[Illustration: PERICLES.]
GREAT LEADERS
HISTORIC PORTRAITS
FROM THE GREAT HISTORIANS
SELECTED, WITH NOTES AND BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
BY G. T. FERRIS
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1889
COPYRIGHT, 1889,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
PREFACE.
Every one perusing the pages of the historians must have been impressed
with the graphic and singularly penetrative character of many of the
sketches of the distinguished persons whose doings form the staple of
history. These pen-portraits often stand out from the narrative with
luminous and vivid effect, the writers seeming to have concentrated upon
them all their powers of penetration and all their skill in graphic
delineation. Few things in literature are marked by analysis so close,
discernment so keen, or by effects so brilliant and dramatic. In some of
the later historians this feature is specially noticeable, but it was
Hume’s admirable portrayal of the character of Alfred the Great that
suggested the compilation of the present volume.
A selection such as this of the more striking passages in the great
historians will serve, it is believed, a double purpose--first as a
suitable introduction to these distinguished writers for those not
acquainted with them, and next as a means of stimulating a taste for the
study of history itself. It must be remembered that it is largely
through their sympathies for persons that readers generally find
pleasure in history. The sometimes noble and sometimes startling
personality of great leaders exerts a fascinating effect upon all
susceptible minds, and whatever brings this personality vividly before
us greatly strengthens our interest in the records of the past. For
these reasons this compilation will be found well adapted for the
reading class in high schools and seminaries.
It is desirable to explain that in some instances the selections do not
appear here exactly in the form of the original. Passages from different
pages are sometimes brought together, so as to give completeness to the
portrait, but in no other way has any liberty been taken with the text
of the authors.
In making the selections, the primary object was to secure, in each
instance, the most vivid and truthful portrait obtainable, but it was
also thought desirable to render the volume as representative of
historical literature as possible, and hence to include a wide range of
writers. The work will be found to be tolerably representative in this
particular, but some well-known historians do not appear, for the reason
that their methods did not yield suitable material.
The selections terminate with the period of Waterloo, because, while
great leaders have flourished since those days, the historical
perspective is not sufficient to permit that judicial estimate so
necessary for a truly valuable portrait.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THEMISTOCLES AND ARISTIDES. By GEORGE GROTE 1
(_From the “History of Greece.”_)
PERICLES. By ERNST CURTIUS 6
(_From the “History of Greece.”_)
EPAMINONDAS. By ERNST CURTIUS 10
(_From the “History of Greece.”_)
ALEXANDER THE GREAT. By GEORGE GROTE 14
(_From the “History of Greece.”_)
HANNIBAL. By THEODOR MOMMSEN 19
(_From the “History of Rome.”_)
THE GRACCHI. By PLUTARCH 23
(_From “Plutarch’s Lives.”_)
CAIUS MARIUS. By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 27
(_From “Julius Cæsar--A Sketch.”_)
MITHRIDATES, KING OF PONTUS. By THEODOR MOMMSEN 32
(_From the “History of Rome.”_)
LUCIUS SYLLA. By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 37
(_From “Julius Cæsar--A Sketch.”_)
POMPEY. By THOMAS KERCHEVER ARNOLD 41
(_From the “History of Rome.”_)
SERTORIUS. By PLUTARCH 44
(_From “Plutarch’s Lives.”_)
JULIUS CÆSAR. By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 49
(_From “Julius Cæsar--A Sketch.”_)
TRAJAN. By CHARLES MERIVALE 53
(_From the “History of the Romans under the Empire.”_)
THE ANTONINES. By EDWARD GIBBON 56
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
ZENOBIA, QUEEN OF PALMYRA. By EDWARD GIBBON 60
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
CONSTANTINE, THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPEROR. By EDWARD
GIBBON 65
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
JULIAN THE APOSTATE. By EDWARD GIBBON 70
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
THEODOSIUS THE GREAT. By EDWARD GIBBON 77
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
ATTILA, THE SCOURGE OF GOD. By EDWARD GIBBON 83
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
BELISARIUS. By LORD MAHON 88
(_From the “Life of Belisarius.”_)
MOHAMMED, THE FOUNDER OF ISLAM. By EDWARD GIBBON 92
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
CHARLEMAGNE. By Sir JAMES STEPHEN 100
(_From “Lectures on the History of France.”_)
ALFRED THE GREAT, OF ENGLAND. By DAVID HUME 107
(_From the “History of England.”_)
OLAF TRYGGVESON, KING OF NORWAY. By THOMAS CARLYLE 111
(_From the “Early Kings of Norway.”_)
CNUT OR CANUTE OF ENGLAND, ALSO KING OF DENMARK.
