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                                      75 AD
                                    PERICLES
                                 490?-429 B.C.
                                  by Plutarch
                           translated by John Dryden
PERICLES

  CAESAR 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.
  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 everything
that addresses it, be it what it will, useful or unuseful; 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 colour is
more 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 skilfully, "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 honour
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 endeavour 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 practise 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
practice, 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 mind and
upright temper and demeanour, and in that capacity to bear the
cross-grained humours 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 of 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 have named;

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 gallery 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 intermeddler and a favourer 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 had 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 by 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 Pericles'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 scenes, we shall not
altogether rely upon; Zeno used to bid those who called Pericles's
gravity the affectation of a charlatan, to go and affect the like
themselves; inasmuch as this mere counterfeiting might in time
insensibly instil into them a real love and knowledge of those noble
qualities.
  Nor were these the only advantages which Pericles derived from
Anaxagoras's 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 clashings of quoits, fire-beacons, and the shadows
of sun-dials, every one of which 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 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, 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, 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"-

                    "-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 colours 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 others 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's
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 Piraeus; 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 honours 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 labours, to lovers of expense, intemperance,
and licence, 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. 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 in
interest with the populace, directed the exertions of his party
against this council with such success, that most of these causes
and matters which had been used to be tried there were, by the
agency of Ephialtes, removed from its cognisance; Cimon, also, was
banished by ostracism as a favourer 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.
  The ostracism was limited by law to ten years; but the
Lacedaemonians, in the meantime, 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
favouring the Lacedaemonians, by venturing his own person along with
his countrymen. But Pericles's 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 his 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
favour for her brother Cimon at Pericles's 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 to
acquit himself of his commission, and went out of court, having done
Cimon the least prejudice of 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 honour; and where such qualities are,
there can no such cruel and brutal passion find harbour 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.
  Cimon, while he was admiral, ended his days in the Isle of Cyprus.
And the aristocratical party, seeing that Pericles was already
before this grown to be the greatest and foremost man of all the city,
but nevertheless wishing there should be somebody set up against
him, to blunt and turn the edge of his power, that it might not
altogether prove a monarchy, put forward Thucydides of Alopece, a
discreet person, and a near kinsman of Cimon's, to conduct the
opposition against him; who, indeed, though less skilled in warlike
affairs than Cimon was, yet was better versed in speaking and
political business and keeping close guard in the city, and,
engaging with Pericles on the hustings, in a short time brought the
government to an equality of parties. For he would not suffer those
who were called the honest and good (persons of worth and distinction)
to be scattered up and down and mix themselves and be lost among the
populace, as formerly, diminishing and obscuring their superiority
amongst the masses; but taking them apart by themselves and uniting
them in one body, by their combined weight he was able, as it were
upon the balance, to make a counterpoise to the other party.
  For, indeed, there was from the beginning a sort of concealed split,
or seam, as it might be in a piece of iron, marking the different
popular and aristocratical tendencies; but the open rivalry and
contention of these two opponents made the gash deep, and severed
the city into the two parties of the people and the few. And so
Pericles, at that time, more than at any other, let loose the reins to
the people, and made his policy subservient to their pleasure,
contriving continually to have some great public show or solemnity,
some banquet, or some procession or other in the town to please
them, coaxing his countrymen like children with such delights and
pleasures as were not, however, unedifying. Besides that every year he
sent out threescore galleys, on board of which there were numbers of
the citizens, who were in pay eight months, learning at the same
time and practising the art of seamanship.
  He sent, moreover, a thousand of them into the Chersonese as
planters, to share the land among them by lot, and five hundred more
into the isle of Naxos, and half that number to Andros, a thousand
into Thrace to dwell among the Bisaltae, and others into Italy, when
the city Sybaris, which now was called Thurii, was to be repeopled.
And this he did to ease and discharge the city of an idle, and, by
reason of their idleness, a busy meddling crowd of people; and at
the same time to meet the necessities and restore the fortunes of
the poor townsmen, and to intimidate, also, and check their allies
from attempting any change, by posting such garrisons, as it were,
in the midst of them.
  That which gave most pleasure and ornament to the city of Athens,
and the greatest admiration and even astonishment to all strangers,
and that which now is Greece's only evidence that the power she boasts
of and her ancient wealth are no romance or idle story, was his
construction of the public and sacred buildings. Yet this was that
of all his actions in the government which his enemies most looked
askance upon and cavilled at in the popular assemblies, crying out how
that the commonwealth of Athens had lost its reputation and was
ill-spoken of abroad for removing the common treasure of the Greeks
from the isle of Delos into their own custody; and how that their
fairest excuse for so doing, namely, that they took it away for fear
the barbarians should seize it, and on purpose to secure it in a
safe place, this Pericles had made unavailable, and how that "Greece
cannot but resent it as an insufferable affront, and consider
herself to be tyrannized over openly, when she sees the treasure,
which was contributed by her upon a necessity for the war, wantonly
lavished out by us upon our city, to gild her all over, and to adorn
and set her forth, as it were some vain woman, hung round with
precious stones and figures and temples, which cost a world of money."
  Pericles, on the other hand, informed the people, that they were
in no way obliged to give any account of those moneys to their allies,
so long as they maintained their defence, and kept off the
barbarians from attacking them; while in the meantime they did not
so much as supply one horse or man or ship, but only found money for
the service; "which money," said he, "is not theirs that give it,
but theirs that receive it, if so be they perform the conditions
upon which they receive it." And that it was good reason, that, now
the city was sufficiently provided and stored with all things
necessary for the war, they should convert the overplus of its
wealth to such undertakings as would hereafter, when completed, give
them eternal honour, and, for the present, while in process, freely
supply all the inhabitants with plenty. With their variety of
workmanship and of occasions for service, which summon all arts and
trades and require all hands to be employed about them, they do
actually put the whole city, in a manner, into state-pay; while at the
same time she is both beautiful and maintained by herself. For as
those who are of age and strength for war are provided for and
maintained in the armaments abroad by their pay out of the public
stock, so, it being his desire and design that the undisciplined
mechanic multitude that stayed at home should not go without their
share of public salaries, and yet should not have them given them
for sitting still and doing nothing, to that end he thought fit to
bring in among them, with the approbation of the people, these vast
projects of buildings and designs of work, that would be of some
continuance before they were finished, and would give employment to
numerous arts, so that the part of the people that stayed at home
might, no less than those that were at sea or in garrisons or on
expeditions, have a fair and just occasion of receiving the benefit
and having their share of the public moneys.
  The materials were stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony, cypresswood;
and the arts or trades that wrought and fashioned them were smiths and
carpenters, moulders, founders and braziers, stone-cutters, dyers,
goldsmiths, ivory-workers, painters, embroiderers, turners; those
again that conveyed them to the town for use, merchants and mariners
and ship-masters by sea, and by land, cartwrights, cattle-breeders,
wagoners, rope-makers, flax-workers, shoemakers and
leather-dressers, road-makers, miners. And every trade in the same
nature, as a captain in an army has his particular company of soldiers
under him, had its own hired company of journeymen and labourers
belonging to it banded together as in array, to be as it were the
instrument and body for the performance of the service. Thus, to say
all in a word, the occasions and services of these public works
distributed plenty through every age and condition.
  As then grew the works up, no less stately in size than exquisite in
form, the workmen striving to outvie the material and the design
with the beauty of their workmanship, yet the most wonderful thing
of all was the rapidity of their execution.
  Undertakings, any one of which singly might have required, they
thought, for their completion, several successions and ages of men,
were every one of them accomplished in the height and prime of one
man's political service. Although they say, too, that Zeuxis once,
having heard Agatharchus the painter boast of despatching his work
with speed and ease, replied, "I take a long time." For ease and speed
in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of
beauty; the expenditure of time allowed to a man's pains beforehand
for the production of a thing is repaid by way of interest with a
vital force for the preservation when once produced. For which
reason Pericles's works are especially admired, as having been made
quickly, to last long. For every particular piece of his work was
immediately, even at that time, for its beauty and elegance,
antique; and yet in its vigour and freshness looks to this day as if
it were just executed. There is a sort of bloom of newness upon
those works of his, preserving them from the touch of time, as if they
had some perennial spirit and undying vitality mingled in the
composition of them.
  Phidias had the oversight of all the works, and was
surveyor-general, though upon the various portions other great masters
and workmen were employed. For Callicrates and Ictinus built the
Parthenon; the chapel at Eleusis, where the mysteries were celebrated,
was begun by Coroebus, who erected the pillars that stand upon the
floor or pavement, and joined them to the architraves; and after his
death Metagenes of Xypete added the frieze and the upper line of
columns; Xenocles of Cholargus roofed or arched the lantern on top
of the temple of Castor and Pollux; and the long wall, which
Socrates says he himself heard Pericles propose to the people, was
undertaken by Callicrates. This work Cratinus ridicules, as long in
finishing-

