And, in the Nemesis, addresses him --

Come, Jove, thou head of gods.

And a second, Teleclides, says, that now, in embarrassment with

political difficulties, he sits in the city,--

Fainting underneath the load

Of his own head; and now abroad,

From his huge gallery of a pate,

Sends forth trouble to the state.

And a third, Eupolis, in the comedy called the Demi, in a series of

questions about each of the demagogues, whom he makes in the play to

come up from hell, upon Pericles being named last, exclaims,--

And here by way of summary, now we've done,

Behold, in brief, the heads of all in one.

The master that taught him music, most authors are agreed, was Damon

(whose name, they say, ought to be pronounced with the first syllable

short). Though Aristotle tells us that he was thoroughly practiced in

all accomplishments of this kind by Pythoclides. Damon, it is not

unlikely, being a sophist, out of policy, sheltered himself under the

profession of music to conceal from people in general his skill in other

things, and under this pretense attended Pericles, the young athlete of

politics, so to say, as his training-master in these exercises. Damon's

lyre, however, did not prove altogether a successful blind; he was

banished the country by ostracism for ten years, as a dangerous

intermeddler and a favorer of arbitrary power, and, by this means, gave

the stage occasion to play upon him. As, for instance, Plato, the comic

poet, introduces a character, who questions him --

Tell me, if you please,

Since you're the Chiron who taught Pericles.

Pericles, also, was a hearer of Zeno, the Eleatic, 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 that 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 that 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 vile and abandoned fellow in the open marketplace, where he was

engaged in the dispatch 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 stepping into his house, it being by this time

dark, he ordered one of his servants to take a light, and to go along

with the man and see him safe home. Ion, it is true, the dramatic poet,

says that Pericles's manner in company was somewhat over-assuming and

pompous; and that into his high bearing there entered a good deal of

slightingness and scorn of others; he reserves his commendation for

Cimon's ease and pliancy and natural grace in society. Ion, however,

who must needs make virtue, like a show of tragedies, include some comic

scenes, we shall not altogether rely upon; Zeno used to bid those who

called Pericles's gravity the affectation of a charlatan, to go and

affect the like themselves; inasmuch as this mere counterfeiting might

in time insensibly instill into them a real love and knowledge of those

noble qualities.

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 judgment, 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 that 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.

And yet, in my opinion, it is no absurdity to say that they were both in

the right, both natural philosopher and diviner, one justly detecting

the cause of this event, by which it was produced, the other the end for

which it was designed. For it was the business of the one to find out

and give an account of what it was made, and in what manner and by what

means it grew as it did; and of the other to foretell to what end and

purpose it was so made, and what it might mean or portend. Those who

say that to find out the cause of a prodigy is in effect to destroy its

supposed signification as such, do not take notice that, at the same

time, together with divine prodigies, they also do away with signs and

signals of human art and concert, as, for instance, the clashings of

quoits, fire-beacons, and the shadows on sun-dials, every one of which

things has its cause, and by that cause and contrivance is a sign of

something else. But these are subjects, perhaps, that would better

befit another place.

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 Pisistratus, 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. Reflecting, too, that he had

a considerable estate, and was descended of a noble family, and had

friends of great influence, he was fearful all this might bring him to

be banished as a dangerous person; and for this reason meddled not at

all with state affairs, but in military service showed himself of a

brave and intrepid nature. But when Aristides was now dead, and

Themistocles 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 marketplace and the council-hall, and he avoided

invitations of friends to supper, and all friendly visiting 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 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 most 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 to every business, nor

at all times coming into the assembly, but, as Critolaus says, reserving

himself, like the Salaminian galley,@ for great occasions, while matters

of lesser importance were dispatched 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. For having, in addition to his great natural genius,

attained, by the study of nature, to use the words of the divine Plato,

this height of intelligence, and this universal consummating power, and

drawing hence whatever might be of advantage to him in the art of

speaking, he showed himself far superior to all others. Upon which

account, they say, he had his nickname given him, though some are of

opinion he was named the Olympian from the public buildings with which

he adorned the city; and others again, from his great power in public

affairs, whether of war or peace. Nor is it unlikely that the

confluence of many attributes may have conferred it on him. However,

the comedies represented at the time, which, both in good earnest and in

merriment, let fly many hard words at him, plainly show that he got that

appellation especially from his speaking; they speak of his "thundering

and lightning" when he harangued the people, and of his wielding a

dreadful thunderbolt in his tongue.

A saying also 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, by persisting that he had no fall, he gets the

better of me, and makes the bystanders, in spite of their own eyes,

believe him." The truth, however, is, that Pericles himself was very

careful what and how he was to speak, insomuch that, whenever he went up

to the hustings, he prayed the gods that no one word might unawares slip

from him unsuitable to the matter and the occasion.

