The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0093/00936.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 28KB | 452 lines

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$Title{Plutarch's Lives
Part I}
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$Author{Plutarch}
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$Subject{pericles
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$Date{c75}
$Log{See Caesar*0093601.scf
}
Title:       Plutarch's Lives
Book:        Pericles
Author:      Plutarch
Date:        c75
Translation: Dryden, Arthur Hugh Clough

Part I

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

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

[Footnote 1: Probably Augustus.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And, in the Nemesis, addresses him -

     "Come, Jove, thou head of gods."

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

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

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

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

     The master that taught him music, most authors are agreed, was Damon
(whose name, they say, ought to be pronounced with the first syllable short).
Though Aristotle tells us that he was thoroughly practised in all
accomplishments of this kind by Pythoclides. Damon, it is not unlikely, being
a sophist, out of policy, sheltered himself under the profession of music to
conc