        "'Tis long since Pericles, if words would do it,
         Talked up the wall; yet adds not one mite to it."

  The Odeum, or music-room, which in its interior was full of seats
and ranges of pillars, and outside had its roof made to slope and
descend from one single point at the top, was constructed, we are
told, in imitation of the King of Persia's Pavilion; this likewise
by Pericles's order; which Cratinus again, in his comedy called the
Thracian Women, made an occasion of raillery-

        "So, we see here,
         Jupiter Long-pate Pericles appear,
         Since ostracism time, he's laid aside his head,
         And wears the new Odeum in its stead."

  Pericles, also eager for distinction, then first obtained the decree
for a contest in musical skill to be held yearly at the Panathenaea,
and he himself, being chosen judge, arranged the order and method in
which the competitors should sing and play on the flute and on the
harp. And both at that time, and at other times also, they sat in this
music-room to see and hear all such trials of skill.
  The propylaea, or entrances to the Acropolis, were finished in
five years' time, Mnesicles being the principal architect. A strange
accident happened in the course of building, which showed that the
goddess was not averse to the work, but was aiding and co-operating to
bring it to perfection. One of the artificers, the quickest and the
handiest workman among them all, with a slip of his foot fell down
from a great height, and lay in a miserable condition, the
physicians having no hope of his recovery. When Pericles was in
distress about this, Minerva appeared to him at night in a dream,
and ordered a course of treatment, which he applied, and in a short
time and with great ease cured the man. And upon this occasion it
was that he set up a brass statue of Minerva, surnamed Health, in
the citadel near the altar, which they say was there before. But it
was Phidias who wrought the goddess's image in gold, and he has his
name inscribed on the pedestal as the workman of it; and indeed the
whole work in a manner was under his charge, and he had, as we have
said already, the oversight over all the artists and workmen,
through Pericles's friendship for him; and this, indeed, made him much
envied, and his patron shamefully slandered with stories, as if
Phidias were in the habit of receiving, for Pericles's use, freeborn
women that came to see the works. The comic writers of the town,
when they had got hold of this story, made much of it, and bespattered
him with all the ribaldry they could invent, charging him falsely with
the wife of Menippus, one who was his friend and served as
lieutenant under him in the wars; and with the birds kept by
Pyrilampes, an acquaintance of Pericles, who, they pretended, used
to give presents of peacocks to Pericles's female friends. And how can
one wonder at any number of strange assertions from men whose whole
lives were devoted to mockery, and who were ready at any time to
sacrifice the reputation of their superiors to vulgar envy and
spite, as to some evil genius, when even Stesimbrotus the Thracian has
dared to lay to the charge of Pericles a monstrous and fabulous
piece of criminality with his son's wife? So very difficult a matter
is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history, when, on
the one hand, those who afterwards write it find long periods of
time intercepting their view, and, on the other hand, the contemporary
records of any actions and lives, partly through envy and ill-will,
partly through favour and flattery, pervert and distort truth.
  When the orators, who sided with Thucydides and his party, were at
one time crying out, as their custom was, against Pericles, as one who
squandered away the public money, and made havoc of the state
revenues, he rose in the open assembly and put the question to the
people, whether they thought that he had laid out much; and they
saying, "Too much, a great deal," "Then," said he, "since it is so,
let the cost not go to your account, but to mine; and let the
inscription upon the buildings stand in my name." When they heard
him say thus, whether it were out of a surprise to see the greatness
of his spirit or out of emulation of the glory of the works, they
cried aloud, bidding him to spend on, and lay out what he thought
fit from the public purse, and to spare no cost, till all were
finished.
  At length, coming to a final contest with Thucydides which of the
two should ostracism the other out of the country, and having gone
through this peril, he threw his antagonist out, and broke up the
confederacy that had been organized against him. So that now all
schism and division being at an end, and the city brought to
evenness and unity, he got all Athens and all affairs that pertained
to the Athenians into his own hands, their tributes, their armies, and
their galleys, the islands, the sea, and their wide-extended power,
partly over other Greeks and partly over barbarians, and all that
empire, which they possessed, founded and fortified upon subject
nations and royal friendships and alliance.
  After this he was no longer the same man he had been before, nor
as tame and gentle and familiar as formerly with the populace, so as
readily to yield to their pleasures and to comply with the desires
of the multitude, as a steersman shifts with the winds. Quitting
that loose, remiss, and, in some cases, licentious court of the
popular will, he turned those soft and flowery modulations to the
austerity of aristocratical and regal rule; and employing this
uprightly and undeviatingly for the country's best interests, he was
able generally to lead the people along, with their own wills and
consents, by persuading and showing them what was to be done; and
sometimes, too, urging and pressing them forward extremely against
their will, he made them, whether they would or no, yield submission
to what was for their advantage. In which, to say the truth, he did
but like a skilful physician, who, in a complicated and chronic
disease, as he sees occasion, at one while allows his patient the
moderate use of such things as please him, at another while gives
him keen pains and drug to work the cure. For there arising and
growing up, as was natural, all manner of distempered feelings among a
people which had so vast a command and dominion, he alone, as a
great master, knowing how to handle and deal fitly with each one of
them, and, in an especial manner, making that use of hopes and
fears, as his two chief rudders, with the one to check the career of
their confidence at any time, with the other to raise them up and
cheer them when under any discouragement, plainly showed by this, that
rhetoric, or the art of speaking, is, in Plato's language, the
government of the souls of men, and that her chief business is to
address the affections and passions, which are as it were the
strings and keys to the soul, and require a skilful and careful
touch to be played on as they should be. The source of this
predominance was not barely his power of language, but, as
Thucydides assures us, the reputation of his life, and the
confidence felt in his character; his manifest freedom from every kind
of corruption, and superiority to all considerations of money.
Notwithstanding he had made the city of Athens, which was great of
itself, as great and rich as can be imagined, and though he were
himself in power and interest more than equal to many kings and
absolute rulers, who some of them also bequeathed by will their
power to their children, he, for his part, did not make the
patrimony his father left him greater than it was by one drachma.
  Thucydides, indeed, gives a plain statement of the greatness of
his power; and the comic poets, in their spiteful manner, more than
hint at it, styling his companions and friends the new
Pisistratidae, and calling on him to abjure any intention of
usurpation, as one whose eminence was too great to be any longer
proportionable to and compatible with a democracy or popular
government. And Teleclides says the Athenians had surrendered up to
him-

  "The tribute of the cities, and with them, the cities too,
     to do with them as he pleases, and undo;
   To build up, if he likes, stone walls around a town; and again,
     if so he likes, to pull them down;
   Their treaties and alliances, power, empire, peace, and war,
     their wealth and their success forever more."