He has left nothing in writing behind him, except some decrees; and

there are but very few of his sayings recorded; one, for example, is,

that he said Aegina must, like a gathering in a man's eye, be removed

from Piraeus; and another, that he said he saw already war moving on its

way towards them out of Peloponnesus. Again, when on a time Sophocles,

who was his fellow-commissioner in the generalship, was going on board

with him, and praised the beauty of a youth they met with in the way to

the ship, "Sophocles," said he, "a general ought not only to have clean

hands, but also clean eyes." And Stesimbrotus tells us, that, in his

encomium on those who fell in battle at Samos, he said they were become

immortal, as the gods were. "For," said he, "we do not see them

themselves, but only by the honors we pay them, and by the benefits they

do us, attribute to them immortality; and the like attributes belong

also to those that die in the service of their country."

Since Thucydides describes the rule of Pericles as an aristocratical

government, that went by the name of a democracy, but was, indeed, the

supremacy of a single great man, while many others say, on the contrary,

that by him the common people were first encouraged and led on to such

evils as appropriations of subject territory; allowances for attending

theaters, 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, let us examine the cause

of this change by the actual matters of fact.

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, by the advice of one Damonides

of Oea, as Aristotle states, 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 other

forms of pay and largess, he made use of them against the council of

Areopagus, of which he himself was no member, as having never been

appointed by lot either chief archon, or lawgiver, or king, or captain.

For from of old these offices were conferred on persons by lot, and they

who had acquitted themselves duly in the discharge of them were advanced

to the court of Areopagus. And so Pericles, having secured his power

and interest with the populace, directed the exertions of his party

against this council with such success, that most of those causes and

matters which had been used to be tried there, were, by the agency of

Ephialtes, 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; as is recorded in the history of his

life. So vast an authority had Pericles obtained among the people.

The ostracism was limited by law to ten years; but the Lacedaemonians,

in the mean time, entering with a great army into the territory of

Tanagra, and the Athenians going out against them, 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 country-men.

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 in that than in any 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.

Yet some there are who say that Pericles did not propose the order for

Cimon's return till some private articles of agreement had been made

between them, and this by means of Elpinice, Cimon's sister; that Cimon,

namely, should go out to sea with a fleet of two hundred ships, and be

commander-in-chief abroad, with a design to reduce the king of Persia's

territories, and that Pericles should have the power at home.

This Elpinice, it was thought, had before this time procured some

favor for her brother Cimon at Pericles's hands, and induced him to be

more remiss and gentle in urging the charge when Cimon was tried for his

life; for Pericles was one of the committee appointed by the commons to

plead against him. And when Elpinice came and besought him in her

brother's behalf, he answered, with a smile, "O Elpinice, you are too

old a woman to undertake such business as this." But, when he appeared

to impeach him, he stood up but once to speak, merely to acquit himself

of his commission, and went out of court, having done Cimon the least

prejudice of any of his accusers.

How, then, can one believe Idomeneus, who charges Pericles as if he had

by treachery procured the murder of Ephialtes, the popular statesman,

one who was his friend, and of his own party in all his political

course, out of jealousy, forsooth, and envy of his great reputation?

This historian, it seems, having raked up these stories, I know not

whence, has befouled with them a man who, perchance, was not altogether

free from fault or blame, but yet had a noble spirit, and a soul that

was bent on honor; and where such qualities are, there can no such cruel

and brutal passion find harbor or gain admittance. As to Ephialtes, the

truth of the story, as Aristotle has told it, is this: that having made

himself formidable to the oligarchical party, by being an

uncompromising asserter of the people's rights in calling to account and

prosecuting those who any way wronged them, his enemies, lying in wait

for him, by the means of Aristodicus the Tanagraean, privately

dispatched him.

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; who,

indeed, though less skilled in warlike affairs than Cimon was, yet was

better versed in speaking and political business, and keeping close

guard in the city, and engaging with Pericles on the hustings, in a

short time brought the government to an equality of parties. For he

would not suffer those who were called the honest and good (persons of

worth and distinction) to be scattered up and down and mix themselves

and be lost among the populace, as formerly, diminishing and obscuring

their superiority amongst the masses; but taking them apart by

themselves and uniting them in one body, by their combined weight he was

able, as it were upon the balance, to make a counter-poise to the other

party.

For, indeed, there was from the beginning a sort of concealed split, or

seam, as it might be in a piece of iron, marking the different popular

and aristocratical tendencies; but the open rivalry and contention of

these two opponents made the gash deep, and severed the city into the

two parties of the people and the few. 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,

learning at the same time 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. Yet this was that of all his actions in

the government which his enemies most looked askance upon and caviled at

in the popular assemblies, crying out how that the commonwealth of

Athens had lost its reputation and was ill-spoken of abroad for removing

the common treasure of the Greeks from the isle of Delos into their own

custody; and how that their fairest excuse for so doing, namely, that

they took it away for fear the barbarians should seize it, and on

purpose to secure it in a safe place, this Pericles had made

unavailable, and how that "Greece cannot but resent it as an

insufferable affront, and consider herself to be tyrannized over openly,

when she sees the treasure, which was contributed by her upon a

necessity for the war, wantonly lavished out by us upon our city, to

gild her all over, and to adorn and set her forth, as it were some vain

woman, hung round with precious stones and figures and temples, which

cost a world of money."