By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 116
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 120
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
ROBERT GUISCARD. By EDWARD GIBBON 126
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
THOMAS À BECKET, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. By
DAVID HUME 130
(_From the “History of England.”_)
SALADIN. By EDWARD GIBBON 135
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
HENRY II, KING OF ENGLAND. By DAVID HUME 138
(_From the “History of England.”_)
GENGHIS OR ZINGIS KHAN. By EDWARD GIBBON 142
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
SIMON DE MONTFORT, EARL OF LEICESTER. By JOHN RICHARD
GREEN 148
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
EDWARD I, KING OF ENGLAND. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 153
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
ROBERT BRUCE. By Sir ARCHIBALD ALISON 157
(_From “Essays.”_)
EDWARD III, KING OF ENGLAND. By DAVID HUME 163
(_From the “History of England.”_)
RIENZI. By EDWARD GIBBON 167
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
TIMOUR OR TAMERLANE. By EDWARD GIBBON 173
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
JEANNE D’ARC. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 180
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
MAHOMET OR MOHAMMED II. By EDWARD GIBBON 186
(_From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”_)
LORENZO DE’ MEDICI. By JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 190
(_From the “Italian Renaissance.”_)
GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. By JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 195
(_From the “Italian Renaissance.”_)
CÆSAR BORGIA. By CHARLES YRIARTE 201
(_From “Cæsar Borgia.”_)
CARDINAL WOLSEY. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 208
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
FRANCISCO PIZARRO.[1] By WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 211
(_From the “Conquest of Peru.”_)
HERNANDO CORTÉS. By WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 216
(_From the “History of the Conquest of Mexico.”_)
MARTIN LUTHER. By THOMAS CARLYLE 222
(_From the “Life of Martin Luther.”_)
IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA (SAINT), FOUNDER OF THE ORDER
OF JESUS. By Sir JAMES STEPHEN 230
(_From “Stephen’s Essays.”_)
THOMAS CROMWELL, EARL OF ESSEX. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 235
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
CHARLES V, EMPEROR OF GERMANY.[2] By JOHN LOTHROP
MOTLEY 240
(_From the “Rise of the Dutch Republic.”_)
WILLIAM OF NASSAU, PRINCE OF ORANGE. By JOHN LOTHROP
MOTLEY 248
(_From the “Rise of the Dutch Republic.”_)
JOHN KNOX. By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 255
(_From the “History of England.”_)
DUKE OF ALVA. By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 259
(_From the “Rise of the Dutch Republic.”_)
QUEEN ELIZABETH. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 265
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
MARY STUART, QUEEN OF SCOTS. By DAVID HUME 275
(_From the “History of England.”_)
JOHN PYM. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 280
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
HENRY IV, KING OF FRANCE. By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 284
(_From the “History of the United Netherlands.”_)
WALLENSTEIN, DUKE OF FRIEDLAND. By FRIEDRICH VON
SCHILLER 291
(_From the “History of the Thirty Years’ War.”_)
CARDINAL RICHELIEU. By Sir JAMES STEPHEN 299
(_From the “Lectures on the History of France.”_)
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, KING OF SWEDEN. By FRIEDRICH VON
SCHILLER 303
(_From the “History of the Thirty Years’ War.”_)
EARL OF STRAFFORD. By DAVID HUME 310
(_From the “History of England.”_)
OLIVER CROMWELL. By THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 315
(_From the “History of England.”_)
LORD HALIFAX. By THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 322
(_From the “History of England.”_)
LOUIS XIV OF FRANCE. By THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 327
(_From “Essays.”_)
WILLIAM III OF ENGLAND. By THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 329
(_From the “History of England.”_)
PETER THE GREAT, CZAR OF RUSSIA. By THOMAS BABINGTON
MACAULAY 339
(_From the “History of England.”_)
DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH. By WILLIAM E. H. LECKY 344
(_From the “History of England in the Eighteenth Century.”_)
SIR ROBERT WALPOLE. By WILLIAM E. H. LECKY 351
(_From the “History of England in the Eighteenth Century.”_)
FREDERICK THE GREAT. By THOMAS CARLYLE 357
(_From the “Life of Frederick the Great.”_)
WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 364
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
EDMUND BURKE. By WILLIAM E. H. LECKY 369
(_From the “History of England in the Eighteenth Century.”_)
GEORGE WASHINGTON. By WILLIAM E. H. LECKY 378
(_From the “History of England in the Eighteenth Century.”_)
MIRABEAU. By THOMAS CARLYLE 384
(_From Carlyle’s “Essays.”_)
CHARLES JAMES FOX. By WILLIAM E. H. LECKY 389
(_From the “History of England in the Eighteenth Century.”_)
JEAN PAUL MARAT. By HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE 396
(_From the “French Revolution.”_)
PRINCE TALLEYRAND. By ARCHIBALD ALISON 400
(_From the “History of Europe.”_)
GEORGE JACQUES DANTON. By HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE 405
(_From the “French Revolution.”_)
ROBESPIERRE. By HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE 410
(_From the “French Revolution.”_)
WILLIAM PITT THE YOUNGER. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN 417
(_From the “Short History of the English People.”_)
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. By LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS 423
(_From the “History of the Consulate and Empire.”_)
DUKE OF WELLINGTON. By ARCHIBALD ALISON 432
(_From the “History of Europe.”_)
LIST OF ENGRAVED PORTRAITS.