  Nor was all this the luck of some happy occasion; nor was it the
mere bloom and grace of a policy that flourished for a season; but
having for forty years together maintained the first place among
statesmen such as Ephialtes and Leocrates and Myronides and Cimon
and Tolmides and Thucydides were, after the defeat and banishment of
Thucydides, for no less than fifteen years longer, in the exercise
of one continuous unintermitted command in the office, to which he was
annually re-elected, of General, he preserved his integrity unspotted;
though otherwise he was not altogether idle or careless in looking
after his pecuniary advantage; his paternal estate, which of right
belonged to him, he so ordered that it might neither through
negligence he wasted or lessened, nor yet, being so full of business
as he was, cost him any great trouble or time with taking care of
it; and put it into such a way of management as he thought to be the
most easy for himself, and the most exact. All his yearly products and
profits he sold together in a lump, and supplied his household needs
afterwards by buying everything that he or his family wanted out of
the market. Upon which account, his children, when they grew to age,
were not well pleased with his management, and the women that lived
with him were treated with little cost, and complained of his way of
housekeeping, where everything was ordered and set down from day to
day, and reduced to the greatest exactness; since there was not there,
as is usual in a great family and a plentiful estate, anything to
spare, or over and above; but all that went out or came in, all
disbursements and all receipts, proceeded as it were by number and
measure. His manager in all this was a single servant, Evangelus by
name, a man either naturally gifted or instructed by Pericles so as to
excel every one in this art of domestic economy.
  All this, in truth, was very little in harmony with Anaxagoras's
wisdom; if, indeed, it be true that he, by a kind of divine impulse
and greatness of spirit, voluntarily quitted his house, and left his
land to lie fallow and to be grazed by sheep like a common. But the
life of a contemplative philosopher and that of an active statesman
are, I presume, not the same thing; for the one merely employs, upon
great and good objects of thought, an intelligence that requires no
aid of instruments nor supply of any external materials; whereas the
other, who tempers and applies his virtue to human uses, may have
occasion for affluence, not as a matter of necessity, but as a noble
thing; which was Pericles's case, who relieved numerous poor citizens.
  However, there is a story that Anaxagoras himself, while Pericles
was taken up with public affairs, lay neglected, and that, now being
grown old, he wrapped himself up with a resolution to die for want
of food; which being by chance brought to Pericles's ear, he was
horror-struck, and instantly ran thither, and used all the arguments
and entreaties he could to him, lamenting not so much Anaxagoras's
condition as his own, should he lose such a counsellor as he had found
him to be; and that, upon this, Anaxagoras unfolded his robe, and
showing himself, made answer: "Pericles," said he, "even those who
have occasion for a lamp supply it with oil."
  The Lacedaemonians beginning to show themselves troubled at the
growth of the Athenian power, Pericles, on the other hand, to
elevate the people's spirit yet more, and to raise them to the thought
of great actions, proposed a decree, to summon all the Greeks in what,
part soever, whether of Europe or Asia, every city, little as well
as great, to send their deputies to Athens to a general assembly, or
convention, there to consult and advise concerning the Greek temples
which the barbarians had burnt down, and the sacrifices which were due
from them upon vows they had made to their gods for the safety of
Greece when they fought against the barbarians; and also concerning
the navigation of the sea, that they might henceforward pass to and
fro and trade securely and be at peace among themselves.
  Upon this errand there were twenty men, of such as were above
fifty years of age, sent by commission; five to summon the Ionians and
Dorians in Asia, and the islanders as far as Lesbos and Rhodes; five
to visit all the places in the Hellespont and Thrace, up to Byzantium;
and other five besides these to go to Boeotia and Phocis and
Peloponnesus, and from hence to pass through the Locrians over to
the neighbouring continent as far as Acarnania and Ambracia; and the
rest to take their course through Euboea to the Oetaeans and the
Malian Gulf, and to the Achaeans of Phthiotis and the Thessalians; all
of them to treat with the people as they passed, and persuade them
to come and take their part in the debates for settling the peace
and jointly regulating the affairs of Greece.
  Nothing was effected, nor did the cities meet by their deputies,
as was desired; the Lacedaemonians, as it is said, crossing the design
underhand, and the attempt being disappointed and baffled first in
Peloponnesus. I thought fit, however, to introduce the mention of
it, to show the spirit of the man and the greatness of his thoughts.
  In his military conduct, he gained a great reputation for
wariness; he would not by his good-will engage in any fight which
had much uncertainty or hazard; he did not envy the glory of
generals whose rash adventures fortune favoured with brilliant
success, however they were admired by others; nor did he think them
worthy his imitation, but always used to say to his citizens that,
so far as lay in his power, they should continue immortal, and live
for ever. Seeing Tolmides, the son of Tolmaeus, upon the confidence of
his former successes, and flushed with the honour his military actions
had procured him, making preparations to attack the Boeotians in their
own country when there was no likely opportunity, and that he had
prevailed with the bravest and most enterprising of the youth to
enlist themselves as volunteers in the service, who besides his
other force made up a thousand, he endeavoured to withhold him and
to advise him from it in the public assembly, telling him in a
memorable saying of his, which still goes about, that, if he would not
take Pericles's advice, yet he would not do amiss to wait and be ruled
by time, the wisest counsellor of all. This saying, at that time,
was but slightly commended; but within a few days after, when news was
brought that Tolmides himself had been defeated and slain in battle
near Coronea, and that many brave citizens had fallen with him, it
gained him great repute as well as good-will among the people, for
wisdom and for love of his countrymen.
  But of all his expeditions, that to the Chersonese gave most
satisfaction and pleasure, having proved the safety of the Greeks
who inhabited there. For not only by carrying along with him a
thousand fresh citizens of Athens he gave new strength and vigour to
the cities, but also by belting the neck of land, which joins the
peninsula to the continent, with bulwarks and forts from sea to sea,
he put a stop to the inroads of the Thracians, who lay all about the
Chersonese, and closed the door against a continual and grievous
war, with which that country had been long harassed, lying exposed
to the encroachments and influx of barbarous neighbours, and
groaning under the evils of a predatory population both upon and
within its borders.
  Nor was he less admired and talked of abroad for his sailing
around the Peloponnesus, having set out from Pegae, or The
Fountains, the port of Megara, with a hundred galleys. For he not only
laid waste the sea-coast, as Tolmides had done before, but also,
advancing far up into the mainland with the soldiers he had on
board, by the terror of his appearance drove many within their
walls; and at Nemea, with main force, routed and raised a trophy
over the Sicyonians, who stood their ground and joined battle with
him. And having taken on board a supply of soldiers into the galleys
out of Achaia, then in league with Athens, he crossed with the fleet
to the opposite continent, and, sailing along by the mouth of the
river Achelous, overran Acarnania and shut up the Oeniadae within
their city walls, and having ravaged and wasted their country, weighed
anchor for home with the double advantage of having shown himself