Pericles, on the other hand, informed the people, that they were in no

way obliged to give any account of those moneys to their allies, so long

as they maintained their defense, and kept off the barbarians from

attacking them; while in the meantime they did not so much as supply

one horse or man or ship, but only found money for the service; "which

money," said he, "is not theirs that give it, but theirs that receive

it, if so be they perform the conditions upon which they receive it."

And that it was good reason, that, now the city was sufficiently

provided and stored with all things necessary for the war, they should

convert the overplus of its wealth to such undertakings, as would

hereafter, when completed, give them eternal honor, and, for the

present, while in process, freely supply all the inhabitants with

plenty. With their variety of workmanship and of occasions for service,

which summon all arts and trades and require all hands to be employed

about them, they do actually put the whole city, in a manner, into

state-pay; while at the same time she is both beautified and maintained

by herself. For as those who are of age and strength for war are

provided for and maintained in the armaments abroad by their pay out of

the public stock, so, it being his desire and design that the

undisciplined mechanic multitude that stayed at home should not go

without their share of public salaries, and yet should not have them

given them for sitting still and doing nothing, to that end he thought

fit to bring in among them, with the approbation of the people, these

vast projects of buildings and designs of works, that would be of some

continuance before they were finished, and would give employment to

numerous arts, so that the part of the people that stayed at home might,

no less than those that were at sea or in garrisons or on expeditions,

have a fair and just occasion of receiving the benefit and having their

share of the public moneys.

The materials were stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony cypress-wood; and

the arts or trades that wrought and fashioned them were smiths and

carpenters, molders, 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, waggoners,

rope-makers, flax-workers, shoe-makers and leather-dressers, roadmakers,

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. Thus, to say all in a word, the occasions and services 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

dispatching 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. This work

Cratinus ridicules, as long in finishing, --

'Tis long since Pericles, if words would do it,

Talk'd up the wall; yet adds not one mite to it.

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.

Pericles, 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 on 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 cooperating to

bring it to perfection. One of the artificers, the quickest and the

handiest workman among them all, with a slip of his foot fell down from

a great height, and lay in a miserable condition, the physicians having

no hopes of his recovery. When Pericles was in distress about this,

Minerva 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 Minerva, 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; and this,

indeed, made him much envied, and his patron shamefully slandered with

stories, as if Phidias were in the habit of receiving, for Pericles's

use, freeborn women that came to see the works. The comic writers of

the town, when they had got hold of this story, made much of it, and

bespattered him with all the ribaldry they could invent, charging him

falsely with the wife of Menippus, one who was his friend and served as

lieutenant under him in the wars; and with the birds kept by Pyrilampes,

an acquaintance of Pericles, who, they pretended, used to give presents

of peacocks to Pericles's female friends. And how can one wonder at any

number of strange assertions from men whose whole lives were devoted to

mockery, and who were ready at any time to sacrifice the reputation of

their superiors to vulgar envy and spite, as to some evil genius, when

even Stesimbrotus the Thasian has dared to lay to the charge of Pericles

a monstrous and fabulous piece of criminality with his son's wife? So

very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of

anything by history, when, on the one hand, those who afterwards write

it find long periods of time intercepting their view, and, on the other

hand, the contemporary records of any actions and lives, partly through

envy and ill-will, partly through favor and flattery, pervert and

distort truth.

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 the 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 they 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; and employing this uprightly and

undeviatingly for the country's best interests, he was able generally to

lead the people along, with their own wills and consents, by persuading

and showing them what was to be done; and sometimes, too, urging and

pressing them forward extremely against their will, he made them,

whether they would or no, yield submission to what was for their

advantage. In which, to say the truth, he did but like a skillful

physician, who, in a complicated and chronic disease, as he sees

occasion, at one while allows his patient the moderate use of such

things as please him, at another while gives him keen pains and drugs to

work the cure. For there arising and growing up, as was natural, all

manner of distempered feelings among a people which had so vast a

command and dominion, he alone, as a great master, knowing how to handle

and deal fitly with each one of them, and, in an especial manner, making

that use of hopes and fears, as his two chief rudders, with the one to

check the career of their confidence at any time, with the other to

raise them up and cheer them when under any discouragement, plainly

showed by this, that rhetoric, or the art of speaking, is, in Plato's

language, the government of the souls of men, and that her chief

business is to address the affections and passions, which are as it were

the strings and keys to the soul, and require a skillful and careful

touch to be played on as they should be. The source of this

predominance was not barely his power of language, but, as Thucydides

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 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.