FACE PAGE
PERICLES 6
(_From antique bust, copy in the British Museum._)
ALEXANDER THE GREAT 14
(_From antique bust._)
HANNIBAL 20
(_From antique gem._)
JULIUS CÆSAR 49
(_From antique statue, Rome._)
MOHAMMED 92
(_From old print, likeness traditional._)
CHARLEMAGNE 100
(_From old line engraving._)
ALFRED THE GREAT 107
(_From old line engraving._)
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 120
(_Copy of painting from an ancient effigy._)
MARTIN LUTHER 222
(_From painting by Cranach._)
IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA 230
(_From portrait by Rubens._)
CHARLES V. 240
(_From portrait by Titian._)
WILLIAM OF NASSAU 248
RICHELIEU 299
(_From line engraving by Nanteuil._)
OLIVER CROMWELL 315
PETER THE GREAT 339
(_From line engraving by Petrus Anderloni._)
FREDERICK THE GREAT 357
GREAT LEADERS.
THEMISTOCLES AND ARISTIDES.
BY GEORGE GROTE.
[Athenian statesmen and soldiers, the first named born 514 B.C.,
died about 449; the second, surnamed “the Just,” died about 468
B.C., date of birth unknown. During the Persian invasions of
Greece, Themistocles was the most brilliant figure among the Greek
leaders; his genius was omnipresent, his resources boundless. He
created the maritime supremacy of Athens, and through him the great
victory of Salamis was won. His political ascendency was finally
lost through the distrust created by his unscrupulous and facile
character, and he died an exile in Persia, intriguing against his
native land. Aristides, less brilliant than his rival, was famous
for the stainless integrity and uprightness of his public life, and
his name has passed into history as the symbol of unswerving truth
and justice. He also contributed largely to the successful
leadership of the Hellenic forces against their Asiatic invaders.
References: Plutarch’s “Lives,” Grote’s “History of Greece,”
Curtius’s “History of Greece.”]
Neither Themistocles nor Aristides could boast of a lineage of gods and
heroes like the Æacid Miltiades;[3] both were of middling station and
circumstances. Aristides, son of Lysimachus, was on both sides of pure
Athenian blood. But the wife of Neocles, father of Themistocles, was a
foreign woman of Thrace or Caria; and such an alliance is the less
surprising since Themistocles must have been born in the time of the
Peisistratids,[4] when the status of an Athenian citizen had not yet
acquired its political value. There was a marked contrast between these
two eminent men--those points which stood most conspicuous in one being
comparatively deficient in the other.
In the description of Themistocles, which we have the advantage of
finding briefly sketched by Thucydides, the circumstance most
emphatically brought out is his immense force of spontaneous invention
and apprehension, without any previous aid either from teaching or
actual practice. The might of unassisted nature was never so strikingly
exhibited as in him; he conceived the complications of a present
embarrassment and divined the chances of a mysterious future with equal
sagacity and equal quickness. The right expedient seemed to flash on his
mind _extempore_, even in the most perplexing contingencies, without the
least necessity for premeditation.
Nor was he less distinguished for daring and resource in action. When
engaged on any joint affairs his superior competence marked him out as
the leader for others to follow; and no business, however foreign to his
experience, ever took him by surprise or came wholly amiss to him. Such
is the remarkable picture which Thucydides draws of a countryman whose
death nearly coincided in time with his own birth. The untutored
readiness and universality of Themistocles probably formed in his mind a
contrast to the more elaborate discipline and careful preliminary study
with which the statesmen of his own day--and Pericles specially the
greatest of them--approached the consideration and discussion of public
affairs. Themistocles had received no teaching from philosophers,
sophists, and rhetors, who were the instructors of well-born youth in
the days of Thucydides, and whom Aristophanes, the contemporary of the
latter, so unmercifully derides--treating such instruction as worse than
nothing, and extolling in comparison with it the unlettered courage, the
more gymnastic accomplishments of the victors at Marathon.
The general character given in Plutarch, though many of his anecdotes
are both trifling and apocryphal, is quite consistent with the brief
sketch just cited from Thucydides. Themistocles had an unbounded
passion, not merely for glory--insomuch as the laurels of Miltiades
acquired at Marathon deprived him of rest--but also for display of every
kind. He was eager to vie with men richer than himself in showy
exhibition--one great source, though not the only source of popularity
at Athens; nor was he at all scrupulous in procuring the means of doing
it. Besides being scrupulous in attendance on the ecclesia and
dicastery, he knew most of the citizens by name, and was always ready
for advice to them in their private affairs. Moreover, he possessed all
the tactics of the expert party-man in conciliating political friends
and in defeating personal enemies; and though in the early part of his
life sincerely bent upon the upholding and aggrandizement of his
country, and was on some most critical occasions of unspeakable value to
it, yet on the whole his morality was as reckless as his intelligence
was eminent.
He was grossly corrupt in the exercise of power and employing tortuous
means, sometimes, indeed, for ends in themselves honorable and
patriotic, but sometimes also merely for enriching himself. He ended a
glorious life by years of deep disgrace, with the forfeiture of all
Hellenic esteem and brotherhood--a rich man, an exile, a traitor, and a
pensioner of the Great King, pledged to undo his own previous work of
liberation accomplished at the victory of Salamis.
Of Aristides, unfortunately, we possess no description from the hand of
Thucydides; yet his character is so simple and consistent that we may
safely accept the brief but unqualified encomium of Herodotus and
Plato, expanded as it is in the biography of Plutarch and Cornelius
Nepos, however little the details of the latter can be trusted.
