We are inspired by acts of virtue with an emulation and eagerness that
may lead on to imitation. In other things there does not immediately
follow upon the admiration and liking of the thing done, any strong
desire of doing the like. Nay, many times, on the very contrary, when
we are pleased with the work, we slight and set little by the workman
or artist himself, as, for instance, in perfumes and purple dyes, we are
taken with the things themselves well enough, but do not think dyers and
perfumers otherwise than low and sordid people. It was not said amiss
by Antisthenes, when people told him that one Ismenias was an excellent
piper, "It may be so, but he is a wretched human being, otherwise he
would not have been an excellent piper." And King Philip, to the same
purpose, told his son Alexander, who once at a merry meeting played a
piece of music charmingly and skillfully, "Are you not ashamed, my son,
to play so well?" For it is enough for a king or prince to find leisure
sometimes to hear others sing, and he does the muses quite honor enough
when he pleases to be but present, while others engage in such exercises
and trials of skill.
He who busies himself in mean occupations produces, in the very pains he
takes about things of little or no use, an evidence against himself of
his negligence and indisposition to what is really good. Nor did any
generous and ingenuous young man, at the sight of the statue of Jupiter
at Pisa, ever desire to be a Phidias, or, on seeing that of Juno at
Argos, long to be a Polycletus, or feel induced by his pleasure in their
poems to wish to be an Anacreon or Pliletas or Archilochus. But virtue,
by the bare statement of its actions, can so affect men's minds as to
create at once both admiration of the things done and desire to imitate
the doers of them. The goods of fortune we would possess and would
enjoy; those of virtue we long to practice and exercise; we are
content to receive the former from others, the latter we wish others to
experience from us.
And so we have thought fit to spend our time and pains in writing of
the lives of famous persons; and have composed this tenth book upon that
subject, containing the life of Pericles, and that of Fabius Maximus,
who carried on the war against Hannibal, men alike, as in their other
virtues and good parts, so especially in their mild and upright temper
and demeanor, and in that capacity to bear the cross-grained humors of
their fellow-citizens and colleagues in office which made them both most
useful and serviceable to the interests of their countries. Whether we
take a right aim at our intended purpose, it is left to the reader to
judge by what he shall find here.
Pericles was of the tribe of Acamantis, and the township Cholargus, of
the noblest birth both on his father's and mother's side. Xanthippus,
his father, who defeated the king of Persia's generals in the battle at
Mycale, took to Wife Agariste, the grandchild of Clisthenes, who drove
out the sons of Pisistratus, and nobly put and end to their tyrannical
usurpation, and moreover made a body of laws, and settled a model of
government admirably tempered and suited for the harmony and safety of
the people.
Pericles in other respects was perfectly formed physically, only his
head was somewhat longish and out of proportion. For which reason almost
all the images and statues that were made of him have the head covered
with a helmet, the workmen not apparently being willing to expose him.
The poets of Athens called him "Schinocephalos," or squill-head, from
"schinos," a squill, or sea-onion.
Pericles was a hearer of Zeno, the Eliatic, who treated of natural
philosophy in the same manner as Parmenides did, but had also perfected
himself in an art of his own for refuting and silencing opponents in
argument; as Timon of Phlius describes it,--
Also the two-edged tongue of mighty Zeno, who,
Say what one would, could argue it untrue.
But he saw most of Pericles, and furnished him most especially with a
weight and grandeur of sense, superior to all arts of popularity, and
in general gave him his elevation and sublimity of purpose and of
character, was Anaxagoras of Clazomenae; whom the men of those times
called by the name of Nous, that is mind, or intelligence, whether in
admiration of the great and extraordinary gift he displayed for the
science of nature, or because he was the first of the philosophers who
did not refer the first ordering of the world to fortune or chance, nor
to necessity or compulsion, but to a pure, unadulterated intelligence,
which in all other existing mixed and compound things acts as a
principle of discrimination, and of combination of like with like.
