| Plutarch's Parallel Lives | |
| The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch | |
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Pericles
We are inspired by acts of virtue with an emulation and eagerness
that may lead on to imitation. In other things there does not
immediately follow upon the admiration and liking of the thing
done, any strong desire of doing the like. Nay, many times, on the
very contrary, when we are pleased with the work, we slight and
set little by the workman or artist himself, as, for instance, in
perfumes and purple dyes, we are taken with the things themselves
well enough, but do not think dyers and perfumers otherwise than
low and sordid people. It was not said amiss by Antisthenes, when
people told him that one Ismenias was an excellent piper, "It may
be so, but he is a wretched human being, otherwise he would not
have been an excellent piper." And King Philip, to the same
purpose, told his son Alexander, who once at a merry meeting
played a piece of music charmingly and skillfully, "Are you not
ashamed, my son, to play so well?" For it is enough for a king or
prince to find leisure sometimes to hear others sing, and he does
the muses quite honor enough when he pleases to be but present,
while others engage in such exercises and trials of skill.
He who busies himself in mean occupations produces, in the very
pains he takes about things of little or no use, an evidence
against himself of his negligence and indisposition to what is
really good. Nor did any generous and ingenuous young man, at the
sight of the statue of Jupiter at Pisa, ever desire to be a
Phidias, or, on seeing that of Juno at Argos, long to be a
Polycletus, or feel induced by his pleasure in their poems to wish
to be an Anacreon or Pliletas or Archilochus. But virtue, by the
bare statement of its actions, can so affect men's minds as to
create at once both admiration of the things done and desire to
imitate the doers of them. The goods of fortune we would possess
and would enjoy; those of virtue we long to practice and exercise;
we are content to receive the former from others, the latter we
wish others to experience from us.
And so we have thought fit to spend our time and pains in writing
of the lives of famous persons; and have composed this tenth book
upon that subject, containing the life of Pericles, and that of
Fabius Maximus, who carried on the war against Hannibal, men
alike, as in their other virtues and good parts, so especially in
their mild and upright temper and demeanor, and in that capacity
to bear the cross-grained humors of their fellow-citizens and
colleagues in office which made them both most useful and
serviceable to the interests of their countries. Whether we take a
right aim at our intended purpose, it is left to the reader to
judge by what he shall find here.
Pericles was of the tribe of Acamantis, and the township
Cholargus, of the noblest birth both on his father's and mother's
side. Xanthippus, his father, who defeated the king of Persia's
generals in the battle at Mycale, took to Wife Agariste, the
grandchild of Clisthenes, who drove out the sons of Pisistratus,
and nobly put and end to their tyrannical usurpation, and moreover
made a body of laws, and settled a model of government admirably
tempered and suited for the harmony and safety of the people.
Pericles in other respects was perfectly formed physically, only
his head was somewhat longish and out of proportion. For which
reason almost all the images and statues that were made of him
have the head covered with a helmet, the workmen not apparently
being willing to expose him. The poets of Athens called him
"Schinocephalos," or squill-head, from "schinos," a squill, or
sea-onion.
Pericles was a hearer of Zeno, the Eliatic, who treated of natural
philosophy in the same manner as Parmenides did, but had also
perfected himself in an art of his own for refuting and silencing
opponents in argument; as Timon of Phlius describes it,--
Also the two-edged tongue of mighty Zeno, who,
Say what one would, could argue it untrue.
But he saw most of Pericles, and furnished him most especially
with a weight and grandeur of sense, superior to all arts of
popularity, and in general gave him his elevation and sublimity of
purpose and of character, was Anaxagoras of Clazomenae; whom the
men of those times called by the name of Nous, that is mind, or
intelligence, whether in admiration of the great and extraordinary
gift he displayed for the science of nature, or because he was the
first of the philosophers who did not refer the first ordering of
the world to fortune or chance, nor to necessity or compulsion,
but to a pure, unadulterated intelligence, which in all other
existing mixed and compound things acts as a principle of
discrimination, and of combination of like with like.