Aristides was inferior to Themistocles in resource, quickness,
flexibility, and power of coping with difficulties; but incomparably
superior to him--as well as to other rivals and contemporaries--in
integrity, public as well as private; inaccessible to pecuniary
temptation as well as to other seductive influences, and deserving as
well as enjoying the highest measure of personal confidence.
He is described as the peculiar friend of Clisthenes, the first founder
of the democracy; as pursuing a straight and single-handed course in
political life, with no solicitude for party-ties, and with little care
either to conciliate friends or to offend enemies; as unflinching in the
exposure of corrupt practices by whomsoever committed or upheld; as
earning for himself the lofty surname of the Just, not less by his
judicial decisions in the capacity of archon, than by his equity in
private arbitrations, and even his candor in public dispute; and as
manifesting throughout a long public life, full of tempting
opportunities, an uprightness without a flaw and beyond all suspicion,
recognized equally by his bitter contemporary the poet Timocreon, and by
the allies of Athens, upon whom he first assessed the tribute.
Few of the leading men in any part of Greece were without some taint on
their reputation, deserved or undeserved, in regard to pecuniary
probity; but whoever became notoriously recognized as possessing this
vital quality, acquired by means of it a firmer hold on the public
esteem than even eminent talents could confer. Thucydides ranks
conspicuous probity among the first of the many ascendant qualities
possessed by Pericles; and Nicias, equal to him in this respect, though
immeasurably inferior in every other, owed to it a still larger
proportion of that exaggerated confidence which the Athenian people
continued so long to repose in him.
The abilities of Aristides, though apparently adequate to every occasion
on which he was engaged, and only inferior when we compare him with so
remarkable a man as Thucydides, were put in the shade by this
incorruptible probity, which procured for him, however, along with the
general esteem, no inconsiderable amount of private enmity from jobbers,
whom he exposed, and even some jealousy from persons who heard it
proclaimed with offensive ostentation.
We are told that a rustic and unlettered citizen gave his ostracizing
vote and expressed his dislike against Aristides on the simple ground
that he was tired of hearing him always called the Just. Now the purity
of the most honorable man will not bear to be so boastfully talked of,
as if he were the only honorable man in the country; the less it is
obtruded the more deeply and cordially will it be felt; and the story
just alluded to, whether true or false, illustrates that natural
reaction of feeling produced by absurd encomiasts or perhaps by
insidious enemies under the mask of encomiasts, who trumpeted for
Aristides as the _Just_ man at Attica so as to wound the legitimate
dignity of every one else.
Neither indiscreet friends nor artful enemies, however, could rob him of
the lasting esteem of his countrymen, which he enjoyed with intervals of
their displeasure to the end of his life. Though he was ostracized
during a part of the period between the battles of Marathon and
Salamis--at a time when the rivalry between him and Themistocles was so
violent that both could not remain at Athens without peril--yet the
dangers of Athens during the invasion of Xerxes brought him back before
the ten years of exile were expired. His fortune, originally very
moderate, was still further diminished during the course of his life, so
that he died very poor, and the state was obliged to lend aid to his
children.
PERICLES.
BY ERNST CURTIUS.
[A distinguished statesman, who built up and consolidated the power
of Athens immediately after the Persian wars, born 495 B.C., died
429. His career was contemporaneous with the highest glory of
Athens in art, arms, literature, and oratory. As an orator Pericles
was second only to Demosthenes, as a statesman second to none.
References: Grote’s “History of Greece,” Curtius’s “History of
Greece,” Plutarch’s “Lives,” Bulwer’s “Athens.”]
Aspasia came to Athens when everything new and extraordinary, everything
which appeared to be an enlargement of ancient usage, a step forward and
a new acquisition, was joyously welcomed. Nor was it long before it was
recognized that she enchanted the souls of men by no mere arts of
deception of which she had learned the trick. Hers was a lofty and
richly endowed nature with a perfect sense of all that is beautiful, and
hers a harmonious and felicitous development. For the first time the
treasures of Hellenic culture were found in the possession of a woman
surrounded by the graces of her womanhood--a phenomenon which all men
looked on with eyes of wonder. She was able to converse with
irresistible grace on politics, philosophy, and art, so that the most
serious Athenians--even such men as Socrates--sought her out in order to
listen to her conversation.
But her real importance for Athens began on the day when she made the
acquaintance of Pericles, and formed with him a connection of mutual
love. It was a real marriage, which only lacked the civil sanction
because she was a foreigner; it was an alliance of the truest and
tenderest affection which death alone dissolved--the endless source of a
domestic felicity which no man needed more than the statesman, who lived
retired from all external recreations and was unceasingly engaged in the
labors of his life.
Doubtless the possession of this woman was in many respects invaluable
for Pericles. Not only were her accomplishments the delights of the
leisure hours which he allowed himself and the recreation of his mind
from its cares, but she also kept him in intercourse with the daily life
around him. She possessed what he lacked--the power of being perfectly
at ease in every kind of society; she kept herself informed of
everything that took place in the city; nor can distant countries have
escaped her attention, since she is said to have first acquainted
Pericles with Sicilian oratory, which was at that time developing
itself.
