collected from all parts of the vessel which contained it, in a point to that
place from whence the root of the horn took its rise. And that, for that time,
Anaxagoras was much admired for his explanation by those that were present;
and Lampon no less a little while after, when Thucydides was overpowered, and
the whole affairs of the state and government came into the hands of Pericles.

     And yet, in my opinion, it is no absurdity to say that they were both in
the right, both natural philosopher and diviner, one justly detecting the
cause of this event, by which it was produced, the other the end for which it
was designed. For it was the business of the one to find out and give an
account of what it was made, and in what manner and by what means it grew as
it did; and of the other to foretell to what end and purpose it was so made,
and what it might mean or portend. Those who say that to find out the cause of
a prodigy is in effect to destroy its supposed signification as such, do not
take notice that, at the same time, together with divine prodigies, they also
do away with signs and signals of human art and concert, as, for instance, the
cladhings of quoits, fire-beacons, and the shadows on sun-dials, every one of
which things has its cause, and by that cause and contrivance is a sign of
something else. But these are subjects, perhaps, that would better befit
another place.

     Pericles, while yet but a young man, stood in considerable apprehension
of the people, as he was thought in face and figure to be very like the tyrant
Pisistratus, and those of great age remarked upon the sweetness of his voice,
and his volubility and rapidity in speaking, and were struck with amazement at
the resemblance. Reflecting, too, that he had a considerable estate, and was
descended of a noble family, and had friends of great influence, he was
fearful all this might bring him to be banished as a dangerous person; and for
this reason meddled not at all with state affairs, but in military service
showed himself of a brave and intrepid nature. But when Aristides was now
dead, and Themistocles driven out, and Cimon was for the most part kept abroad
by the expeditions he made in parts out of Greece, Pericles, seeing things in
this posture, now advanced and took his side, not with the rich and few, but
with the many and poor, contrary to his natural bent, which was far from
democratical; but, most likely, fearing he might fall under suspicion of
aiming at arbitrary power, and seeing Cimon on the side of the aristocracy,
and much beloved by the better and more distinguished people, he joined the
party of the people with a view at once both to secure himself and procure
means against Cimon.

     He immediately entered, also, on quite a new course of life and
management of his time. For he was never seen to walk in any street but that
which led to the market-place and the council-hall, and he avoided invitations
of friends to supper, and all friendly visiting and intercourse whatever; in
all the time he had to do with the public, which was not a little, he was
never known to have gone to any of his friends to a supper, except that once
when his near kinsman Euryptolemus married, he remained present till the
ceremony of the drink-offering, ^4 and then immediately rose from table and
went his way. For these friendly meetings are very quick to defeat any assumed
superiority, and in intimate familiarity an exterior of gravity is hard to
maintain. Real excellence, indeed, is most recognized when most openly looked
into; and in really good men, nothing which meets the eyes of external
observers so truly deserves their admiration, as their daily common life does
that of their nearer friends. Pericles, however, to avoid any feeling of
commonness, or any satiety on the part of the people, presented himself at
intervals only, not speaking to every business, nor at all times coming into
the assembly, but, as Critolaus says, reserving himself, like the Salaminian
galley, ^5 for great occasions, while matters of lesser importance were
despatched by friends or other speakers under his direction. And of this
number we are told Ephialtes made one, who broke the power of the council of
Areopagus, giving the people, according to Plato's expression, so copious and
so strong a draught of liberty, that, growing wild and unruly, like an
unmanageable horse, it, as the comic poets say, -

[Footnote 4: The spondai, or libations, which, like the modern grace,
concluded the meal, and were followed by the dessert.]

[Footnote 5: The Salaminia and the Paralus were the two sacred state-galleys
of Athens, used only on special missions.]

     "- got beyond all keeping in,
     Champing at Euboea, and among the islands leaping in."

     The style of speaking most consonant to his form of life and the dignity
of his views he found, so to say, in the tones of that instrument with which
Anaxagoras had furnished him; of his teaching he continually availed himself,
and deepened the colors of rhetoric with the dye of natural science. For
having, in addition to his great natural genius, attained, by the study of
nature, to use the words of the divine Plato, this height of intelligence, and
this universal consummating power, and drawing hence whatever might be of
advantage to him in the art of speaking, he showed himself far superior to all
others. Upon which account, they say, he had his nickname given him, though
some are of opinion he was named the Olympian from the public buildings with
which he adorned the city; and other again, from his great power in public
affairs, whether of war or peace. Nor is it unlikely that the confluence of
many attributes may have conferred it on him. However, the comedies
represented at the time, which, both in good earnest and in merriment, let fly
many hard words at him, plainly show that he got that appellation especially
from his speaking; they speak of his "thundering and lightning" when he
harangued the people, and of his wielding a dreadful thunderbolt in his
tongue.

     A saying also of Thucydides, the son of Melesias, stands on record,
spoken by him by way of pleasantry upon Pericles' dexterity. Thucydides was
one of the noble and distinguished citizens, and had been his greatest
opponent; and, when Archidamus, the king of the Lacedaemonians, asked him
whether he or Pericles were the better wrestler, he made this answer: "When
I," said he, "have thrown him and given him a fair fall, by persisting that he
had no fall, he gets the better of me, and makes the bystanders, in spite of
their own eyes, believe him." The truth, however, is, that Pericles himself
was very careful what and how he was to speak, insomuch that, whenever he went
up to the hustings, he prayed the gods that no one word might unawares slip
from him unsuitable to the matter and the occasion.