For this man, Pericles entertained an extraordinary esteem and
admiration, and, filling himself with this lofty and, as they call
it, up-in-the-air sort of thought, derived hence not merely, as
was natural, elevation of purpose and dignity of language, raised
far above the base and dishonest buffooneries of mob-eloquence,
but, besides this, a composure of countenance, and a serenity and
calmness in all his movements, which no occurrence whilst he was
speaking could disturb, a sustained and even tone of voice, and
various other advantages of a similar kind, which produced the
greatest effect on his hearers. Once, after being reviled and ill-
spoken of all day long in his own hearing by some abandoned fellow
in the open market-place where he was engaged in the despatch of
some urgent affair, he continued his business in perfect silence,
and in the evening returned home composedly, the man still dogging
him at the heels, and pelting him all the way with abuse and foul
language; and stopping into his house, it being by this time dark,
he ordered one of hi servants to take a light and to go along with
the man and see him safe home.
Nor were these the only advantages which Pericles derived from
Anaxagoras's acquaintance; he seems also to have become, by his
instructions, superior to that superstition with which an ignorant
wonder at appearances, for example, in the heavens, possesses the
minds of people unacquainted with their causes, eager for the
supernatural, and excitable through an inexperience which the
knowledge of natural causes removes, replacing wild and timid
superstition by the good hope and assurance of an intelligent
piety.
There is a story that once Pericles had brought to him from a
country farm of his, a ram's head with one horn, and that Lampon,
the diviner, upon seeing the horn grow strong and solid out of the
midst of the forehead, gave it as his judgement that, there being
at that time two potent factions, parties, or interests in the
city, the one of Thucydides and the other of Pericles, the
government would come about to that one of them in whose ground or
estate this token or indication of fate had shown itself. But that
Anaxagoras, cleaving the skull in sunder, showed to the bystanders
that the brain had not filled up its natural place, but being
oblong, like an egg, had collected from all parts of the vessel
which contained it, in a point to that place from whence the root
of the horn took its rise. And that, for the time, Anaxagoras was
much admired for his explanation by those that were present; and
Lampon no less a little while after, when Thucydides was
overpowered, and the whole affairs of the state and government
came into the hands of Pericles.
Pericles, while yet but a young man, stood in considerable
apprehension of the people, as he was thought in face and figure
to be very like the tyrant Pisitratus, and those of great age
remarked upon the sweetness of his voice, and his volubility and
rapidity in speaking, and were struck with amazement at the
resemblance. But when Aristides was now dead, and Themosticles
driven out, and Cimon was for the most part kept abroad by the
expeditions he made in parts out of Greece, Pericles, seeing
things in this posture, now advanced and took his side, not with
the rich and few, but with the many and poor, contrary to his
natural bent, which was far from democratical; but, most likely,
fearing he might fall under suspicion of aiming at arbitrary
power, and seeing Cimon on the side of the aristocracy, and much
beloved by the better and more distinguished people, he joined the
party of the people, with a view at once both to secure himself
and procure means against Cimon.
He immediately entered, also, on quite a new course of life and
management of his time. For he was never seen to walk in any
street but that which led to the market-place and the council-
hall, and he avoided invitations of friends to supper, and all
friendly visits and intercourse whatever; in all the time he had
to do with the public, which was not a little, he was never known
to have gone to any of his friends to a supper, except that once
when his near kinsman Euryptolemus married, he remained present
till the ceremony of the drink-offering, and then immediately rose
from the table and went his way. For these friendly meetings are
very quick to defeat any assumed superiority, and in intimate
familiarity an exterior of gravity is hard to maintain. Real
excellence, indeed, is best recognized when most openly looked
into; and in really good men, nothing which meets the eyes of
external observers so truly deserves their admiration, as their
daily common life does that of their nearer friends. Pericles,
however, to avoid any feeling of commonness, or any satiety on the
part of the people, presented himself at intervals only, not
speaking on every business, nor at all times coming into the
assembly, but, as Critoaus says, reserving himself, like the
Salaminian galley, for great occasions, while matters of lesser
importance were despatched by friends or other speakers under his
direction. And of this number we are told Ephialtes made one, who
broke the power of the council of Areopagus, giving the people,
according to Plato's expression, so copious and so strong a
draught of liberty, that, growing wild and unruly, like an
unmanageable horse, it, as the comic poets say, -
"--got beyond all keeping in,
Champing at Euboea, and among the islands leaping in."
