The tributes of the cities, and, with them, the cities, too, to do
with them as he pleases, and undo;
To build up, if he likes, stone walls around a town; and again, if
so he likes, to pull them down;
Their treaties and alliances, power, empire, peace, and war, their
wealth and their success forevermore.
Nor was all this the luck of some happy occasion; nor was it the mere
bloom and grace of a policy that flourished for a season; but having for
fifty-five years together maintained the first place among statesmen, in
the exercise of one continuous unintermitted command in the office, to
which he was annually reelected, of General, he preserved his integrity
unspotted; though otherwise he was not altogether idle or careless in
looking after his pecuniary advantage; his paternal estate, which of
right belonged to him, he so ordered that it might neither through
negligence be wasted or lessened, nor yet, being so full of business as
he was, cost him any great trouble or time with taking care of it; and
put it into such a way of management as he thought to be most easy for
himself, and the most exact. All his yearly products and profits he sold
together in a lump, and supplied his household needs afterward by buying
everything that he or his family wanted out of the market. Upon which
account, his children, when they grew to age, were not well pleased with
his management; since there was not there, as is usual in a great family
and a plentiful estate, anything to spare, or over and above; but all
that went out or came in, all disbursements and all receipts, proceeded
as it were by number and measure. His manager in all this was a single
servant, Evangelus by name, a man either naturally gifted or instructed
by Pericles so as to excel every one in this art of domestic economy.
The Lacedaemonians beginning to show themselves troubled at the growth
of the Athenian power, Pericles, on the other hand, to elevate the
people's spirit yet more, and to raise them to the thought of great
actions, proposed a decree to summon all the Greeks in what part soever,
whether of Europe or Asia, every city, little as well as great, to send
their deputies to Athens to a general assembly or convention, there to
consult and advise concerning the Greek temples which the barbarians
had burnt down; and also concerning the navigation of the sea, that they
might henceforward all of them pass to and fro and trade securely, and
be at peace among themselves.
Nothing was effected, nor did the cities meet by their deputies, as
was desired; the Lacedaemonians, as it is said, crossing the design
underhand, and the attempt being disappointed and baffled first in
Peloponnesus. I thought fit, however, to introduce the mention of it, to
show the spirit of the man and the greatness of his thoughts.
In his military conduct he gained a great reputation for wariness;
he would not by his good-will engage in any fight which had much
uncertainty or hazard; he did not envy the glory of generals whose rash
adventures fortune favored with brilliant success, however they were
admired by others; nor did he think them worthy his imitation, but
always used to say to his citizens that, so far as lay in his power,
they should continue immortal, and live forever. Seeing Tolmides,
the son of Tolmaeus, upon the confidence of his former successes, and
flushed with the honor his military actions had procured him, making
preparation to attack the Boeotians in their own country, when there was
no likely opportunity, and that he had prevailed with the bravest and
most enterprising of the youth to enlist themselves as volunteers in the
service, who besides his other force made up a thousand, he endeavored
to withhold him, and advised him against it in the public assembly,
telling him in a memorable saying of which still goes about, that, if he
would not take Pericles's advice, yet he would not do amiss to wait
and be ruled by time, the wisest counselor of all. This saying, at that
time, was but slightly commended; but, within a few days after, when
news was brought that Tolmides himself had been defeated and slain in
battle near Coronea, and that many brave citizens had fallen with him,
it gained him great repute as well as good-will among the people, for
wisdom and for love of his countrymen.
But of all his expeditions, that to the Chersonese gave most
satisfaction and pleasure, having proved the safety of the Greeks who
inhabited there. For not only by carrying along with him a thousand
fresh citizens of Athens he gave new strength and vigor to the cities,
but also by belting the neck of land, which joins the peninsula to the
continent, with bulwarks and forts from sea to sea, he put a stop to the
inroads of the Thracians, who lay all about the Chersonese, and closed
the door against a continual and grievous war, with which that country
had been long harassed, lying exposed to the encroachments and influx
of barbarous neighbors, and groaning under the evils of a predatory
population both upon and within its borders.
Entering also the Euxine Sea with a large and finely equipped fleet,
he obtained for the Greek cities any new arrangements they wanted, and
entered into friendly relations with them; and to the barbarous nations,
and kings and chiefs round about them, displayed the greatness of the
power of the Athenians, their perfect ability and confidence to sail
wherever they had a mind, and to bring the whole sea under his control.