For this man, Pericles entertained an extraordinary esteem and
admiration, and, filling himself with this lofty and, as they call it,
up-in-the-air sort of thought, derived hence not merely, as was natural,
elevation of purpose and dignity of language, raised far above the
base and dishonest buffooneries of mob-eloquence, but, besides this,
a composure of countenance, and a serenity and calmness in all his
movements, which no occurrence whilst he was speaking could disturb,
a sustained and even tone of voice, and various other advantages of a
similar kind, which produced the greatest effect on his hearers. Once,
after being reviled and ill-spoken of all day long in his own hearing by
some abandoned fellow in the open market-place where he was engaged in
the despatch of some urgent affair, he continued his business in perfect
silence, and in the evening returned home composedly, the man still
dogging him at the heels, and pelting him all the way with abuse and
foul language; and stopping into his house, it being by this time dark,
he ordered one of hi servants to take a light and to go along with the
man and see him safe home.
Nor were these the only advantages which Pericles derived from
Anaxagoras's acquaintance; he seems also to have become, by his
instructions, superior to that superstition with which an ignorant
wonder at appearances, for example, in the heavens, possesses the minds
of people unacquainted with their causes, eager for the supernatural,
and excitable through an inexperience which the knowledge of natural
causes removes, replacing wild and timid superstition by the good hope
and assurance of an intelligent piety.
There is a story that once Pericles had brought to him from a country
farm of his, a ram's head with one horn, and that Lampon, the diviner,
upon seeing the horn grow strong and solid out of the midst of the
forehead, gave it as his judgement that, there being at that time
two potent factions, parties, or interests in the city, the one of
Thucydides and the other of Pericles, the government would come about to
that one of them in whose ground or estate this token or indication
of fate had shown itself. But that Anaxagoras, cleaving the skull in
sunder, showed to the bystanders that the brain had not filled up its
natural place, but being oblong, like an egg, had collected from all
parts of the vessel which contained it, in a point to that place from
whence the root of the horn took its rise. And that, for the time,
Anaxagoras was much admired for his explanation by those that were
present; and Lampon no less a little while after, when Thucydides was
overpowered, and the whole affairs of the state and government came into
the hands of Pericles.
Pericles, while yet but a young man, stood in considerable apprehension
of the people, as he was thought in face and figure to be very like the
tyrant Pisitratus, and those of great age remarked upon the sweetness of
his voice, and his volubility and rapidity in speaking, and were struck
with amazement at the resemblance. But when Aristides was now dead, and
Themosticles driven out, and Cimon was for the most part kept abroad by
the expeditions he made in parts out of Greece, Pericles, seeing things
in this posture, now advanced and took his side, not with the rich and
few, but with the many and poor, contrary to his natural bent, which
was far from democratical; but, most likely, fearing he might fall under
suspicion of aiming at arbitrary power, and seeing Cimon on the side of
the aristocracy, and much beloved by the better and more distinguished
people, he joined the party of the people, with a view at once both to
secure himself and procure means against Cimon.
He immediately entered, also, on quite a new course of life and
management of his time. For he was never seen to walk in any street but
that which led to the market-place and the council-hall, and he
avoided invitations of friends to supper, and all friendly visits and
intercourse whatever; in all the time he had to do with the public,
which was not a little, he was never known to have gone to any of his
friends to a supper, except that once when his near kinsman Euryptolemus
married, he remained present till the ceremony of the drink-offering,
and then immediately rose from the table and went his way. For these
friendly meetings are very quick to defeat any assumed superiority, and
in intimate familiarity an exterior of gravity is hard to maintain. Real
excellence, indeed, is best recognized when most openly looked into; and
in really good men, nothing which meets the eyes of external observers
so truly deserves their admiration, as their daily common life does
that of their nearer friends. Pericles, however, to avoid any feeling of
commonness, or any satiety on the part of the people, presented himself
at intervals only, not speaking on every business, nor at all times
coming into the assembly, but, as Critoaus says, reserving himself,
like the Salaminian galley, for great occasions, while matters of
lesser importance were despatched by friends or other speakers under his
direction. And of this number we are told Ephialtes made one, who broke
the power of the council of Areopagus, giving the people, according to
Plato's expression, so copious and so strong a draught of liberty, that,
growing wild and unruly, like an unmanageable horse, it, as the comic
poets say,--
"--got beyond all keeping in,
Champing at Euboea, and among the islands leaping in."