The style of speaking most consonant to his form of life and the
dignity of his views he found, so to say, in the tones of that
instrument with which Anaxagoras had furnished him; of his
teaching he continually availed himself, and deepened the colors
of rhetoric with the dye of natural science.
A saying of Thucydides, the son of Melesias, stands on record,
spoken by him by way of pleasantry upon Pericles's dexterity.
Thucydides was one of the noble and distinguished citizens, and
had been his greatest opponent; and, when Archidamus, the king of
the Lacedaemonians, asked him whether he or Pericles were the
better wrestler, he made this answer: "When I," said he, "have
thrown him and given him a fair fall, he by persisting that he had
no fall, gets the better of me, and makes the bystanders, in spite
of their own eyes, believe him."
The rule of Pericles has been described as an aristocratical
government, that went by the name of a democracy, but was, indeed,
the supremacy of a single great man; while many say, that by him
the common people were first encouraged and led on to such evils
as appropriations of subject territory, allowances for attending
theatres, payments for performing public duties, and by these bad
habits were, under the influence of his public measures, changed
from a sober, thrifty people, that maintained themselves by their
own labors, to lovers of expense, intemperance, and license.
At the first, as has been said, when he set himself against
Cimon's great authority, he did caress the people. Finding himself
come short of his competitor in wealth and money, by which
advantages the other was enabled to take care of the poor,
inviting every day some one or other of the citizens that was in
want to supper, and bestowing clothes on the aged people, and
breaking down the hedges and enclosures of his grounds, that all
that would might freely gather what fruit they pleased. Pericles,
thus outdone in popular arts, turned to the distribution of the
public moneys; and in a short time having bought the people over,
what with moneys allowed for shows and for service on juries, and
what with the other forms of pay and largess, he made use of them
against the council of Areopagus, and directed the exertions of
his party against this council with such success, that most of
those causes and matters which had been formerly tried there, were
removed from its cognizance; Cimon, also, was banished by
ostracism as a favorer of the Lacedaemonians and a hater of the
people, though in wealth and noble birth he was among the first,
and had won several most glorious victories over the barbarians,
and had filled the city with money and spoils of war. So vast an
authority had Pericles obtained among the people.
The ostracism was limited by law to ten years; but the
Lacedaemonians, in the meantime, entering with a great army into
the territory of Tanagra, and the Athenians going out against the,
Cimon, coming from his banishment before his time was out, put
himself in arms and array with those of his fellow-citizens that
were of his own tribe, and desired by his deeds to wipe off the
suspicion of his favoring the Lacedaemonians, by venturing his own
person along with his countrymen. But Pericles's friends,
gathering in a body, forced him to retire as a banished man. For
which cause also Pericles seems to have exerted himself more than
in any other battle, and to have been conspicuous above all for
his exposure of himself to danger. All Cimon's friends, also, to a
man, fell together side by side, whom Pericles had accused with
him of taking part with the Lacedaemonians. Defeated in this
battle on their own frontiers, and expecting a new and perilous
attack with return of spring, the Athenians now felt regret and
sorrow for the loss of Cimon, and repentance for their expulsion
of him. Pericles, being sensible of their feelings, did not
hesitate or delay to gratify it, and himself made the motion for
recalling him home. He, upon his return, concluded a peace betwixt
the two cities; for the Lacedaemonians entertained as kindly
feelings towards him as they did the reverse towards Pericles and
the other popular leaders.
Cimon, while he was admiral, ended his days in the Isle of Cyprus.