She was of use to him through her various connections at home and abroad
as well as by the keen glance of her feminine sagacity and by her
knowledge of men. Thus the foremost woman of her age lived in the
society of the man whose superiority of mind had placed him at the head
of the first city of the Hellenes, in loyal devotion to her friend and
husband; and although the mocking spirits at Athens eagerly sought out
every blemish which could be discovered in the life of Pericles, yet no
calumny was ever able to vilify this rare union and to blacken its
memory.
Pericles had no leisure for occupying himself with the management of his
private property. He farmed out his lands and intrusted the money to his
faithful slave Evangelus, who accurately knew the measure which his
master deemed the right one, and managed the household accordingly;
which, indeed, presented a striking contrast to those of the wealthy
families of Athens, and ill corresponded to the tastes of Pericles’s
sons as they grew up. For in it there was no overflow, no joyous and
reckless expenditure, but so careful an economy that everything was
calculated down to drachm and obolus.
Pericles was perfectly convinced that nothing short of a perfectly
blameless integrity and the severest self-abnegation could render
possible the permanency of his influence over his fellow-citizens and
prevent the exposure of even the smallest blot to his cavilers and
enemies. After Themistocles had for the first time shown how a statesman
and general might enrich himself, Pericles was in this respect the
admirer and most faithful follower of Aristides, and in the matter of
conscientiousness went even much further than Cimon, spurning on
principle every opportunity offered by the office of general for a
perfectly justifiable personal enrichment.
All attempts to bribe him remained useless. His lofty sentiments are
evidenced by the remark which he addressed to Sophocles, who fell in
love even in his old age: “Not only the hands, but the eyes also of a
general should practice continence.” The more vivid the appreciation he
felt for female charms the more highly must we esteem the equanimity to
which he had attained by means of a self-command which had become a
matter of habit with him; nor did anything make so powerful an
impression upon the changeable Athenians as the immovable calm of this
great man.
Pericles was neither a lengthy nor a frequent speaker. He avoided
nothing more scrupulously than superfluous words, and therefore as often
as he appeared before the people he prayed to Zeus to guard him from
useless words. But the brief words which he actually spoke made a
proportionately deep impression upon the citizens. His conception of his
calling was too solemn and lofty to permit him to consent to talk as the
multitude liked. He was not afraid when he found the citizens weak and
irresolute to express to them bitter truths and serious blame.
His speeches always endeavored to place every case in connection with
facts of a more general kind, so as to instruct and elevate the minds of
the citizens; he never grew weary of pointing out how no individual
happiness was conceivable from the welfare of the entire body; he proved
to the citizens the claim which he had established upon their
confidence; he clearly and concisely developed his political views,
endeavoring not to talk over his hearers, but to convince them; and when
the feeling of his own superiority was about to tempt him to despise the
multitude, he admonished himself to be patient and long suffering. “Take
heed, Pericles,” he cried to himself, “those whom thou rulest are
Hellenes, citizens of Athens.”
The principles of the statesmanship of Pericles were so simple that all
citizens were perfectly capable of understanding them; and he attached a
particular value to the idea that the Athenians instead of, like the
Lacedæmonians, seeking their strength in an affectation of secrecy, were
unwilling to overcome their enemies by deception and cunning stratagems.
As the Persian war had seemed inevitable to Themistocles, so the
struggle with Sparta loomed as certain before the eyes of Pericles. The
term of peace allowed before its outbreak had accordingly to be employed
by Athens in preparing herself for the struggle awaiting her forces.
When at last the critical hour arrived Athens was to stand before her
assailants firm and invincible, with her walls for a shield and her navy
for a sword.
The long schooling through which Pericles had passed in the art of war
and the rare combination of caution and energy which he had displayed in
every command held by him had secured him the confidence of the
citizens. Therefore they for a succession of years elected him general,
and as such invested him with an extraordinary authority, which reduced
the offices of the other nine generals to mere posts of honor which were
filled by persons agreeable to him. During the period of his
administration the whole centers of gravity of public life lay in this
office.
Inasmuch as Pericles, besides the authority of a “strategy” prolonged to
him in an extraordinary degree, also filled the office of superintendent
of the finances; inasmuch as he was repeatedly and for long periods of
years superintendent of public works; inasmuch as his personal influence
was so great that he could in all important matters determine the civic
elections according to his wish; it is easy to understand how he ruled
the state in time of war and peace, and how the power of both the
council and of the whole civic body in all essentials passed into his
hands.
He was the type of temperance and sobriety. He made it a rule never to
assist at a festive banquet; and no Athenian could remember to have seen
Pericles, since he stood at the head of the state, in the company of
friends over the wine-cup. He was known to no man except as one serious
and collected, full of grave thoughts and affairs. His whole life was
devoted to the service of the state, and his power accompanied by so
thorough a self-denial and so full a measure of labor that the multitude
in its love of enjoyment could surely not regard the possession of that
power as an enviable privilege. For him there existed only one road,
which he was daily seen to take, the road leading from his house to the
market-place and the council-hall, the seat of the government, where the
current business of state was transacted.
