Caesar once, seeing some wealthy strangers at Rome, carrying up and
down with them in their arms and bosoms young puppy-dogs and monkeys,
embracing and making much of them, took occasion not unnaturally to ask
whether the women in their country were not used to bear children; by
that prince-like reprimand gravely reflecting upon persons who spend and
lavish upon brute beasts that affection and kindness which nature has
implanted in us to be bestowed on those of our own kind. With like
reason may we blame those who misuse that love of inquiry and
observation which nature has implanted in our souls, by expending it on
objects unworthy of the attention either of their eyes or their ears,
while they disregard such as are excellent in themselves, and would do
them good.
The mere outward sense, being passive in responding to the impression of
the objects that come in its way and strike upon it, perhaps cannot help
entertaining and taking notice of everything that addresses it, be it
what it will, useful or unuseful; but, in the exercise of his mental
perception, every man, if he chooses, has a natural power to turn
himself upon all occasions, and to change and shift with the greatest
ease to what he shall himself judge desirable. So that it becomes a
man's duty to pursue and make after the best and choicest of everything,
that he may not only employ his contemplation, but may also be
improved by it. For as that color is most suitable to the eye whose
freshness and pleasantness stimulates and strengthens the sight, so a
man ought to apply his intellectual perception to such objects as, with
the sense of delight, are apt to call it forth, and allure it to its
own proper good and advantage.
Such objects we find in the acts of virtue, which also produce in the
minds of mere readers about them, an emulation and eagerness that may
lead them 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," said he, "but he is but 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,
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 Philetas or Archilochus. For it does
not necessarily follow, that, if a piece of work please for its
gracefulness, therefore he that wrought it deserves our admiration.
Whence it is that neither do such things really profit or advantage the
beholders, upon the sight of which no zeal arises for the imitation of
them, nor any impulse or inclination, which may prompt any desire or
endeavor of doing the like. 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. Moral good is a
practical stimulus; it is no sooner seen, than it inspires an impulse to
practice; and influences the mind and character not by a mere imitation
which we look at, but, by the statement of the fact, creates a moral
purpose which we form.
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 here find.
Pericles was of the tribe 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 an 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.
His mother, being near her time, fancied in a dream that she was brought
to bed of a lion, and a few days after was delivered of Pericles, in
other respects perfectly formed, 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
apparently being willing not to expose him. The poets of Athens called
him Schinocephalos, or squill-head, from schinos, a squill, or sea-
onion. One of the comic poets, Cratinus, in the Chirons,
tells us that --
Old Chronos once took queen Sedition to wife;
Which two brought to life
That tyrant far-famed,
Whom the gods the supreme skull-compeller have named.