formidable to his enemies, and at the same time safe and energetic
to his fellow citizens; for there was not so much as any chance
miscarriage that happened, the whole voyage through, to those who were
under his charge.
  Entering also the Euxine Sea with a large and finely equipped fleet,
he obtained for the Greek cities any new arrangements they wanted, and
entered into friendly relations with them; and to the barbarous
nations, and kings and chiefs round about them, displayed the
greatness of the power of the Athenians, their perfect ability avid
confidence to sail where-ever they had a mind, and to bring the
whole sea under their control. He left the Sinopians thirteen ships of
war, with soldiers under the command of Lamachus, to assist them
against Timesileus the tyrant; and when he and his accomplices had
been thrown out, obtained a decree that six hundred of the Athenians
that were willing should sail to Sinope and plant themselves there
with the Sinopians, sharing among them the houses and land which the
tyrant and his party had previously held.
  But in other things he did not comply with the giddy impulses of the
citizens, nor quit his own resolutions to follow their fancies,
when, carried away with the thought of their strength and great
success, they were eager to interfere again in Egypt, and to disturb
the King of Persia's maritime dominions. Nay, there were a good many
who were, even then, possessed with that unblest and inauspicious
passion for Sicily, which afterward the orators of Alcibiades's
party blew up into a flame. There were some also who dreamt of Tuscany
and Carthage, and not without plausible reason in their present
large dominion and prosperous course of their affairs.
  But Pericles curbed this passion for foreign conquest, and
unsparingly pruned and cut down their ever busy fancies for a
multitude of undertakings; and directed their power for the most
part to securing and consolidating what they had already got,
supposing it would be quite enough for them to do, if they could
keep the Lacedaemonians in check; to whom he entertained all along a
sense of opposition; which, as upon many other occasions, so he
particularly showed by what he did in the time of the holy war. The
Lacedaemonians, having gone with an army to Delphi, restored
Apollo's temple, which the Phocians had got into their possession,
to the Delphians; immediately after their departure, Pericles, with
another army, came and restored the Phocians. And the
Lacedaemonians, having engraven the record of their privilege of
consulting the oracle before others, which the Delphians gave them,
upon the forehead of the brazen wolf which stands there, he, also,
having received from the Phocians the like privilege for the
Athenians, had it cut upon the same wolf of brass on his right side.
  That he did well and wisely in thus restraining the exertions of the
Athenians within the compass of Greece, the events themselves that
happened afterward bore sufficient witness. For, in the first place,
the Euboeans revolted, against whom he passed over with forces; and
then, immediately after, news came that the Megarians were turned
their enemies; and a hostile army was upon the borders of Attica,
under the conduct of Plistoanax, King of the Lacedaemonians. Wherefore
Pericles came with his army back again in all haste out of Euboea,
to meet the war which threatened at home; and did not venture to
engage a numerous and brave army eager for battle; but perceiving that
Plistoanax was a very young man, and governed himself mostly by the
counsel and advice of Cleandrides, whom the ephors had sent with
him, by reason of his youth, to be a kind of guardian and assistant to
him, he privately made trial of this man's integrity, and, in a
short time, having corrupted him with money, prevailed with him to
withdraw the Peloponnesians out of Attica. When the army had retired
and dispersed into their several states, the Lacedaemonians in anger
fined their king in so large a sum of money, that, unable to pay it,
he quitted Lacedaemon; while Cleandrides fled, and had sentence of
death passed upon him in his absence. This was the father of Gylippus,
who overpowered the Athenians in Sicily. And it seems that this
covetousness was an hereditary disease transmitted from father to son;
for Gylippus also afterwards was caught in foul practices, and
expelled from Sparta for it. But this we have told at large in the
account of Lysander.
  When Pericles, in giving up his accounts of this expedition,
stated a disbursement of ten talents, as laid out upon fit occasion,
the people, without any question, nor troubling themselves to
investigate the mystery, freely allowed of it. And some historians, in
which number is Theophrastus the philosopher, have given it as a truth
that Pericles every year used to send privately the sum of ten talents
to Sparta, with which he complimented those in office, to keep off the
war; not to purchase peace neither, but time, that he might prepare at
leisure, and be the better able to carry on war hereafter.
  Immediately after this, turning his forces against the revolters,
and passing over into the island of Euboea with fifty sail of ships
and five thousand men in arms, he reduced their cities, and drove
out the citizens of the Chalcidians, called Hippobotae, horse-feeders,
the chief persons for wealth and reputation among them; and removing
all the Histiaeans out of the country, brought in a plantation of
Athenians in their room; making them his one example of severity,
because they had captured an Attic ship and killed all on board.
  After this, having made a truce between the Athenians and
Lacedaemonians for thirty years, he ordered, by public decree, the
expedition against the isle of Samos, on the ground, that, when they
were bid to leave off their war with the Milesians they had not
complied. And as these measures against the Samians are thought to
have been taken to please Aspasia, this may be a fit point for inquiry
about the woman, what art or charming faculty she had that enabled her
to captivate, as she did, the greatest statesmen, and to give the
philosophers occasion to speak so much about her, and that, too, not
to her disparagement. That she was a Milesian by birth, the daughter
of Axiochus, is a thing acknowledged. And they say it was in emulation
of Thargelia, a courtesan of the old Ionian times, that she made her
addresses to men of great power. Thargelia was a great beauty,
extremely charming, and at the same time sagacious; she had numerous
suitors among the Greeks, and brought all who had to do with her
over to the Persian interest, and by their means, being men of the
greatest power and station, sowed the seeds of the Median faction up
and down in several cities. Aspasia, some say, was courted and
caressed by Pericles upon account of her knowledge and skill in
politics. Socrates himself would sometimes go to visit her, and some
of his acquaintance with him; and those who frequented her company
would carry their wives with them to listen to her. Her occupation was
anything but creditable, her house being a home for young
courtesans. Aeschines tells us, also, that Lysicles, a sheep-dealer, a
man of low birth and character, by keeping Aspasia company after
Pericles's death, came to be a chief man in Athens. And in Plato's
Menexenus, though we do not take the introduction as quite serious,
still thus much seems to be historical, that she had the repute of
being resorted to by many of the Athenians for instruction in the
art of speaking. Pericles's inclination for her seems, however, to
have rather proceeded from the passion of love. He had a wife that was
near of kin to him, who had been married first to Hipponicus, by
whom she had Callias, surnamed the Rich; and also she brought
Pericles, while she lived with him, two sons, Xanthippus and
Paralus. Afterwards, when they did not well agree, nor like to live
together, he parted with her, with her own consent, to another man,
and himself took Aspasia, and loved her with wonderful affection;
every day, both as he went out and as he came in from the
market-place, he saluted and kissed her.
  In the comedies she goes by the nicknames of the new Omphale and
Deianira, and again is styled Juno. Cratinus, in downright terms,
calls her a harlot.