Thucydides, indeed, gives a plain statement of the greatness of his

power; and the comic poets, in their spiteful manner, more than hint at

it, styling his companions and friends the new Pisistratidae, and

calling on him to abjure any intention of usurpation, as one whose

eminence was too great to be any longer proportionable to and compatible

with a democracy or popular government. And Teleclides says the

Athenians had surrendered up to him --

The tribute 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

forty years together maintained the first place among statesmen such as

Ephialtes and Leocrates and Myronides and Cimon and Tolmides and

Thucydides were, after the defeat and banishment of Thucydides, for no

less than fifteen years longer, 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 the 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, and the

women that lived with him were treated with little cost, and complained

of this way of housekeeping, where everything was ordered and set down

from day to day, and reduced to the greatest exactness; since there was

not there, as is usual in a great family and a plentiful estate, any

thing 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.

All this, in truth, was very little in harmony with Anaxagoras's wisdom;

if, indeed, it be true that he, by a kind of divine impulse and

greatness of spirit, voluntarily quitted his house, and left his land to

lie fallow and to be grazed by sheep like a common. But the life of a

contemplative philosopher and that of an active statesman are, I

presume, not the same thing; for the one merely employs, upon great and

good objects of thought, an intelligence that requires no aid of

instruments nor supply of any external materials; whereas the other, who

tempers and applies his virtue to human uses, may have occasion for

affluence, not as a matter of mere necessity, but as a noble thing;

which was Pericles's case, who relieved numerous poor citizens.

However, there is a story, that Anaxagoras himself, while Pericles was

taken up with public affairs, lay neglected, and that, now being grown

old, he wrapped himself up with a resolution to die for want of food;

which being by chance brought to Pericles's ear, he was horror-struck,

and instantly ran thither, and used all the arguments and entreaties he

could to him, lamenting not so much Anaxagoras's condition as his own,

should he lose such a counselor as he had found him to be; and that,

upon this, Anaxagoras unfolded his robe, and showing himself, made

answer: "Pericles," said he, "even those who have occasion for a lamp

supply it with oil."

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 the sacrifices which were due from them

upon vows they had made to their gods for the safety of Greece when they

fought against the barbarians; 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.

Upon this errand, there were twenty men, of such as were above fifty

years of age, sent by commission; five to summon the Ionians and Dorians

in Asia, and the islanders as far as Lesbos and Rhodes; five to visit

all the places in the Hellespont and Thrace, up to Byzantium; and other

five besides these to go to Boeotia and Phocis and Peloponnesus, and

from hence to pass through the Locrians over to the neighboring

continent, as far as Acarnania and Ambracia; and the rest to take their

course through Euboea to the Oetaeans and the Malian Gulf, and to the

Achaeans of Phthiotis and the Thessalians; all of them to treat with the

people as they passed, and to persuade them to come and take their part

in the debates for settling the peace and jointly regulating the affairs

of Greece.

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 to advise him from it in the public assembly,

telling him in a memorable saying of his, 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.

Nor was he less admired and talked of abroad for his sailing round the

Peloponnesus, having set out from Pegae, or The Fountains, the port of

Megara, with a hundred galleys. For he not only laid waste the sea-

coast, as Tolmides had done before, but also, advancing far up into main

land with the soldiers he had on board, by the terror of his appearance

drove many within their walls; and at Nemea, with main force, routed and

raised a trophy over the Sicyonians, who stood their ground and joined

battle with him. And having taken on board a supply of soldiers into

the galleys, out of Achaia, then in league with Athens he crossed with

the fleet to the opposite continent, and, sailing along by the mouth of

the river Achelous overran Acarnania, and shut up the Oeniadae within

their city walls, and having ravaged and wasted their country, weighed

anchor for home with the double advantage of having shown himself

formidable to his enemies, and at the same time safe and energetic to

his fellow-citizens; for there was not so much as any chance-miscarriage

that happened, the whole voyage through, to those who were under his

charge.

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 their

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 unblessed and inauspicious passion for Sicily,

which afterward the orators of Alcibiades'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, so 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 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.

That he did well and wisely in thus restraining the exertions of the

Athenians within the compass of Greece, the events themselves that

happened afterward bore sufficient witness. For, in the first place,

the Euboeans revolted, against whom he passed over with forces; and

then, immediately after, news came that the Megarians were turned their

enemies, and a hostile army was upon the borders of Attica, under the

conduct of Plistoanax, king of the Lacedaemonians. Wherefore Pericles

came with his army back again in all haste out of Euboea, to meet the

war which threatened at home; and did not venture to engage a numerous

and brave army eager for battle; but perceiving that Plistoanax was a

very young man, and governed himself mostly by the counsel and advice of

Cleandrides, whom the ephors had sent with him, by reason of his youth,

to be a kind of guardian and assistant to him, he privately made trial

of this man's integrity, and, in a short time, having corrupted him with

money, prevailed with him to withdraw the Peloponnesians out of Attica.