The style of speaking most consonant to his form of life and the dignity
of his views he found, so to say, in the tones of that instrument with
which Anaxagoras had furnished him; of his teaching he continually
availed himself, and deepened the colors of rhetoric with the dye of
natural science.
A saying of Thucydides, the son of Melesias, stands on record, spoken by
him by way of pleasantry upon Pericles's dexterity. Thucydides was
one of the noble and distinguished citizens, and had been his greatest
opponent; and, when Archidamus, the king of the Lacedaemonians, asked
him whether he or Pericles were the better wrestler, he made this
answer: "When I," said he, "have thrown him and given him a fair fall,
he by persisting that he had no fall, gets the better of me, and makes
the bystanders, in spite of their own eyes, believe him."
The rule of Pericles has been described as an aristocratical government,
that went by the name of a democracy, but was, indeed, the supremacy of
a single great man; while many say, that by him the common people were
first encouraged and led on to such evils as appropriations of subject
territory, allowances for attending theatres, payments for performing
public duties, and by these bad habits were, under the influence of his
public measures, changed from a sober, thrifty people, that maintained
themselves by their own labors, to lovers of expense, intemperance, and
license.
At the first, as has been said, when he set himself against Cimon's
great authority, he did caress the people. Finding himself come short
of his competitor in wealth and money, by which advantages the other was
enabled to take care of the poor, inviting every day some one or other
of the citizens that was in want to supper, and bestowing clothes on the
aged people, and breaking down the hedges and enclosures of his grounds,
that all that would might freely gather what fruit they pleased.
Pericles, thus outdone in popular arts, turned to the distribution of
the public moneys; and in a short time having bought the people over,
what with moneys allowed for shows and for service on juries, and what
with the other forms of pay and largess, he made use of them against the
council of Areopagus, and directed the exertions of his party against
this council with such success, that most of those causes and matters
which had been formerly tried there, were removed from its
cognizance; Cimon, also, was banished by ostracism as a favorer of the
Lacedaemonians and a hater of the people, though in wealth and noble
birth he was among the first, and had won several most glorious
victories over the barbarians, and had filled the city with money and
spoils of war. So vast an authority had Pericles obtained among the
people.
The ostracism was limited by law to ten years; but the Lacedaemonians,
in the meantime, entering with a great army into the territory of
Tanagra, and the Athenians going out against the Cimon, coming from his
banishment before his time was out, put himself in arms and array with
those of his fellow-citizens that were of his own tribe, and desired by
his deeds to wipe off the suspicion of his favoring the Lacedaemonians,
by venturing his own person along with his countrymen. But Pericles's
friends, gathering in a body, forced him to retire as a banished man.
For which cause also Pericles seems to have exerted himself more than
in any other battle, and to have been conspicuous above all for his
exposure of himself to danger. All Cimon's friends, also, to a man, fell
together side by side, whom Pericles had accused with him of taking part
with the Lacedaemonians. Defeated in this battle on their own frontiers,
and expecting a new and perilous attack with return of spring, the
Athenians now felt regret and sorrow for the loss of Cimon, and
repentance for their expulsion of him. Pericles, being sensible of their
feelings, did not hesitate or delay to gratify it, and himself made the
motion for recalling him home. He, upon his return, concluded a peace
betwixt the two cities; for the Lacedaemonians entertained as kindly
feelings towards him as they did the reverse towards Pericles and the
other popular leaders.