     He has left nothing in writing behind him, except some decrees; and there
are but very few of his sayings recorded; one, for example, is, that he said
Aegina must, like a gathering in a man's eye, be removed from Pireaeus; and
another, that he said he saw already war moving on its way towards them out of
Peloponnesus. Again, when on a time Sophocles, who was his fellow-commissioner
in the generalship, was going on board with him, and praised the beauty of a
youth they met with in the way to the ship, "Sophocles," said he, "a general
ought not only to have clean hands, but also clean eyes." And Stesimbrotus
tells us, that, in his encomium on those who fell in battle at Samos, he said
they were become immortal, as the gods were. "For," said he, "we do not see
them themselves, but only by the honors we pay them, and by the benefits they
do us, attribute to them immortality; and the like attributes belong also to
those that die in the service of their country."

     Since Thucydides describes the rule of Pericles as an aristocratical
government, that went by the name of a democracy, but was, indeed, the
supremacy of a single great man, while many others say, on the contrary, that
by him the common people were first encouraged and led on to such evils as
appropriations of subject territory; allowances for attending theatres,
payments for performing public duties, and by these bad habits were, under the
influence of his public measures, changed from a sober, thrifty people, that
maintained themselves by their own labors, to lovers of expense, intemperance,
and license, let us examine the cause of this change by the actual matters of
fact.

     At the first, as has been said, when he set himself against Cimon's great
authority, he did caress the people. Finding himself come short of his
competitor in wealth and money, by which advantages the other was enabled to
take care of the poor, inviting every day some one or other of the citizens
that was in want to supper, and bestowing clothes on the aged people, and
breaking down the hedges and enclosures of his grounds, that all that would
might freely gather what fruit they pleased, Pericles, thus outdone in popular
arts, by the advice of one Damonides of Oea, as Aristotle states, turned to
the distribution of the public moneys; and in a short time having bought the
people over, what with moneys allowed for shows and for service on juries, and
what with other forms of pay and largess, he made use of them against the
council of Areopagus, of which he himself was no member, as having never been
appointed by lot either chief archon, or lawgiver, or king, or captain. ^6 For
from of old these offices were conferred on persons by lot, and they who had
acquitted themselves duly in the discharge of them were advanced to the court
of Areopagus. And so Pericles, having secured his power and interest with the
populace, directed the exertions of his party against this council with such
success, that most of those causes and matters which had been used to be tried
there, were, by the agency of Ephialtes, removed from its cognizance. Cimon,
also, was banished by ostracism as a favorer of the Lacedaemonians and a hater
of the people, though in wealth and noble birth he was among the first, and
had won several most glorious victories over the barbarians, and had filled
the city with money and spoils of war; as is recorded in the history of his
life. So vast an authority had Pericles obtained among the people.

[Footnote 6: Eponymus, Thesmothetes, Basileus, Polemarchus; titles of the
different archons, the chief civic dignitaries, who, after the period of the
Persian wars, were appointed, not by election, but simply by lot, from the
whole body of citizens. Hence, at this time, the importance of the board of
the ten strategic, or generals who were elected, and were always persons of
real or supposed capacity.]

     The ostracism was limited by law to ten years; but the Lacedaemonians, in
the mean time, entering with a great army into the territory of Tanagra, and
the Athenians going out against them, Cimon, coming from his banishment before
his time was out, put himself in arms and array with those of his
fellow-citizens that were of his own tribe, and desired by his deeds to wipe
off the suspicion of his favoring the Lacedaemonians, by venturing his own
person along with his countrymen. But Pericles' friends, gathering in a body,
forced him to retire as a banished man. For which cause also Pericles seems to
have exerted himself more in that than in any battle, and to have been
conspicuous above all for his exposure of himself to danger. All Cimon's
friends, also, to a man, fell together side by side, whom Pericles had accused
with him of taking part with the Lacedaemonians. Defeated in this battle on
their own frontiers, and expecting a new and perilous attack with return of
spring, the Athenians now felt regret and sorrow for the loss of Cimon, and
repentance for their expulsion of him. Pericles, being sensible of their
feelings, did not hesitate or delay to gratify it, and himself made the motion
for recalling him home. He, upon return, concluded a peace betwixt the two
cities; for the Lacedaemonians entertained as kindly feelings towards him as
they did the reverse towards Pericles and the other popular leaders.

     Yet some there are who say that Pericles did not propose the order for
Cimon's return till some private articles of agreement had been made between
them, and this by means of Elpinice, Cimon's sister; that Cimon, namely,
should go out to sea with a fleet of two hundred ships, and be
commander-in-chief abroad, with a design to reduce the king of Persia's
territories, and that Pericles should have the power at home.

     This Elpinice, it was thought, had before this time procured some favor
for her brother Cimon at Pericles' hands, and induced him to be more remiss
and gentle in urging the charge when Cimon was tried for his life; for
Pericles was one of the committee appointed by the commons to plead against
him. And when Elpinice came and besought him in her brother's behalf, he
answered, with a smile, "O Elpinice, you are too old a woman to undertake such
business as this." But, when he appeared to impeach him, he stood up but once
to speak, merely acquit himself of his commission, and went out of court,
having done Cimon the least prejudice any of his accusers.

     How, then, can one believe Idomeneus, who charges Pericles as if he had
by treachery procured the murder of Ephialtes, the popular statesman, one who
was his friend, and of his own party in all his political course, out of
jealousy, forsooth, and envy of his great reputation? This historian, it
seems, having raked up these stories, I know not whence, has befouled with
them a man who, perchance, was not altogether free from fault or blame, but
yet had a noble spirit, and a soul that was bent on honor; and where such
qualities are, there can no such cruel and brutal passion find harbor or gain
admittance. As to Ephialtes, the truth of the story, as Aristotle has told it,
is this: that having made himself formidable to the oligarchical party, by
being an uncompromising asserter of the people's rights in calling to account
and prosecuting those who any way wronged them, his enemies, lying in wait for
him, by the means of Aristodicus the Tanagraean, privately despatched him.