EPAMINONDAS.
BY ERNST CURTIUS.
[The greatest of the Theban generals and statesmen, and one of the
greatest men of antiquity; born about 418 B.C., killed on the
battle-field of Mantinea in the hour of victory, 362. He raised
Thebes from a subordinate place to the leadership of Greece by his
genius in arms and wisdom in council. Eminent as soldier,
statesman, and orator, Epaminondas was a model of virtue in his
private life, and was not only devoted to his native republic, but
in the largest sense a Greek patriot. References: Grote’s “History
of Greece,” Curtius’s “History of Greece,” Plutarch’s “Lives.”]
It would be difficult to find in the entire course of Greek history any
two statesmen who, in spite of differences in character and outward
conditions of life, resembled one another so greatly and were as men so
truly the peers of one another as Pericles and Epaminondas. In the case
of both these men the chief foundation of their authority was their
lofty and varied mental culture; what secured to them their intellectual
superiority was the love of knowledge which pervaded and ennobled the
whole being of either. Epaminondas like Pericles directs his native city
as the man in whom the civic community places supreme confidence, and
whom it therefore re-elects from year to year as general. Like Pericles,
Epaminondas left no successor behind him, and his death was also the
close of an historical epoch.
Epaminondas stood alone from the first; and while Pericles with all his
superiority yet stood essentially on the basis of Attic culture,
Epaminondas, on the other hand, was, so to speak, a stranger in his
native city. Nor was it ever his intention to be a Theban in the sense
in which Pericles was an Athenian. The object of his life was rather to
be a perfect Hellene, while his efforts as a statesman were likewise
simply an endeavor to introduce his fellow-citizens to that true
Hellenism which consisted in civic virtue and in love of wisdom.
In the very last hour of his life, when he was delighted by the
preservation of his shield, he showed himself a genuine Hellene; thus
again it was a genuinely Greek standpoint from which he viewed the war
against Sparta and Athens as a competitive contest for the honor of the
hegemony in Hellas, an honor which could only be justly won by mental
and moral superiority. The conflict was inevitable; it had become a
national duty, because the supremacy of Sparta had become a tyranny
dishonorable to the Hellenic nation. After Epaminondas liberated the
Greek cities from the Spartan yoke it became the object of his Bœotian
patriotism to make his own native city worthy and capable of assuming
the direction.
How far Epaminondas might have succeeded in securing a permanent
hegemony[5] over Greek affairs to the Thebans who shall attempt to
judge? He fell in the full vigor of his manhood on the battle-field
where the states, which withstood his policy, had brought their last
resources to bear. Of all statesmen, therefore, he is least to be judged
by the actual results of his policy. His greatness lies in this--that
from his childhood he incessantly endeavored to be to his
fellow-citizens a model of Hellenic virtue. Chaste and unselfish he
passed, ever true to himself, through a most active life, through all
the temptations of the most unexampled success in war, through the whole
series of trials and disasters.
Epaminondas was not merely the founder of a military organization. He
equally proved the inventiveness of his mind in contriving to obtain for
his country, which was wealthy neither by trade nor manufactures,
pecuniary resources sufficient for maintaining a land-army and a
war-navy commensurate with the needs of a great power. He made himself
master of all the productive ideas of earlier state administrations; and
in particular the Athenians naturally stood before his eyes as models
and predecessors.
On the one hand, he turned to account for his native city the
improvements made in arms and tactics, which were due to Xenophon,
Chabrias, and Iphicrates; on the other, the example of the Athenians
taught him that the question of the hegemony over Greece could only be
settled by sea. Finally, Epaminondas, more than any other Greek
statesman, followed in the footsteps of Periclean Athens in regarding
the public fostering of art and science as a main duty of that state
which desired to claim a position of primacy.
Personally he did his utmost to domesticate philosophy at Thebes, not
only as intellectual discourse carried on in select circles, but as the
power of higher knowledge which elevates and purifies the people. Public
oratory found a home at Thebes, together with the free constitution; and
not only did Epaminondas personally prove himself fully the equal of the
foremost orators in Athens--of Callistratus in particular--in power of
speech and in felicitous readiness of mind, but, as the embassy at Susa
shows, his friends too learned in a surprisingly short time to assert
the interests of Thebes by the side of the other states, which had long
kept up foreign relations with vigor, skill, and dignity.
In every department there were perceptible intellectual mobility and
vigorously sustained effort. Of the fine arts painting received a
specially successful development, distinguished by a thoughtful and
clear treatment of intellectual ideas. Of the architecture of this
period honorable evidence is to this day given by the well-preserved
remains of the fortifications of Messene, constructed under the
direction of Epaminondas--typical specimens of architecture constructed
in the grandest style. Plastic art likewise found a home at Thebes. It
was the endeavor of Epaminondas--although with prudent moderation--to
transfer the splendor of Periclean Athens to Thebes.