            "To find him a Juno the goddess of lust
             Bore that harlot past shame,
             Aspasia by name."

It should seem also that he had a son by her; Eupolis, in his Demi,
introduced Pericles asking after his safety, and Myronides replying-

        "My son?" "He lives: a man he had been long,
         But that the harlot-mother did him wrong."

Aspasia, they say, became so celebrated and renowned, that Cyrus, also
who made war against Artaxerxes for the Persian monarchy, gave her
whom he loved the best of all his concubines the name of Aspasia,
who before that was called Milto. She was a Phocaean by birth, the
daughter of one Hermotimus, and, when Cyrus fell in battle, was
carried to the king, and had great influence at court. These things
coming into my memory as I am writing this story, it would be
unnatural for me to omit them.
  Pericles, however, was particularly charged with having proposed
to the assembly the war against the Samians, from favour to the
Milesians, upon the entreaty of Aspasia. For the two states were at
war for the possession of Priene; and the Samians, getting the better,
refused to lay down their arms and to have the controversy betwixt
them decided by arbitration before the Athenians. Pericles, therefore,
fitting out a fleet, went and broke up the oligarchical government
at Samos, and taking fifty of the principal men of the town as
hostages, and as many of their children, sent them to the isle of
Lemnos, there to be kept, though he had offers, as some relate, of a
talent apiece for himself from each one of the hostages, and of many
other presents from those who were anxious not to have a democracy.
Moreover, Pisuthnes the Persian, one of the king's lieutenants,
bearing some good-will to the Samians, sent him ten thousand pieces of
gold to excuse the city. Pericles, however, would receive none of
all this; but after he had taken that course with the Samians which he
thought fit, and set up a democracy among them, sailed back to Athens.
  But they, however, immediately revolted, Pisuthnes having privily
got away their hostages for them, and provided them with means for the
war. Whereupon Pericles came out with a fleet a second time against
them, and found them not idle nor slinking away, but manfully resolved
to try for the dominion of the sea. The issue was, that after a
sharp sea-fight about the island called Tragia, Pericles obtained a
decisive victory, having with forty-four ships routed seventy of the
enemy's, twenty of which were carrying soldiers.
  Together with his victory and pursuit, having made himself master of
the port, he laid siege to the Samians, and blocked them up, who
yet, one way or another, still ventured to make sallies, and fight
under the city walls. But after that another greater fleet from Athens
was arrived, and that the Samians were now shut up with a close
leaguer on every side, Pericles, taking with him sixty galleys, sailed
out into the main sea, with the intention, as most authors give the
account, to meet a squadron of Phoenician ships that were coming for
the Samians' relief, and to fight them at as great distance as could
be from the island; but, as Stesimbrotus says, with a design of
putting over to Cyprus, which does not seem to be probable. But,
whichever of the two was his intention, it seems to have been a
miscalculation. For on his departure, Melissus, the son of
Ithagenes, a philosopher, being at that time the general in Samos,
despising either the small number of the ships that were left or the
inexperience of the commanders, prevailed with the citizens to
attack the Athenians. And the Samians having won the battle, and taken
several of the men prisoners, and disabled several of the ships,
were masters of the sea, and brought into port all necessaries they
wanted for the war, which they had not before. Aristotle says, too,
that Pericles had been once before this worsted by this Melissus in
a sea-fight.
  The Samians, that they might requite an affront which had before
been put upon them, branded the Athenians, whom they took prisoners,
in their foreheads, with the figure of an owl. For so the Athenians
had marked them before with a Samaena, which is a sort of ship, low
and flat in the prow, so as to look snub-nosed, but wide and large and
well-spread in the hold, by which it both carries a large cargo and
sails well. And it was so called, because the first of that kind was
seen at Samos, having been built by order of Polycrates the tyrant.
These brands upon the Samians' foreheads, they say, are the allusion
in the passage of Aristophanes, where he says-

        "For, oh, the Samians are a lettered people."

  Pericles, as soon as news was brought him of the disaster that had
befallen his army, made all the haste he could to come in to their
relief, and having defeated Melissus, who bore up against him, and put
the enemy to flight, he immediately proceeded to hem them in with a
wall, resolving to master them and take the town, rather with some
cost and time than with the wounds and hazards of his citizens. But as
it was a hard matter to keep back the Athenians, who were vexed at the
delay, and were eagerly bent to fight, he divided the whole
multitude into eight parts, and arranged by lot that that part which
had the white bean should have leave to feast and take their ease
while the other seven were fighting. And this is the reason, they say,
that people, when at any time they have been merry, and enjoyed
themselves, called it white day, in allusion to this white bean.
  Ephorus the historian tells us besides, that Pericles made use of
engines of battery in this siege, being much taken with the
curiousness of the invention, with the aid and presence of Artemon
himself, the engineer, who, being lame, used to be carried about in
a litter, where the works required his attendance, and for that reason
was called Periphoretus. But Heraclides Ponticus disproves this out of
Anacreon's poems, where mention is made of this Artemon Periphoretus
several ages before the Samian war, or any of these occurrences. And
he says that Artemon, being a man who loved his ease, and had a
great apprehension of danger, for the most part kept close within
doors, having two of his servants to hold a brazen shield over his
head, that nothing might fall upon him from above; and if he were at
any time forced upon necessity to go abroad, that he was carried about
in a little hanging bed, close to the very ground, and that for this
reason he was called Periphoretus.
  In the ninth month, the Samians surrendering themselves and
delivering up the town, Pericles pulled down their walls, and seized
their shipping, and set a fine of a large sum of money upon them, part
of which they paid down at once, and they agreed to bring in the
rest by a certain time, and gave hostages for security. Duris the
Samian makes a tragical drama out of these events, charging the
Athenians and Pericles with a great deal of cruelty, which neither
Thucydides, nor Ephorus, nor Aristotle have given any relation of, and
probably with little regard to truth; how, for example, he brought the
captains and soldiers of the alleys into the market-place at
Miletus, and there having bound them fast to boards for ten days,
then, when they were already all but half dead, gave order to have
them killed by beating out their brains with clubs, and their dead
bodies to be flung out into the open streets and fields, unburied.
Duris however, who, even where he has no private feeling concerned, is
not wont to keep his narratives within the limits of truth, is the
more likely upon this occasion to have exaggerated the calamities
which befell his country, to create odium against the Athenians.
Pericles however, after the reduction of Samos, returning back to
Athens, took care that those who died in the war should be
honourably buried, and made a funeral harangue, as the custom is, in
their commendation at their graves, for which he gained great
admiration. As he came down from the stage on which he spoke, the rest
of the women came and complimented him, taking him by the hand, and
crowning him with garlands and ribbons, like a victorious athlete in
the games; but Elpinice, coming near to him, said, "These are brave
deeds, Pericles, that you have done, and such as deserve our chaplets;
who have lost us many a worthy citizen, not in a war with
Phoenicians or Medes, like my brother Cimon, but for the overthrow
of an allied and kindred city." As Elpinice spoke these words, he,
smiling quietly, as it is said, returned her answer with this verse:-

        "Old women should not seek to be perfumed."

