The second invasion of the Peloponnesians was prolonged for forty days,
and the whole Attic territory was laid waste. Pericles again refused to
venture a pitched battle against them, knowing well that the Athenian
army was no match for them in the open field. But a powerful fleet was
sent to cruise round Peloponnesus, which inflicted much damage on the
coast districts. It was a welcome relief to the Athenians selected for
this service to escape for a time from the plague-stricken city; but
unhappily they carried the infection with them, and the crews were
decimated by the same disease. Nor did the evil stop here: for the same
armament being afterwards despatched to Potidaea, to reinforce the
blockading army and fleet, caused a virulent outbreak of the plague
among the forces stationed there, which up till then had been healthy.
After some fruitless operations against the town this second armament
was withdrawn, and returned to Athens with the loss of more than a
thousand men.
After all these disasters the reaction against Pericles, which had
begun with the first invasion of Attica, reached a climax, and on all
sides he was loudly decried by the Athenians, as the author of all
their miseries. Envoys were sent with overtures of peace to Sparta, and
when these returned with no favourable answer, the storm of popular
fury grew more violent than ever. Pericles, who knew the temper of his
people, and had foreseen that some such outbreak would occur, remained
calm and unmoved. But wishing to allay the general excitement, and
bring back the citizens to a more reasonable view of their prospects,
he summoned an assembly, and addressed the multitude in terms of grave
and dignified rebuke. He reminded them that they themselves had voted
for war, and remonstrated against the unfairness of making him
responsible for their own decision. If war could have been avoided
without imperilling the very existence of their city, then that
decision was wrong; but if, as was the fact, peace could only have been
preserved by ruinous concessions, then his advice had been good, and
they had been right in following it. The welfare of the individual
citizen depended on the welfare of the community to which he belonged;
as long as that was secured, private losses could always be made good,
but public disaster meant private ruin. On this principle they had
acted two years before, when they determined to reject the demands of
Sparta. Why, then, were they now indulging in weak regrets, and turning
against him whom they had appointed as their chosen guide and adviser?
Was there anything in his character, any fact in his whole life, which
justified them in suspecting him of unworthy motives? Was he the man to
lead them astray, in order to save some selfish end--he, the great
Pericles, whose loyalty, eloquence, clear-sightedness, and
incorruptibility, had been proved in a public career of more than
thirty years? If any other course had been open to them, he would have
been to blame in counselling war; but the alternative was between that
and degradation. The immediate pressure of private calamity was
blinding them to the magnitude of the interests at stake--Athens, with
all her fond traditions, and all the lustre of her name. That they were
sure of victory he had already declared to them on many infallible
grounds. But seeing them so sunk in despair, he would speak in a tone
of loud assurance, and boldly assert a fact which they seemed to have
overlooked. They were lords of the sea, absolute masters, that was to
say, of half the world! Let them keep a firm grasp on this empire, and
they would soon recover those pretty ornaments of empire--their gardens
and their vineyards--which they held so dear: but, that once
relinquished, they would lose all. Surely this knowledge should inspire
them with a lofty contempt of their foes, a contempt grounded, not on
ignorance or shallow enthusiasm, but on rational calculation. They
could not now descend from the eminence on which they stood. Athens,
who had blazed so long in unrivalled splendour before the eyes of the
world, dared not suffer her lustre to be abated: for her, obscurity
meant extinction. Let them keep this in mind, and not listen to
counsels of seeming prudence and moderation, which were suicidal in a
ruling state. All their calamities, except the plague, were the
foreseen results of their own decision. Now was the time to display
their known courage and patience. Let them think of the glory of
Athens, and her imperial fame.
This memorable speech, the last recorded utterance of Pericles, had the
desired effect. It was resolved to continue the war, and no further
embassies were sent to Sparta. But resentment still smouldered in the
hearts of the Athenians against their great statesman. How fearful was
the contrast between the high hopes with which they had embarked in
this struggle, and the scenes of horror and desolation which lay around
them! From the walls they could see their trampled fields, their
ravaged plantations, and the blackened ruins of their homes. Within,
the pestilence still raged undiminished, and the city was filled with
sounds and sights of woe. Under the pressure of these calamities the
ascendency of Pericles went through a brief period of eclipse, and he
was condemned to pay a fine. Soon, however, he recovered all his
influence, and remained at the head of affairs until his death, which
occurred in the autumn of the following year.