When the army had retired and dispersed into their several states, the

Lacedaemonians in anger fined their king in so large a sum of money,

that, unable to pay it, he quitted Lacedaemon; while Cleandrides fled,

and had sentence of death passed upon him in his absence. This was the

father of Gylippus, who overpowered the Athenians in Sicily. And it

seems that this covetousness was an hereditary disease transmitted from

father to son; for Gylippus also afterwards was caught in foul

practices, and expelled from Sparta for it. But this we have told at

large in the account of Lysander.

When Pericles, in giving up his accounts of this expedition, 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 of it. And some historians, in which number is

Theophrastus 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 neither, but time, that he might prepare at leisure, and

be the better able to carry on war hereafter.

Immediately after this, turning his forces against the revolters, and

passing over into the island of Euboea with fifty sail of ships and five

thousand men in arms, he reduced their cities, and drove out the

citizens of the Chalcidians, called Hippobotae, horse-feeders, the

chief persons for wealth and reputation among them; and removing all the

Histiaeans out of the country, brought in a plantation of Athenians in

their room; making them his one example of severity, because they had

captured an Attic ship and killed all on board.

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. And as these

measures against the Samians are thought to have been taken to please

Aspasia, this may be a fit point for inquiry about the woman, what art

or charming faculty she had that enabled her to captivate, as she did,

the greatest statesmen, and to give the philosophers occasion to speak

so much about her, and that, too, not to her disparagement. That she

was a Milesian by birth, the daughter of Axiochus, is a thing

acknowledged. And they say it was in emulation of Thargelia, a

courtesan of the old Ionian times, that she made her addresses to men of

great power. Thargelia was a great beauty, extremely charming, and at

the same time sagacious; she had numerous suitors among the Greeks, and

brought all who had to do with her over to the Persian interest, and by

their means, being men of the greatest power and station, sowed the

seeds of the Median faction up and down in several cities. Aspasia,

some say, was courted and caressed by Pericles upon account of her

knowledge and skill in politics. Socrates himself would sometimes go to

visit her, and some of his acquaintance with him; and those who

frequented her company would carry their wives with them to listen to

her. Her occupation was any thing but creditable, her house being a

home for young courtesans. Aeschines tells us also, that Lysicles, a

sheep-dealer, a man of low birth and character, by keeping Aspasia

company after Pericles's death, came to be a chief man in Athens. And

in Plato's Menexenus, though we do not take the introduction as quite

serious, still thus much seems to be historical, that she had the repute

of being resorted to by many of the Athenians for instruction in the art

of speaking. Pericles's inclination for her seems, however, to have

rather proceeded from the passion of love. He had a wife that was near

of kin to him, who had been married first to Hipponicus, by whom she had

Callias, surnamed the Rich; and also she brought Pericles, while she

lived with him, two sons, Xanthippus and Paralus. Afterwards, when they

did not well agree nor like to live together, he parted with her, with

her own consent, to another man, and himself took Aspasia, and loved her

with wonderful affection; every day, both as he went out and as he came

in from the marketplace, he saluted and kissed her.

In the comedies she goes by the nicknames of the new Omphale and

Deianira, and again is styled Juno. Cratinus, in downright terms, calls

her a harlot.

To find him a Juno the goddess of lust

Bore that harlot past shame,

Aspasia by name.

It should seem, also, that he had a son by her; Eupolis, in his Demi,

introduced Pericles asking after his safety, and Myronides replying,

"My son?" "He lives; a man he had been long,

But that the harlot-mother did him wrong."

Aspasia, they say, became so celebrated and renowned, that Cyrus also,

who made war against Artaxerxes for the Persian monarchy, gave her whom

he loved the best of all his concubines the name of Aspasia, who before

that was called Milto. She was a Phocaean by birth, the daughter of one

Hermotimus, and, when Cyrus fell in battle, was carried to the king, and

had great influence at court. These things coming into my memory as I

am writing this story, it would be unnatural for me to omit them.

Pericles, however, was particularly charged with having proposed to the

assembly the war against the Samians, from favor to the Milesians, upon

the entreaty of Aspasia. 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 oligarchical 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 a piece 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 the 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 that another greater fleet from Athens was arrived,

and that 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 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 the 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

necessaries they wanted for the war, which they had not before.