Ion says of him, that upon this exploit of his, conquering the
Samians, he indulged very high and proud thoughts of himself:
whereas Agamemnon was ten years taking a barbarous city, he had in
nine months' time vanquished and taken the greatest and most
powerful of the Ionians. And indeed it was not without reason that
he assumed this glory to himself, for, in real truth, there was much
uncertainty and great hazard in this great war, if so be, as
Thucydides tells us, the Samian state were within a very little of
wresting the whole power and dominion of the sea out of the Athenians'
hands.
  After this was over, the Peloponnesian war beginning to break out in
full tide, he advised the people to send help to the Corcyraeans,
who were attacked by the Corinthians, and to secure to themselves an
island possessed of great naval resources, since the Peloponnesians
were already all but in actual hostilities against them. The people
readily consenting to the motion, and voting an aid and succour for
them, he despatched Lacedaemonius, Cimon's son, having only ten
ships with him, as it were out of a design to affront him; for there
was a great kindness and friendship betwixt Cimon's family and the
Lacedaemonians; so, in order that Lacedaemonius might lie the more
open to a charge, or suspicion at least, of favouring the
Lacedaemonians and playing false, if he performed no considerable
exploit in this service, he allowed him a small number of ships, and
sent him out against his will; and indeed he made it somewhat his
business to hinder Cimon's sons from rising in the state, professing
that by their very names they were not to be looked upon as native and
true Athenians, but foreigners and strangers, one being called
Lacedaemonius, another Thessalus, and the third Eleus and they were
all three of them, it was thought, born of an Arcadian woman. Being,
however, ill spoken of on account of these ten galleys, as having
afforded but a small supply to the people that were in need, and yet
given a great advantage to those who might complain of the act of
intervention, Pericles sent out a larger force afterwards to
Corcyra, which arrived after the fight was over. And when now the
Corinthians, angry and indignant with the Athenians, accused them
publicly at Lacedaemon, the Megarians joined with them, complaining
that they were, contrary to common right and the articles of peace
sworn to among the Greeks, kept out and driven away from every
market and from all ports under the control of the Athenians. The
Aeginetans, also, professing to be ill-used and treated with violence,
made supplications in private to the Lacedaemonians for redress,
though not daring openly to call the Athenians in question. In the
meantime, also, the city Potidaea, under the dominion of the
Athenians, but a colony formerly of the Corinthians, had revolted, and
was beset with a formal siege, and was a further occasion of
precipitating the war.
  Yet notwithstanding all this, there being embassies sent to
Athens, and Archidamus, the King of the Lacedaemonians, endeavouring
to bring the greater part of the complaints and matters in dispute
to a fair determination, and to pacify and allay the heats of the
allies, it is very likely that the war would not upon any other
grounds of quarrel have fallen upon the Athenians, could they have
been prevailed with to repeal the ordinance against the Megarians, and
to be reconciled to them. Upon which account, since Pericles was the
man who mainly opposed it, and stirred up the people's passions to
persist in their contention with the Megarians, he was regarded as the
sole cause of the war.
  They say, moreover, that ambassadors went, by order, from Lacedaemon
to Athens about this very business, and that when Pericles was
urging a certain law which made it illegal to take down or withdraw
the tablet of the decree, one of the ambassadors, Polyalces by name,
said, "Well, do not take it down then, but turn it; there is no law, I
suppose, which forbids that;" which, though prettily said, did not
move Pericles from his resolution. There may have been, in all
likelihood, something of a secret grudge and private animosity which
he had against the Megarians. Yet, upon a public and open charge
against them, that they had appropriated part of the sacred land on
the frontier, he proposed a decree that a herald should be sent to
them, and the same also to the Lacedaemonians, with an accusation of
the Megarians; an order which certainly shows equitable and friendly
proceeding enough. And after that the herald who was sent, by name
Anthemocritus, died, and it was believed that the Megarians had
contrived his death, then Charinus proposed a decree against them,
that there should be an irreconcilable and implacable enmity
thenceforward betwixt the two commonwealths; and that if any one of
the Megarians should but set his foot in Attica, he should be put to
death; and that the commanders, when they take the usual oath, should,
over and above that, swear that they will twice every year make an
inroad into the Megarian country; and that Anthemocritus should be
buried near the Thracian Gates, which are now called the Dipylon, or
Double Gate.
  On the other hand, the Megarians, utterly denying and disowning
the murder of Anthemocritus, throw the whole matter upon Aspasia and
Pericles, availing themselves of the famous verses in the Acharnians-

        "To Megara some of our madcaps ran,
         And stole Simaetha thence, their courtesan.
         Which exploit the Megarians to outdo,
         Came to Aspasia's house, and took off two."

  The true occasion of the quarrel is not so easy to find out. But
of inducing the refusal to annul the decree, all alike charge
Pericles. Some say he met the request with a positive refusal, out
of high spirit and a view of the state's best interest, accounting
that the demand made in those embassies was designed for a trial of
their compliance, and that a concession would be taken for a
confession of weakness as if they durst not do otherwise; while
other some there are who say that it was rather out of arrogance and a
willful spirit of contention, to show his own strength, that he took
occasion to slight the Lacedaemonians. The worst motive of all,
which is confirmed by most witnesses, is to the following effect:
Phidias the Moulder had, as has before been said, undertaken to make
the statue of Minerva. Now he, being admitted to friendship with
Pericles, and a great favourite of his, had many enemies upon this
account, who envied and maligned him; who also, to make trial in a
case of his, what kind of judges the commons would prove, should there
be occasion to bring Pericles himself before them, having tampered
with Menon, one who had been a workman with Phidias, stationed him
in the market-place, with a petition desiring public security upon his
discovery and impeachment of Phidias. The people admitting the man
to tell his story, and the prosecution proceeding in the assembly,
there was nothing of theft or cheat proved against him; for Phidias,
from the very first beginning, by the advice of Pericles, had so
wrought and wrapt the gold that was used in the work about the statue,
that they might take it all off, and make out the just weight of it,
which Pericles at that time bade the accuser do. But the reputation of
his works was what brought envy upon Phidias, especially that where he
represents the fight of the Amazons upon the goddess's shield, he
had introduced a likeness of himself as a bald old man holding up a
great stone with both hands, and had put in a very fine representation
of Pericles fighting with an Amazon. And the position of the hand
which holds out the spear in front of the face, was ingeniously
contrived to conceal in some degree the likeness, which meantime
showed itself on either side.
  Phidias then was carried away to prison, and there died of a
disease; but, as some say, of poison, administered by the enemies of
Pericles, to raise a slander, or a suspicion at least, as though he
had procured it. The informer Menon, upon Glycon's proposal, the
people made free from payment of taxes and customs, and ordered the
generals to take care that nobody should do him any hurt. About the
same time, Aspasia was indicted of impiety, upon the complaint of
Hermippus the comedian, who also laid further to her charge that she
received into her house freeborn women for the uses of Pericles. And
Diopithes proposed a decree, that public accusations should be laid
against persons who neglected religion, or taught new doctrines
about things above, directing suspicion, by means of Anaxagoras,
against Pericles himself. The people receiving and admitting these
accusations and complaints, at length, by this means, they came to
enact a decree, at the motion of Dracontides, that Pericles should
bring in the accounts of the moneys he had expended, and lodge them
with the Prytanes; and that the judges, carrying their suffrage from
the altar in the Acropolis, should examine and determine the
business in the city. This last clause Hagnon took out of the
decree, and moved that the causes should be tried before fifteen
hundred jurors, whether they should be styled prosecutions for
robbery, or bribery, or any kind of malversation. Aspasia, Pericles
begged off, shedding, as Aeschines says, many tears at the trial,
and personally entreating the jurors. But fearing how it might go with
Anaxagoras, he sent him out of the city. And finding that in Phidias's
case he had miscarried with the people, being afraid of impeachment,
he kindled the war, which hitherto had lingered and smothered, and
blew it up into a flame; hoping, by that means, to disperse and
scatter these complaints and charges, and to allay their jealousy; the
city usually throwing herself upon him alone, and trusting to his sole
conduct, upon the urgency of great affairs and public dangers, by
reason of his authority and the sway he bore.
  These are given out to have been the reasons which induced
Pericles not to suffer the people of Athens to yield to the
proposals of the Lacedaemonians; but their truth is uncertain.
  The Lacedaemonians, for their part, feeling sure that if they
could once remove him, they might be at what terms they pleased with
the Athenians, sent them word that they should expel the "Pollution"
with which Pericles on the mother's side was tainted, as Thucydides
tells us. But the issue proved quite contrary to what those who sent
the message expected; instead of bringing Pericles under suspicion and
reproach, they raised him into yet greater credit and esteem with
the citizens, as a man whom their enemies most hated and feared. In
the same way, also, before Archidamus, who was at the head of the
Peloponnesians, made his invasion into Attica, he told the Athenians
beforehand, that if Archidamus, while he laid waste the rest of the
country, should forbear and spare his estate, either on the ground
of friendship or right of hospitality that was betwixt them, or on
purpose to give his enemies an occasion of traducing him; that then he
did freely bestow upon the state all his land and the buildings upon
it for the public use. The Lacedaemonians, therefore, and their
allies, with a great army, invaded the Athenian territories, under the
conduct of King Archidamus, and laying waste the country, marched on
as far as Acharnae, and there pitched their camp, presuming that the
Athenians would never endure that, but would come out and fight them
for their country's and their honour's sake. But Pericles looked
upon it as dangerous to engage in battle, to the risk of the city
itself, against sixty thousand men-at-arms of Peloponnesians and
Boeotians; for so many they were in number that made the inroad at
first; and he endeavoured to appease those who were desirous to fight,
and were grieved and discontented to see how things went, and gave
them good words, saying, that "trees, when they are lopped and cut,
grow up again in a short time, but men, being once lost, cannot easily
be recovered." He did not convene the people into an assembly, for
fear lest they should force him to act against his judgment; but, like
a skilful steersman or pilot of a ship, who, when a sudden squall
comes on, out at sea, makes all his arrangements, sees that all is
tight and fast, and then follows the dictates of his skill, and
minds the business of the ship, taking no notice of the tears and
entreaties of the sea-sick and fearful passengers, so he, having
shut up the city gates, and placed guards at all posts for security,
followed his own reason and judgment, little regarding those that
cried out against him and were angry at his management, although there
were a great many of his friends that urged him with requests, and
many of his enemies threatened and accused him for doing as he did,
and many made songs and lampoons upon him, which were sung about the
town to his disgrace, reproaching him with the cowardly exercise of
his office of general, and the tame abandonment of everything to the
enemy's hands.
  Cleon, also, already was among his assailants, making use of the
feeling against him as a step to the leadership of the people, as
appears in the anapaestic verses of Hermippus-