Pericles is the representative figure in the golden age of Athenian
greatness, the most perfect example of that equable and harmonious
development in every faculty of body and mind which was the aim of
Greek civic life at its best. As an orator, he was probably never
equalled, and the effect of his eloquence has found immortal expression
in the lines of his contemporary Eupolis. Persuasion, we are told, sat
enthroned on his lips; like a strong athlete, he overtook and outran
all other orators; his words struck home like the lightning, while he
held his audience enchained, as by a powerful spell; and among all the
masters of eloquence, he was the only one who left his sting behind
him. As a statesman, it was his object to admit every freeborn Athenian
to a share of public duties and privileges; and for this purpose he
introduced the system of payment, which enabled the poorer citizens to
perform their part in the service of the state. His military talents,
though never employed for conquest or aggression, were of no mean
order; and on two occasions of supreme peril to Athens, the revolt of
Euboea, and the revolt of Samos, it was his energy and promptitude
which saved his city from ruin.
But it is as the head of the great intellectual movement which
culminated in this epoch, as the friend of poets, philosophers, and
artists, that Pericles has won his most enduring fame. By his liberal
and enlightened policy the surplus of the Athenian revenues was devoted
to the creation of those wonders of architecture and sculpture, whose
fragments still serve as unapproachable models to the mind of modern
Europe. And under his rule Athens became the school of Greece, the
great centre for every form of intellectual activity, a position which
she maintained until the later period of the Roman Empire.
If, however, we would understand the character of Pericles, and the
spirit of the age which he represents, we must never forget that this
aspect of Athenian greatness, to us by far the most important, was not
the aspect which awoke the highest enthusiasm in him and his
contemporaries. Those things which have made the name of Athens
immortal, her art and her literature, were matters of but secondary
importance to the Athenian of that age. He worshipped his city as a
beloved mistress, and, like a lover, he delighted to adorn her with
outward dignity and splendour. But to lavish all his thought and care
on these external embellishments would have been, in his estimation, a
senseless waste of his highest faculties, as if a lover should make the
robes and jewels of his mistress the objects of his highest adoration.
To make Athens the mightiest state in Greece, to build up the fabric of
her material greatness--these were the objects for which he was ready
to devote the best energies of heart and brain, and if need were, to
lay down his life. He might be skilled in every elegant accomplishment,
an acute reasoner, an orator, a musician, a poet; and to some extent he
was all of these. But before all else he was in the highest sense a
practical man, finding in strenuous action his chief glory and pride.
And such a man was the last to melt into ecstasies over the high notes
of a singer, or dream away his life in the fairyland of poetry.
We have dwelt at some length on the work and character of Pericles, as
his death marks a turning point in Athenian history. From that day
onward the policy of Athens takes a downward direction, denoting a
corresponding decline in Athenian character and aspiration. Pericles
had been able, by his commanding talents and proved integrity, to
exercise a salutary check on the restless energies and soaring ambition
of his countrymen. He had been a true father and ruler of his people,
in evil times and in good, curbing them in the insolence of prosperity,
comforting and exalting them in the dark hour of disaster. But the
government now passed into the hands of weaker men, who, since they
were incapable of leading the people, were compelled to follow it, and
to maintain their position by pandering to the worst vices of the
Athenian character. Rash where they should have been cautious, yielding
where they should have been resolute, they squandered the immense
resources of Athens, and led her on, step by step, to humiliation and
defeat. The course of our narrative will show how easily the Athenians
might have emerged triumphant from the struggle with their enemies, if
they had followed the line of conduct marked out by Pericles. They
might, indeed, have avoided the occasion of offence which led
immediately to the war, and thus have escaped the necessity of fighting
altogether; and this, as we have seen, was the one fatal mistake made
by Pericles. But, once launched in the conflict, they were sure of an
easy victory, if they had only shown a very moderate degree of prudence
and self-restraint. And we need not blame the great statesmen too
harshly for not foreseeing the wild excesses of folly and extravagance
which we shall have to record in the following pages.