Aristotle says, too, that Pericles himself had been once before this

worsted by this Melissus 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 it

was so 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 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 of money 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. Duris the Samian makes a

tragical drama out of these events, charging the Athenians and Pericles

with a great deal of cruelty, which neither Thucydides, nor Ephorus, nor

Aristotle have given any relation of, and probably with little regard to

truth; how, for example, he brought the captains and soldiers of the

galleys into the market-place at Miletus, and there having bound them

fast to boards for ten days, then, when they were already all but half

dead, gave order to have them killed by beating out their brains with

clubs, and their dead bodies to be flung out into the open streets and

fields, unburied. Duris, however, who even where he has no private

feeling concerned, is not wont to keep his narrative within the limits

of truth, is the more likely upon this occasion to have exaggerated the

calamities which befell his country, to create odium against the

Athenians. 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, the rest

of the women came and complimented him, taking him by the hand, and

crownings him with garlands and ribbons, like a victorious athlete in

the games; but Elpinice, coming near to him, said, "These are brave

deeds, Pericles, that you have done, and such as deserve our chaplets;

who have lost us many a worthy citizen, not in a war with Phoenicians or

Medes, like my brother Cimon, but for the overthrow of an allied and

kindred city." As Elpinice spoke these words, he, smiling quietly, as

it is said, returned her answer with this verse, --

Old women should not seek to be perfumed.

Ion says of him, that, upon this exploit of his, conquering the Samians,

he indulged very high and proud thoughts of himself: whereas Agamemnon

was ten years taking a barbarous city, he had in nine months' time

vanquished and taken the greatest and most powerful of the Ionians. And

indeed it was not without reason that he assumed this glory to himself,

for, in real truth, there was much uncertainty and great hazard in this

war, if so be, as Thucydides tells us, the Samian state were within a

very little of wresting the whole power and dominion of the sea out of

the Athenians' hands.

After this was over, the Peloponnesian war beginning to break out in

full tide, he advised the people to send help to the Corcyrseans, 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. The people readily

consenting to the motion, and voting an aid and succor for them, he

dispatched Lacedaemonius, Cimon's son, having only ten ships with him,

as it were out of a design to affront him; for there was a great

kindness and friendship betwixt Cimon's family and the Lacedaemonians;

so, in order that Lacedaemonius might lie the more open to a charge, or

suspicion at least, of favoring the Lacedaemonians and playing false, if

he performed no considerable exploit in this service, he allowed him a

small number of ships, and sent him out against his will; and indeed he

made it somewhat his business to hinder Cimon's sons from rising in the

state, professing that by their very names they were not to be looked

upon as native and true Athenians, but foreigners and strangers, one

being called Lacedaemonius, another Thessalus, and the third Eleus; and

they were all three of them, it was thought, born of an Arcadian woman.

Being, however, ill spoken of on account of these ten galleys, as having

afforded but a small supply to the people that were in need, and yet

given a great advantage to those who might complain of the act of

intervention, Pericles sent out a larger force afterward to Corcyra,

which arrived after the fight was over. And when now the Corinthians,

angry and indignant with the Athenians, accused them publicly at

Lacedaemon, the Megarians joined with them, complaining that they were,

contrary to common right and the articles of peace sworn to among the

Greeks, kept out and driven away from every market and from all ports

under the control of the Athenians. The Aeginetans, also, professing to

be ill-used and treated with violence, made supplications in private to

the Lacedaemonians for redress, though not daring openly to call the

Athenians in question. In the meantime, also, the city Potidaea, under

the dominion of the Athenians, but a colony formerly of the Corinthians,

had revolted, and was beset with a formal siege, and was a further

occasion of precipitating the war.

Yet notwithstanding all this, there being embassies sent to Athens, and

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 with to

repeal the ordinance against the Megarians, and to be reconciled to

them. Upon which account, since Pericles was the man who mainly opposed

it, and stirred up the people's passions to persist in their contention

with the Megarians, he was regarded as the sole cause of the war.

They say, moreover, that ambassadors went, by order from Lacedaemon to

Athens about this very business, and that when Pericles was urging a

certain law which made it illegal to take down or withdraw the tablet of

the decree, one of the ambassadors, Polyalces by name, said, "Well, do

not take it down then, but turn it; there is no law, I suppose, which

forbids that;" which, though prettily said, did not move Pericles from

his resolution. There may have been, in all likelihood, something of a

secret grudge and private animosity which he had against the Megarians.

Yet, upon a public and open charge against them, that they had

appropriated part of the sacred land on the frontier, he proposed a

decree that a herald should be sent to them, and the same also to the

Lacedaemonians, with an accusation of the Megarians; an order which

certainly shows equitable and friendly proceeding enough. And after

that the herald who was sent, by name Anthemocritus, died, and it was

believed that the Megarians had contrived his death, then Charinus

proposed a decree against them, that there should be an irreconcilable

and implacable enmity thenceforward betwixt the two commonwealths; and

that if any one of the Megarians should but set his foot in Attica, he

should be put to death; and that the commanders, when they take the

usual oath, should, over and above that, swear that they will twice

every year make an inroad into the Megarian country; and that

Anthemocritus should be buried near the Thriasian Gates, which are now

called the Dipylon, or Double Gate.