        "Satyr-king, instead of swords,
         Will you always handle words?
         Very brave indeed we find them,
         But a Teles lurks behind them.

        "Yet to gnash your teeth you're seen,
         When the little dagger keen,
         Whetted every day anew,
         Of sharp Cleon touches you."

  Pericles, however, was not at all moved by any attacks, but took all
patiently, and submitted in silence to the disgrace they threw upon
him and the ill-will they bore him; and, sending out a fleet of a
hundred galleys to Peloponnesus, he did not go along with it in
person, but stayed behind, that he might watch at home and keep the
city under his own control, till the Peloponnesians broke up their
camp and were gone. Yet to soothe the common people, jaded and
distressed with the war, he relieved them with distributions of public
moneys, and ordained new divisions of subject land. For having
turned out all the people of Aegina, he parted the island among the
Athenians according to lot. Some comfort also, and ease in their
miseries, they might receive from what their enemies endured. For
the fleet, sailing round the Peloponnese, ravaged a great deal of
the country, and pillaged and plundered the towns and smaller
cities; and by land he himself entered with an army the Megarian
country, and made havoc of it all. Whence it is clear that the
Peloponnesians, though they did the Athenians much mischief by land,
yet suffering as much themselves from them by sea, would not have
protracted the war to such a length, but would quickly have given it
over, as Pericles at first foretold they would, had not some divine
power crossed human purposes.
  In the first place, the pestilential disease, or plague, seized upon
the city, and ate up all the flower and prime of their youth and
strength. Upon occasion of which, the people, distempered and
afflicted in their souls, as well as in their bodies, were utterly
enraged like madmen against Pericles, and, like patients grown
delirious, sought to lay violent hands on their physician, or, as it
were, their father. They had been possessed, by his enemies, with
the belief that the occasion of the plague was the crowding of the
country people together into the town forced as they were now, in
the heat of the summer-weather, to dwell many of them together even as
they could, in small tenements and stifling hovels, and to be tied
to a lazy course of life within doors, whereas before they lived in
a pure, open, and free air. The cause and author of all this, said
they, is he who on account of the war has poured a multitude of people
in upon us within the walls, and uses all these men that he has here
upon no employ or service, but keeps them pent up like cattle, to be
overrun with infection from one another, affording them neither
shift of quarters nor any refreshment.
  With the design to remedy these evils, and do the enemy some
inconvenience, Pericles got a hundred and fifty galleys ready, and
having embarked many tried soldiers, both foot and horse, was about to
sail out, giving great hope to his citizens, and no less alarm to
his enemies, upon the sight of so great a force. And now the vessels
having their complement of men, and Pericles being gone aboard his own
galley, it happened that the sun was eclipsed, and it grew dark on a
sudden, to the affright of all, for this was looked upon as
extremely ominous. Pericles, therefore, perceiving the steersman
seized with fear and at a loss what to do, took his cloak and held
it up before the man's face, and screening him with it so that he
could not see, asked him whether he imagined there was any great hurt,
or the sign of any great hurt in this, and he answering No, "Why,"
said he, "and what does that differ from this, only that what has
caused that darkness there, is something greater than a cloak?" This
is a story which philosophers tell their scholars. Pericles,
however, after putting out to sea, seems not to have done any other
exploit befitting such preparations, and when he had laid siege to the
holy city Epidaurus, which gave him some hope of surrender, miscarried
in his design by reason of the sickness. For it not only seized upon
the Athenians, but upon all others, too, that held any sort of
communication with the army. Finding after this the Athenians
ill-affected and highly displeased with him, he tried and
endeavoured what he could to appease and re-encourage them. But he
could not pacify or allay their anger, nor persuade or prevail with
them any way, till they freely passed their votes upon him, resumed
their power, took away his command from him, and fined him in a sum of
money; which by their account that say least, was fifteen talents,
while they who reckon most, name fifty. The name prefixed to the
accusation was Cleon, as Idomeneus tells us; Simmias, according to
Theophrastus; and Heraclides Ponticus gives it as Lacratidas.
  After this, public troubles were soon to leave him unmolested; the
people, so to say, discharged their passion in their stroke, and
lost their stings in the wound. But his domestic concerns were in an
unhappy condition, many of his friends and acquaintance having died in
the plague time, and those of his family having long since been in
disorder and in a kind of mutiny against him. For the eldest of his
lawfully begotten sons, Xanthippus by name, being naturally
prodigal, and marrying a young and expensive wife, the daughter of
Tisander, son of Epilycus, was highly offended at his father's economy
in making him but a scanty allowance, by little and little at a
time. He sent, therefore, to a friend one day and borrowed some
money of him in his father Pericles's name, pretending it was by his
order. The man coming afterward to demand the debt, Pericles was so
far from yielding to pay it, that he entered an action against him.
Upon which the young man, Xanthippus, thought himself so ill-used
and disobliged that he openly reviled his father; telling first, by
way of ridicule, stories about his conversations at home, and the
discourses he had with the sophists and scholars that came to his
house. As, for instance, how one who was a practicer of the five games
of skill, having with a dart or javelin unawares against his will
struck and killed Epitimus the Pharsalian, his father spent a whole
day with Protagoras in a serious dispute, whether the javelin, or
the man that threw it, or the masters of the games who appointed these
sports, were, according to the strictest and best reason, to be
accounted the cause of this mischance. Besides this, Stesimbrotus
tells us that it was Xanthippus who spread abroad among the people the
infamous story concerning his own wife; and in general that this
difference of the young man's with his father, and the breach
betwixt them, continued never to be healed or made up till his
death. For Xanthippus died in the plague time of the sickness. At
which time Pericles also lost his sister, and the greatest part of his
relations and friends, and those who had been most useful and
serviceable to him in managing the affairs of state. However, he did
not shrink or give in upon these occasions, nor betray or lower his
high spirit and the greatness of his mind under all his misfortunes;
he was not even so much as seen to weep or to mourn, or even attend
the burial of any of his friends or relations, till at last he lost
his only remaining legitimate son. Subdued by this blow, and yet