Cimon, while he was admiral, ended his days in the Isle of Cyprus. And
the aristocratical party, seeing that Pericles was already before
this grown to be the greatest and foremost man of all the city, but
nevertheless wishing there should be somebody set up against him, to
blunt and turn the edge of his power, that it might not altogether prove
a monarchy, put forward Thucydides of Alopece, a discreet person, and a
near kinsman of Cimon's, to conduct the opposition against him. And so
Pericles, at that time more than at any other, let loose the reins
to the people, and made his policy subservient to their pleasure,
contriving continually to have some great public show or solemnity, some
banquet, or some procession or other in the town to please them, coaxing
his countrymen like children, with such delights and pleasures as
were not, however, unedifying. Besides that, every year he sent
out threescore galleys, on board of which there went numbers of the
citizens, who were in pay eight months, at the same time learning and
practicing the art of seamanship.
He sent, moreover, a thousand of them into the Chersonese as planters,
to share the land among them by lot, and five hundred more into the
isle of Naxos, and half that number to Andros, a thousand into Thrace to
dwell among the Bisaltae, and others into Italy, when the city Sybaris,
which now was called Thurii, was to be repeopled. And this he did
to ease and discharge the city of an idle, and, by reason of their
idleness, a busy, meddling crowd of people; and at the same time to meet
the necessities and restore the fortunes of the poor townsmen, and to
intimidate, also, and check their allies from attempting any change, by
posting such garrisons, as it were, in the midst of them.
That which gave most pleasure and ornament to the city of Athens, and
the greatest admiration and even astonishment to all strangers, and that
which now is Greece's only evidence that the power she boasts of and her
ancient wealth are no romance or idle story, was his construction of the
public and sacred buildings.
The materials were stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony, and cypress-wood;
the artisans that wrought and fashioned them were smiths and carpenters,
moulders, founders and braziers, stone-cutters, dyers, goldsmiths,
ivory-workers, painters, embroiderers, turners; those again that
conveyed them to the town for use, merchants and mariners and
ship-masters by sea; and by land, cartwrights, cattle-breeders,
wagoners, rope-makers, flax-workers, shoe-makers and leather-dressers,
road-makers, miners. And every trade in the same nature, as a captain
in an army has his particular company of soldiers under him, had its own
hired company of journeymen and laborers belonging to it banded
together as in array, to be as it were the instrument and body for the
performance of the service of these public works distributed plenty
through every age and condition.
As then grew the works up, no less stately in size than exquisite in
form, the workmen striving to outvie the material and the design with
the beauty of their workmanship, yet the most wonderful thing of all was
the rapidity of their execution. Undertakings, any one of which singly
might have required, they thought, for their completion, several
successions and ages of men, were every one of them accomplished in the
height and prime of one man's political service. Although they say,
too, that Zeuxis once, having heard Agatharchus, the painter, boast of
despatching his work with speed and ease, replied, "I take a long
time." For ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting
solidity or exactness of beauty; the expenditure of time allowed to a
man's pains beforehand for the production of a thing is repaid by way of
interest with a vital force for its preservation when once produced.
For which reason Pericles's works are especially admired, as having been
made quickly, to last long. For every particular piece of his work was
immediately, even at that time, for its beauty and elegance, antique;
and yet in its vigor and freshness looks to this day as if it were just
executed. There is a sort of bloom of newness upon those works of his,
preserving them from the touch of time, as if they had some perennial
spirit and undying vitality mingled in the composition of them.
Phidias had the oversight of all the works, and was surveyor-general,
though upon the various portions other great masters and workmen were
employed. For Callicrates and Ictinus built the Parthenon; the chapel at
Eleusis, where the mysteries were celebrated, was begun by Coroebus, who
erected the pillars that stand upon the floor or pavement, and joined
them to the architraves; and after his death Metagenes of Xypete added
the frieze and the upper line of columns; Xenocles of Cholargus roofed
or arched the lantern on the top of the temple of Castor and Pollux; and
the long wall, which Socrates says he himself heard Pericles propose to
the people, was undertaken by Callicrates.