He left the Sinopians thirteen ships of war, with soldiers under the
command of Lamachus, to assist them against Timesileus the tyrant; and,
when he and his accomplices had been thrown out, obtained a decree that
six hundred of the Athenians that were willing should sail to Sinope and
plant themselves there with the Sinopians, sharing among them the houses
and land which the tyrant and his party had previously held.
But in other things he did not comply with the giddy impulses of the
citizens, nor quit his own resolutions to follow their fancies, when,
carried away with the thought of their strength and great success,
they were eager to interfere again in Egypt, and to disturb the king of
Persia's maritime dominions. Nay, there were a good many who were, even
then, possessed with that unblest and unauspicious passion for Sicily,
which afterward the orators of Alciabes's party blew up into a flame.
There were some also who dreamt of Tuscany and of Carthage, and not
without plausible reason in their present large dominion and the
prosperous course of their affairs.
But Pericles curbed this passion for foreign conquest, and unsparingly
pruned and cut down their ever-busy fancies for a multitude of
undertakings, and directed their power for the most part to securing
and consolidating what they had already got, supposing it would be quite
enough for them to do, if they could keep the Lacedaemonians in check;
to whom he entertained all along a sense of opposition; which, as upon
many other occasions, he particularly showed by what he did in the time
of the holy war. The Lacedaemonians, having gone with an army to
Delphi, restored Apollo's temple, which the Phocians had got into
their possession, to the Delphians; immediately after their departure,
Pericles, with another army, came and restored it to the Phocians. And
the Lacedaemonians having engraven the record of their privilege of
consulting the oracle before others, which the Delphians gave them, upon
the forehead of the brazen wolf which stands there, he, also, having
received from the Phocians the like privilege for the Athenians, had it
cut upon the same wolf of brass, on his right side.
When Pericles, in giving up his accounts, stated a disbursement of
ten talents, as laid out upon fit occasion, the people, without any
question, nor troubling themselves to investigate the mystery, freely
allowed it. And some historians, in which number is Theophtastus the
philosopher, have given it as a truth that Pericles every year used
to send privately the sum of ten talents to Sparta, with which he
complimented those in office, to keep off the war; not to purchase peace
either, but time, that he might prepare at leisure, and be the better
able to carry on war hereafter.
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. 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 oligarchal
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 apiece 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 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 another greater fleet from Athens had arrived, and 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 a 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 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 necessities they wanted for the war,
which they had not before. Aristotle says, too, that Pericles himself
had been once before this worsted by the Milissus in a sea-fight.
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 so
it was 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 to 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 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. 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, all the women except Elpinice, the aged sister of Cimon, came
out and complimented him, taking him by the hand, and crowning him with
garlands and ribbons, like a victorious athlete in the games.
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. 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 upon to be reconciled with the
inhabitants of Megara.
The true occasion of the quarrel is not easy to find out. 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 Athena. 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; and they, 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
marketplace, 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 repudiation 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. And Pericles, finding that in Phidias's
case he had miscarried with the people, being afraid of impeachment,
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.
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, 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
judgement; and many of his enemies threatened and accursed 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 lurks behind them.
(Teles was 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 Peloponnesus,
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 flour 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.
Finding the Athenians ill affected and highly displeased with him, he
tried and endeavored what he could to appease and re-encourage them. But
he could not pacify or allay their anger nor persuade or prevail with
them anyway, til they freely passed their votes upon him, resumed their
power, took away his command from him, and fined him in a sum of money.
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 a kind of mutiny against him. For the eldest of his sons,
Xanthippus by name, being naturally prodigal, and marrying a young and
expensive wife, 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's 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
practicer of the five games of skill, * 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. And in general,
this difference of the young man's with his father, in the breach
betwixt them, continued never to be healed or made up til 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 on these occasions, nor betray or lower his high spirit and even 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 his friends or
relations, till at last he lost his only remaining son. Subdued by this
blow, yet striving still, as far as he could, to maintain his principle,
and yet to preserve and keep up the greatness of his soul, when he came,
however, to perform the ceremony of putting a garland of flowers on 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.
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
him again to address and advise them, and to resume 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
acknowledgements, and apologized for their untowardly treatment of him,
he undertook the public affairs once more.
About this time, it seems, 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.
When he was now near his end, the best of 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; 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 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 anything 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 equable 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
regarded 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 an 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 divine
beings, to whom, as the natural of all good and of nothing evil, we
ascribe the rule and government of the world.
The course of public affairs after his death produced a quick and speedy
sense of the loss of Pericles. Those who, while they live, resented
his great authority, as that which eclipsed themselves, presently
after 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.