striving still, as far as he could, to maintain his principle, and
to preserve and keep up the greatness of his soul, when he came,
however, to perform the ceremony of putting a garland of flowers
upon the head of the corpse, he was vanquished by his passion at the
sight, so that he burst into exclamations, and shed copious tears,
having never done any such thing in his life before.
  The city having made trial of other generals for the conduct of war,
and orators for business of state, when they found there was no one
who was of weight enough for such a charge, or of authority sufficient
to be trusted with so great a command regretted the loss of him, and
invited him again to address and advise them, and to reassume the
office of general. He, however, lay at home in dejection and mourning;
but was persuaded by Alcibiades and others of his friends to come
abroad and show himself to the people; who having, upon his
appearance, made their acknowledgments, and apologized for their
untowardly treatment of him he undertook the public affairs once more;
and, being chosen general, requested that the statute concerning
base-born children, which he himself had formerly caused to be made,
might be suspended; that so the name and race of his family might not,
for absolute want of a lawful heir to succeed, be wholly lost and
extinguished. The case of the statute was thus: Pericles, when long
ago at the height of his power in the state, having then, as has
been said, children lawfully begotten, proposed a law that those
only should be reputed true citizens of Athens who were born of such
parents as were both Athenians. After this, the King of Egypt having
sent to the people, by way of present, forty thousand bushels of
wheat, which were to be shared out among the citizens, a great many
actions and suits about legitimacy occurred, by virtue of that
edict; cases which, till that time, had not been known nor taken
notice of; and several persons suffered by false accusations. There
were little less than five thousand who were convicted and sold for
slaves; those who, enduring the test, remained in the government and
passed muster for true Athenians were found upon the poll to be
fourteen thousand and forty persons in number.
  It looked strange, that a law, which had been carried so far against
so many people, should be cancelled again by the same man that made
it; yet the present calamity and distress which Pericles laboured
under in his family broke through all objections, and prevailed with
the Athenians to pity him, as one whose losses and misfortunes had
sufficiently punished his former arrogance and haughtiness. His
sufferings deserved, they thought, their pity, and even indignation,
and his request was such as became a man to ask and men to grant; they
gave him permission to enrol his son in the register of his
fraternity, giving him his own name. This son afterward, after
having defeated the Peloponnesians at Arginusae, was, with his
fellow-generals, put to death by the people.
  About the time when his son was enrolled, it should seem the
plague seized Pericles, not with sharp and violent fits, as it did
others that had it, but with a dull and lingering distemper,
attended with various changes and alterations, leisurely, by little
and little, wasting the strength of his body, and undermining the
noble faculties of his soul. So that Theophrastus, in his Morals, when
discussing whether men's characters change with their circumstances,
and their moral habits, disturbed by the ailings of their bodies,
start aside from the rules of virtue, has left it upon record, that
Pericles, when he was sick, showed one of his friends that came to
visit him an amulet or charm that the women had hung about his neck;
as much as to say, that he was very sick indeed when he would admit of
such a foolery as that was.
  When he was now near his end, the best of the citizens and those
of his friends who were left alive, sitting about him, were speaking
of the greatness of his merit, and his power, and reckoning up his
famous actions and the number of his victories; for there were no less
than nine trophies, which, as their chief commander and conqueror of
their enemies, he had set up for the honour of the city. They talked
thus together among themselves, as though he were unable to understand
or mind what they said, but had now lost his consciousness. He had
listened, however, all the while, and attended to all, and, speaking
out among them, said that he wondered they should commend and take
notice of things which were as much owing to fortune as to anything
else, and had happened to many other commanders, and, at the same
time, should not speak or make mention of that which was the most
excellent and greatest thing of all. "For," said he, "no Athenian,
through my means, ever wore mourning."
  He was indeed a character deserving our high admiration not only for
his equitable and mild temper, which all along in the many affairs
of his life, and the great animosities which he incurred, he
constantly maintained; but also for the high spirit and feeling
which made him regard it, the noblest of all his honours that, in
the exercise of such immense power, he never had gratified his envy or
his passion, nor ever had treated any enemy as irreconcilably
opposed to him. And to me it appears that this one thing gives that
otherwise childish and arrogant title a fitting and becoming
significance; so dispassionate a temper, a life so pure and
unblemished, in the height of power and place, might well be called
Olympian, in accordance with our conceptions of the divine beings,
to whom, as the natural authors of all good and of nothing evil, we
ascribe the rule and government of the world. Not as the poets
represent, who, while confounding us with their ignorant fancies,
are themselves confuted by their own poems and fictions, and call
the place, indeed, where they say the gods make their abode, a
secure and quiet seat, free from all hazards and commotions,
untroubled with winds or with clouds, and equally through all time
illumined with a soft serenity and a pure light as though such were
a home most agreeable for a blessed and immortal nature; and yet, in
the meanwhile, affirm that the gods themselves are full of trouble and
enmity and anger and other passions, which no way become or belong
to even men that have any understanding. But this will, perhaps seem a
subject fitter for some other consideration, and that ought to be
treated of in some other place.
  The course of public affairs after his death produced a quick and
speedy sense of the loss of Pericles. Those who, while he lived,
resented his great authority, as that which eclipsed themselves,
presently after his quitting the stage, making trial of other
orators and demagogues, readily acknowledged that there never had been
in nature such a disposition as his was, more moderate and
reasonable in the height of that state he took upon him, or more grave
and impressive in the mildness which he used. And that invidious
arbitrary power, to which formerly they gave the name of monarchy
and tyranny, did then appear to have been the chief bulwark of
public safety; so great a corruption and such a flood of mischief
and vice followed which he, by keeping weak and low, had withheld from
notice, and had prevented from attaining incurable height through a
licentious impunity.


                             THE END