On the other hand, the Megarians, utterly denying and disowning the

murder of Anthemocritus, throw the whole matter upon Aspasia and

Pericles, availing themselves of the famous verses in the Acharnians,

To Megara some of our madcaps ran,

And stole Simaetha thence, their courtesan.

Which exploit the Megarians to outdo,

Came to Aspasia's house, and took off two.

The true occasion of the quarrel is not so easy to find out. But of

inducing the refusal to annul the decree, all alike charge Pericles.

Some say he met the request with a positive refusal, out of high spirit

and a view of the state's best interests, accounting that the demand

made in those embassies was designed for a trial of their compliance,

and that a concession would be taken for a confession of weakness, as if

they durst not do otherwise; while other some there are who say that it

was rather out of arrogance and a willful spirit of contention, to show

his own strength, that he took occasion to slight the Lacedaemonians.

The worst motive of all, which is confirmed by most witnesses, is to the

following effect. Phidias the Molder had, as has before been said,

undertaken to make the statue of Minerva. 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; who also, 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 ill

the market-place, 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 reputation 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. About the same time, Aspasia was

indicted of impiety, upon the complaint of Hermippus the comedian, who

also laid further to her charge that she received into her house

freeborn women for the uses of Pericles. And Diopithes proposed a

decree, that public accusation should be laid against persons who

neglected religion, or taught new doctrines about things above,

directing suspicion, by means of Anaxagoras, against Pericles himself.

The people receiving and admitting these accusations and complaints, at

length, by this means, they came to enact a decree, at the motion of

Dracontides, that Pericles should bring in the accounts of the moneys he

had expended, and lodge them with the Prytanes; and that the judges,

carrying their suffrage from the altar in the Acropolis, should examine

and determine the business in the city. This last clause Hagnon took

out of the decree, and moved that the causes should be tried before

fifteen hundred jurors, whether they should be styled prosecutions for

robbery, or bribery, or any kind of malversation. Aspasia, Pericles

begged off, shedding, as Aeschines says, many tears at the trial, and

personally entreating the jurors. But fearing how it might go with

Anaxagoras, he sent him out of the city. And finding that in Phidias's

case he had miscarried with the people, being afraid of impeachment, he

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, for their part, feeling sure that if they could once

remove him, they might be at what terms they pleased with the Athenians,

sent them word that they should expel the "Pollution" with which

Pericles on the mother's side was tainted, as Thucydides tells us. But

the issue proved quite contrary to what those who sent the message

expected; instead of bringing Pericles under suspicion and reproach,

they raised him into yet greater credit and esteem with the citizens, as

a man whom their enemies most hated and feared. In the same way, also,

before Archidamus, who was at the head of the Peloponnesians, made his

invasion into Attica, he told the Athenians beforehand, that if

Archidamus, while he laid waste the rest of the country, should forbear

and spare his estate, either on the ground of friendship or right of

hospitality that was betwixt them, or on purpose to give his enemies an

occasion of traducing him, that then he did freely bestow upon the state

all that his land and the buildings upon it for the public use. 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

judgment; but, like a skillful steersman or pilot of a ship, who, when a

sudden squall comes on, out at sea, makes all his arrangements, sees

that all is tight and fast, and then follows the dictates of his skill,

and minds the business of the ship, taking no notice of the tears and

entreaties of the sea-sick and fearful passengers, so he, having shut up

the city gates, and placed guards at all posts for security, followed

his own reason and judgment, little regarding those that cried out

against him and were angry at his management, although there were a

great many of his friends that urged him with requests, and many of his

enemies threatened and accused 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.

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

Peloponnese, 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 flower 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. They

had been possessed, by his enemies, with the belief that the occasion of

the plague was the crowding of the country people together into the

town, forced as they were now, in the heat of the summer-weather, to

dwell many of them together even as they could, in small tenements and

stifling hovels, and to be tied to a lazy course of life within doors,

whereas before they lived in a pure, open, and free air. The cause and

author of all this, said they, is he who on account of the war has

poured a multitude of people from the country in upon us within the

walls, and uses all these many men that he has here upon no employ or

service, but keeps them pent up like cattle, to be overrun with

infection from one another, affording them neither shift of quarters nor

any refreshment.

With the design to remedy these evils, and do the enemy some

inconvenience, Pericles got a hundred and fifty galleys ready, and

having embarked many tried soldiers, both foot and horse, was about to

sail out, giving great hope to his citizens, and no less alarm to his

enemies, upon the sight of so great a force. And now the vessels having

their complement of men, and Pericles being gone aboard his own galley,

it happened that the sun was eclipsed, and it grew dark on a sudden, to

the affright of all, for this was looked upon as extremely ominous.