Through Epaminondas Thebes was raised to an equality with the city of
the Athenians, as a seat of a policy aiming at freedom and national
greatness. It thus became possible for the two cities to join hands in
the subsequent struggle for the independence of Greece. And, in this
sense, Epaminondas worked beforehand for the objects of Demosthenes. If
it is considered how, with his small resources, Epaminondas founded or
helped to found Mantinea, Messene, and Megalopolis; how through him
other places, such as Corone and Heraclea, likewise received Theban
settlers--the honor will not be denied him of having been in the royal
art of the foundation of cities the predecessor of Alexander and his
successors.
But he was also their predecessor in another point. By spreading Greek
manners and ways of life he enlarged the narrow boundaries of the land
of the Greeks, and introduced the peoples of the North into the sphere
of Greek history. In his own person he represented the ideas of a
general Hellenic character, which, unconditioned by local accidents, was
freely raised aloft above the distinction of states and tribes. Hitherto
only great statesmen had appeared who were great Athenians or Spartans.
In Epaminondas this local coloring is of quite inferior importance; he
was a Hellene first, and a Theban only in the second place. Thus he
prepared the standpoint from which to be a Hellene was regarded as an
intellectual privilege, independent of the locality of birth; and this
is the standpoint of Hellenism.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
BY GEORGE GROTE.
[Son of Philip, King of Macedon, born 356 B.C., died 323. The
greatest of the world’s conquerors in the extent and rapidity of
his conquests, he began with the consolidation of his father’s
conquests over the republics of Greece, overthrew the great Persian
Empire, and carried his arms to farther India, within a period of
thirteen years. At his death his dominions were divided among his
principal generals. References: Grote’s “History of Greece,”
Curtius’s “History of Greece,” Plutarch’s “Lives.”]
The first growth and development of Macedonia during the twenty-two
years preceding the battle of Chæronea, from an embarrassed secondary
state into the first of all known powers, had excited the astonishment
of contemporaries and admiration for Philip’s organizing genius; but the
achievements of Alexander during the twelve years of his reign, throwing
Philip into the shade, had been on a
[Illustration: ALEXANDER THE GREAT.]
scale so much grander and vaster, and so completely without serious
reverse or even interruption, as to transcend the measure, not only of
human expectation, but almost of human belief. All antecedent human
parallels--the ruin and captivity of the Lydian Crœsus, the expulsion
and mean life of the Syracusan Dionysius, both of them impressive
examples of the mutability of human condition--sunk into trifles
compared with the overthrow of the towering Persian Colossus.
Such were the sentiments excited by Alexander’s career even in the
middle of 330 B.C., more than seven years before his death. During the
following seven years his additional achievements had carried
astonishment yet further. He had mastered, in defiance of fatigue,
hardship, and combat, not merely all the eastern half of the Persian
Empire, but unknown Indian regions beyond its easternmost limits.
Besides Macedonia, Greece, and Thrace, he possessed all that immense
treasure and military force which had once made the Great King so
formidable. By no contemporary man had any such power ever been known or
conceived. With the turn of imagination then prevalent, many were
doubtless disposed to take him for a god on earth, as Grecian spectators
had once supposed with regard to Xerxes, when they beheld the
innumerable Persian host crossing the Hellespont.
Exalted to this prodigious grandeur, Alexander was at the time of his
death little more than thirty-two years old--the age at which a citizen
of Athens was growing into important commands; ten years less than the
age for a consul at Rome; two years younger than the age at which Timour
first acquired the crown and began his foreign conquests. His
extraordinary bodily powers were unabated; he had acquired a large stock
of military experience; and, what was still more important, his appetite
for further conquest was as voracious, and his readiness to purchase it
at the largest cost of toil or danger as complete as it had been when
he first crossed the Hellespont. Great as his past career had been, his
future achievements with such increased means and experience were likely
to be yet greater. His ambition would have been satisfied with nothing
less than the conquest of the whole habitable world as then known; and,
if his life had been prolonged, he probably would have accomplished it.
The patriotic feelings of Livy dispose him to maintain that Alexander,
had he invaded Italy and assailed Romans and Samnites, would have failed
and perished like his relative Alexander of Epirus. But this conclusion
can not be accepted. If we grant the courage and discipline of the Roman
infantry to have been equal to the best infantry of Alexander’s army,
the same can not be said of the Roman cavalry as compared with the
Macedonian companions. Still less is it likely that a Roman consul,
annually changed, would have been a match for Alexander in military
genius and combination; nor, even if personally equal, would he have
possessed the same variety of troops and arms, each effective in its
separate way, and all conspiring to one common purpose; nor, the same
unbounded influence over their minds in stimulating them to full effort.
Among all the qualities which go to constitute the highest military
excellence, either as a general or as a soldier, none was wanting in the
character of Alexander. Together with his own chivalrous
courage--sometimes, indeed, both excessive and unseasonable, so as to
form the only military defect which can be fairly imputed to him--we
trace in all his operations the most careful dispositions taken
beforehand, vigilant precaution in guarding against possible reverse,
and abundant resource in adapting himself to new contingencies. His
achievements are the earliest recorded evidence of scientific military
organization on a large scale, and of its overwhelming effects.
