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$Title{Plutarch's Lives
Part III}
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$Date{c75}
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Title:       Plutarch's Lives
Book:        Pericles
Author:      Plutarch
Date:        c75
Translation: Dryden, Arthur Hugh Clough

Part III

     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 Jonian 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 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, ^7 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 any thing 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 Pericle'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. Pericle'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.

[Footnote 7: She was married, says Athenaeus, to fourteen husbands; a woman of
great beauty and intellect.]

     In the comedies she goes by the nicknames of the new Omphale and
Deianira, and again is styled Juno. Cratinus, is 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 favor 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 a
piece for himself from each one of the hostages, and of many other presents
from those who were anxious not to have a democracy. Moreover, Pissuthnes 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, Pissuthnes 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
other, 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 intent, it seems to have been a miscalculation. For on his departure,
Melissus, the son of Ithagenes, a philosopher, being at that time 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 himself had been once before this
worsted by this Melissus in a sea-fight.

[See Aristotle: Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer]

     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, call 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 galleys 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 narrative 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 honorably 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 complemented 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 his
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 a-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 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 succor 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 favoring 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 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
afterward 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
mean time, also, the city of 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, endeavoring 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"; ^8 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 Thriasian Gates,
which are now called the Dipylon, or Double Gate.

[Footnote 8: The word for taking down, in the literal sense, is also the
technical term for revoking, or repealing; hence the Spartans play upon the
two senses. "If you may not take it down, turn it, with its face to the
wall."]

     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 man,
     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 interests, 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 wilful
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 favorite 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 accusers 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 goddesses' 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 accusation should be laid against
persons who neglected religion, or taught new doctrines about things above, ^9
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' 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.

[Footnote 9: "Supera ac coelestia," as Cicero translates the words meteora and
metarsia, whence we have formed our meteorology. The whole Greek religion was
based on certain conceptions of such phenomena, any tampering with which was,
therefore, quickly resented.]

     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 that 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 honor'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 endeavored 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 come 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 ^10 lurks behind them.

[Footnote 10: Apparently some notorious coward.]

     "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 from the country in upon us within the walls, and
uses all these many 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 refreshments.

     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 endeavored what he could do 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 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' 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 practiser of the five games of skill, ^11
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. Beside 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 all his life before.

[Footnote 11: These are recorded in a pentameter verse by Simonides. Halma,
podokeien, discon, aconta, palen. Leaping, and swiftness of foot, wrestling,
the discus, the dart.]

     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 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 labored 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 enroll 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
honor 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 any thing
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 honors 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 soft serenity and a pure
light, as though such were a home most agreeable for a blessed an 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 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.