Pericles, therefore, perceiving the steersman seized with fear and at a

loss what to do, took his cloak and held it up before the man's face,

and, screening him with it so that he could not see, asked him whether

he imagined there was any great hurt, or the sign of any great hurt in

this, and he answering No, "Why," said he, "and what does that differ

from this, only that what has caused that darkness there, is something

greater than a cloak?" This is a story which philosophers tell their

scholars. Pericles, however after putting out to sea, seems not to have

done any other exploit befitting such preparations, and when he had laid

siege to the holy city Epidaurus, which gave him some hope of surrender,

miscarried in his design by reason of the sickness. For it not only

seized upon the Athenians, but upon all others, too, that held any sort

of communication with the army. Finding after this 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 any way, till they

freely passed their votes upon him, resumed their power, took away his

command from him, and fined him in a sum of money; which, by their

account that say least, was fifteen talents, while they who reckon most,

name fifty. The name prefixed to the accusation was Cleon, as Idomeneus

tells us; Simmias, according to Theophrastus; and Heraclides Ponticus

gives it as Lacratidas.

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 lawfully begotten

sons, Xanthippus by name, being naturally prodigal, and marrying a young

and expensive wife, the daughter of Tisander, son of Epilycus, 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. Besides this,

Stesimbrotus tells us that it was Xanthippus who spread abroad among the

people the infamous story concerning his own wife; and in general that

this difference of the young man's with his father, and the breach

betwixt them, continued never to be healed or made up till 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

upon these occasions, nor betray or lower his high spirit and 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 any of his

friends or relations, till at last he lost his only remaining legitimate

son. Subdued by this blow and yet striving still, as far as he could,

to maintain his principle and to preserve and keep up the greatness of

his soul when he came, however, to perform the ceremony of putting a

garland of flowers upon 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 reassume 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

acknowledgments, and apologized for their untowardly treatment of him,

he undertook the public affairs once more; and, being chosen general,

requested that the statute concerning base-born children, which he

himself had formerly caused to be made, might be suspended; that so the

name and race of his family might not, for absolute want of a lawful

heir to succeed, be wholly lost and extinguished. The case of the

statute was thus: Pericles, when long ago at the height of his power in

the state, having then, as has been said, children lawfully begotten,

proposed a law that those only should be reputed true citizens of Athens

who were born of such parents as were both Athenians. After this, the

king of Egypt having sent to the people, by way of present, forty

thousand bushels of wheat, which were to be shared out among the

citizens, a great many actions and suits about legitimacy occurred, by

virtue of that edict; cases which, till that time, had not been known

nor taken notice of; and several persons suffered by false accusations.

There were little less than five thousand who were convicted and sold

for slaves; those who, enduring the test, remained in the government and

passed muster for true Athenians were found upon the poll to be fourteen

thousand and forty persons in number.

It looked strange, that a law, which had been carried so far against so

many people, should be canceled again by the same man that made it; yet

the present calamity and distress which Pericles labored under in his

family broke through all objections, and prevailed with the Athenians to

pity him, as one whose losses and misfortunes had sufficiently punished

his former arrogance and haughtiness. His sufferings deserved, they

thought, their pity, and even indignation, and his request was such as

became a man to ask and men to grant; they gave him permission to enroll

his son in the register of his fraternity, giving him his own name.

This son afterward, after having defeated the Peloponnesians at

Arginusae, was, with his fellow-generals, put to death by the people.

About the time when his son was enrolled, it should seem, 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.

So that Theophrastus, in his Morals, when discussing whether men's

characters change with their circumstances, and their moral habits,

disturbed by the ailings of their bodies, start aside from the rules of

virtue, has left it upon record, that Pericles, when he was sick, showed

one of his friends that came to visit him, an amulet or charm that the

women had hung about his neck; as much as to say, that he was very sick

indeed when he would admit of such a foolery as that was.

When he was now near his end, the best of the 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; for 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

together 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 equitable 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

regard it 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 that 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 the

divine beings, to whom, as the natural authors of all good and of

nothing evil, we ascribe the rule and government of the world. Not as

the poets represent, who, while confounding us with their ignorant

fancies, are themselves confuted by their own poems and fictions, and

call the place, indeed, where they say the gods make their abode, a

secure and quiet seat, free from all hazards and commotions, untroubled

with winds or with clouds, and equally through all time illumined with a

soft serenity and a pure light, as though such were a home most

agreeable for a blessed and immortal nature; and yet, in the meanwhile,

affirm that the gods themselves are full of trouble and enmity and anger

and other passions, which no way become or belong to even men that have

any understanding. But this will, perhaps, seem a subject fitter for

some other consideration, and that ought to be treated of in some other

place.

The course of public affairs after his death produced a quick and speedy

sense of the loss of Pericles. Those who, while he lived, resented his

great authority, as that which eclipsed themselves, presently after his

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. And that invidious arbitrary power, to which

formerly they gave the name of monarchy and tyranny, did then appear to

have been the chief bulwark of public safety; so great a corruption and

such a flood of mischief and vice followed, which he, by keeping weak

and low, had withheld from notice, and had prevented from attaining

incurable height through a licentious impunity.