Alexander overawes the imagination more than any other personage of
antiquity by the matchless development of all that constitutes
effective force--as an individual warrior and as organizer and leader of
armed masses; not merely the blind impetuosity ascribed by Homer to
Ares, but also the intelligent, methodized, and all-subduing compression
which he personifies in Athene. But all his great qualities were fit for
use only against enemies, in which category, indeed, were numbered all
mankind, known and unknown, except those who chose to submit to him. In
his Indian campaigns amid tribes of utter strangers, we perceive that
not only those who stand on their defense, but also those who abandon
their property and flee to the mountains are alike pursued and
slaughtered.
Apart from the transcendent merits of Alexander as a general, some
authors give him credit for grand and beneficent views on the subject of
imperial government and for intentions highly favorable to the
improvement of mankind. I see no ground for adopting this opinion. As
far as we can venture to anticipate what would have been Alexander’s
future, we see nothing in prospect except years of ever repeated
aggression and conquest, not to be concluded till he had traversed and
subjugated all the inhabited globe. The acquisition of universal
dominion--conceived not metaphorically but literally, and conceived with
greater facility in consequence of the imperfect geographical knowledge
of the time--was the master-passion of his soul.
“You are a man like all of us, Alexander, except that you abandon your
home,” said the naked Indian to him, “like a medlesome destroyer, to
invade the most distant regions; enduring hardship yourself and
inflicting hardship on others.” Now, how an empire thus boundless and
heterogeneous, such as no prince as has yet ever realized, could have
been administered with any superior advantages to subjects, it would be
difficult to show. The mere task of acquiring and maintaining, of
keeping satraps and tribute-gatherers in authority as well as in
subordination, of suppressing resistances ever liable to recur in
regions distant by months of march, would occupy the whole life of a
world conquerer, without leaving any leisure for the improvements suited
to peace and stability--if we give him credit for such purposes in
theory.
In respect of intelligence and combining genius, Alexander was Hellenic
to the full; in respect of disposition and purpose, no one could be less
Hellenic. The acts attesting his Oriental violence of impulse,
unmeasured self-will, and exaction of reverence above the limits of
humanity, have been recounted. To describe him as a son of Hellas,
imbued with the political maxims of Aristotle, and bent on the
systematic diffusion of Hellenic culture for the improvement of mankind
is in my judgement an estimate of his character contrary to the
evidence.
Alexander is indeed said to have invited suggestions from Aristotle as
to the best mode of colonizing; but his temper altered so much after a
few years of Asiatic conquest, that he came not only to lose all
deference for Aristotle’s advice, but even to hate him bitterly. Instead
of “Hellenizing” Asia, he was tending to “Asiatize” Macedonia and
Hellas. His temper and character as modified by a few years of conquest
rendered him quite unfit to follow the course recommended by Aristotle
toward the Greeks--quite as unfit as any of the Persian kings, or as the
French Emperor Napoleon, to endure that partial frustration, compromise,
and smart from personal criticism, which is inseparable from the
position of a limited chief.
Plutarch states that Alexander founded more than seventy new cities in
Asia. So large a number of them is neither verifiable nor probable,
unless we either reckon up simple military posts or borrow from the list
of foundations established by his successors. Except Alexandria in
Egypt, none of the cities founded by Alexander himself can be shown to
have attained any great development. The process of “Hellenizing” Asia,
in as far as Asia was ever “Hellenized,” which has so often been
ascribed to Alexander, was in reality the work of the successors to his
great dominion.
We read that Alexander felt so much interest in the extension of science
that he gave to Aristotle the immense sum of eight hundred talents in
money, placing under his direction several thousand men, for the purpose
of prosecuting zoölogical researches. These exaggerations are probably
the work of those enemies of the philosopher who decried him as a
pensioner of the Macedonian court; but it is probable enough that
Philip, and Alexander in the earlier part of his reign, may have helped
Aristotle in the difficult process of getting together facts and
specimens for observation from esteem toward him personally rather than
from interest in his discoveries.
The intellectual turn of Alexander was toward literature, poetry, and
history. He was fond of the “Iliad” especially, as well as of the Attic
tragedians; so that Harpalus, being directed to send some books to him
in Upper Asia, selected as the most acceptable packet various tragedies
of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, with the dithyrambic poems of
Telestes and the histories of Philistus.
HANNIBAL.
BY THEODOR MOMMSEN.
[A Carthaginian statesman and soldier, one of the foremost generals
of antiquity, born 247 B.C., died 183. The series of Italian
campaigns in which he imperiled the very existence of Rome are
commented on by modern military critics as models of brilliancy and
daring, combined with far-sighted prudence. Finally compelled to
evacuate Italy, he was defeated and his army destroyed by Publius
Cornelius Scipio, afterward surnamed Africanus, at the battle of
Zama in Africa in 202. Exiled from Carthage, he spent the latter
years of his life in fomenting war against Rome among the Eastern
nations, and finally committed suicide to prevent being delivered
over to the hands of Rome. References: Mommsen’s “History of
Rome,” Plutarch’s “Lives.”]
When Hamilcar departed to take command in Spain, he enjoined his son
Hannibal, nine years of age, to swear at the altar of the Supreme God
eternal hatred to the Roman name, and reared him and his younger sons,
Hasdrubal and Mago--the “lion’s brood,” as he called them--in the camp,
as the inheritors of his projects, of his genius, and of his hatred.