The Odeum, or music-room, which in its interior was full of seats and
ranges of pillars, and outside had its roof made to slope and descend
from one single point at the top, was constructed, we are told, in
imitation of the king of Persia's Pavilion; this likewise by Pericles's
order; which Cratinus again, in his comedy called The Thracian Women,
made an occasion of raillery,--
So, we see here,
Jupiter Long-pate Pericles appear,
Since ostracism time he's laid aside his head,
And wears the new Odeum in its stead.
Perils, also eager for distinction, then first obtained the decree for
a contest in musical skill to be held yearly at the Panathenaea, and he
himself, being chosen judge, arranged the order and method in which the
competitors should sing and play on the flute and the harp. And both at
that time, and at other times also, they sat in this music-room to see
and hear all such trials of skill.
The propylaea, or entrances to the Acropolis, were finished in five
years' time, Mnesicles being the principal architect. A strange accident
happened in the course of building, which showed that the goddess was
not averse to the work, but was aiding and co-operating to bring it to
perfection. One of the artificers, the quickest and the handiest workmen
among them all, with a slip of his foot, fell down from a great height,
and lay in a miserable condition, the physician having no hopes of his
recovery. When Pericles was in distress about this, Athenia appeared
to him at night in a dream, and ordered a course of treatment which he
applied, and in a short time, and with great ease, cured the man. And
upon this occasion it was that he set up a brass statue of Athena,
surnamed Health, in the citadel near the altar, which they say was there
before. But it was Phidias who wrought the goddess's image in gold,
and he has his name inscribed on the pedestal as the workman of it; and
indeed the whole work in a manner was under his charge, and he had, as
we have said already, the oversight over all the artists and workmen,
through Pericles's friendship for him.
When the orators, who sided with Thucydides and his party, were at
one time crying out, as their custom was, against Pericles, as one who
squandered away public money and made havoc of the state revenues, he
rose in the open assembly and put the question to the people, whether
they thought that he had laid out much; and saying, "Too much, a great
deal," "Then," said he, "since it is so, let the cost not go to your
account, but to mine; and let the inscription upon the buildings stand
in my name." When they heard him say thus, whether it were out of a
surprise to see the greatness of his spirit, or out of emulation of the
glory of the works, they cried aloud, bidding him to spend on, and lay
out what he thought fit from the public purse, and to spare no cost,
till all were finished.
At length, coming to a final contest with Thucydides, which of the two
should ostracize the other out of the country, and, having gone through
this peril, he threw his antagonist out, and broke up the confederacy
that had been organized against him. So that now all schism and division
being at an end, and the city brought to evenness and unity, he got
all Athens and all affairs that pertained to the Athenians into his own
hands, their tributes, their armies and their galleys, the islands, the
sea, and their wide-extended power, partly over other Greeks and partly
over barbarians, and all that empire which they possessed, founded and
fortified upon subject nations and royal friendships and alliances.
After this he was no longer the same man he had been before, nor as tame
and gentle and familiar as formerly with the populace, so as readily
to yield to their pleasures and to comply with the desires of the
multitude, as a steersman shifts with the winds. Quitting that loose,
remiss, and, in some cases, licentious court of the popular will,
he turned those soft and flowery modulations to the austerity of
aristocratical and regal rule; but, employing this uprightly and
undeviatingly for the country's best interests, he was able generally
to lead the people along, with their own will and consent, by persuading
and showing them what was to be done.
The source of this predominance was not barely his power of language,
but, as Thucydides the historian assures us, the reputation of his life,
and the confidence felt in his character; his manifest freedom from
every kind of corruption, and superiority to all considerations of
money. Notwithstanding he had made the city of Athens, which was great
of itself, as great and rich as can be imagined, and though he were
himself in power and interest more than equal to many kings and absolute
rulers, who some of them also bequeathed by will their power to their
children, he for his part, did not make the patrimony his father left
him greater than it was by one drachma.