And the aristocratical party, seeing that Pericles was already
before this grown to be the greatest and foremost man of all the
city, but nevertheless wishing there should be somebody set up
against him, to blunt and turn the edge of his power, that it
might not altogether prove a monarchy, put forward Thucydides of
Alopece, a discreet person, and a near kinsman of Cimon's, to
conduct the opposition against him. And so Pericles, at that time
more than at any other, let loose the reins to the people, and
made his policy subservient to their pleasure, contriving
continually to have some great public show or solemnity, some
banquet, or some procession or other in the town to please them,
coaxing his countrymen like children, with such delights and
pleasures as were not, however, unedifying. Besides that, every
year he sent out threescore galleys, on board of which there went
numbers of the citizens, who were in pay eight months, at the same
time learning and practicing the art of seamanship.
He sent, moreover, a thousand of them into the Chersonese as
planters, to share the land among them by lot, and five hundred
more into the isle of Naxos, and half that number to Andros, a
thousand into Thrace to dwell among the Bisaltae, and others into
Italy, when the city Sybaris, which now was called Thurii, was to
be repeopled. And this he did to ease and discharge the city of an
idle, and, by reason of their idleness, a busy, meddling crowd of
people; and at the same time to meet the necessities and restore
the fortunes of the poor townsmen, and to intimidate, also, and
check their allies from attempting any change, by posting such
garrisons, as it were, in the midst of them.
That which gave most pleasure and ornament to the city of Athens,
and the greatest admiration and even astonishment to all
strangers, and that which now is Greece's only evidence that the
power she boasts of and her ancient wealth are no romance or idle
story, was his construction of the public and sacred buildings.
The materials were stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony, and cypress-
wood; the artisans that wrought and fashioned them were smiths and
carpenters, moulders, founders and braziers, stone-cutters, dyers,
goldsmiths, ivory-workers, painters, embroiderers, turners; those
again that conveyed them to the town for use, merchants and
mariners and ship-masters by sea; and by land, cartwrights,
cattle-breeders, wagoners, rope-makers, flax-workers, shoe-makers
and leather-dressers, road-makers, miners. And every trade in the
same nature, as a captain in an army has his particular company of
soldiers under him, had its own hired company of journeymen and
laborers belonging to it banded together as in array, to be as it
were the instrument and body for the performance of the service of
these public works distributed plenty through every age and
condition.
As then grew the works up, no less stately in size than exquisite
in form, the workmen striving to outvie the material and the
design with the beauty of their workmanship, yet the most
wonderful thing of all was the rapidity of their execution.
Undertakings, any one of which singly might have required, they
thought, for their completion, several successions and ages of
men, were every one of them accomplished in the height and prime
of one man's political service. Although they say, too, that
Zeuxis once, having heard Agatharchus, the painter, boast of
despatching his work with speed and ease, replied, "I take a long
time." For ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work
lasting solidity or exactness of beauty; the expenditure of time
allowed to a man's pains beforehand for the production of a thing
is repaid by way of interest with a vital force for its
preservation when once produced. For which reason Pericles's works
are especially admired, as having been made quickly, to last long.
For every particular piece of his work was immediately, even at
that time, for its beauty and elegance, antique; and yet in its
vigor and freshness looks to this day as if it were just executed.
There is a sort of bloom of newness upon those works of his,
preserving them from the touch of time, as if they had some
perennial spirit and undying vitality mingled in the composition
of them.
Phidias had the oversight of all the works, and was surveyor-
general, though upon the various portions other great masters and
workmen were employed. For Callicrates and Ictinus built the
Parthenon; the chapel at Eleusis, where the mysteries were
celebrated, was begun by Coroebus, who erected the pillars that
stand upon the floor or pavement, and joined them to the
architraves; and after his death Metagenes of Xypete added the
frieze and the upper line of columns; Xenocles of Cholargus roofed
or arched the lantern on the top of the temple of Castor and
Pollux; and the long wall, which Socrates says he himself heard
Pericles propose to the people, was undertaken by Callicrates.
The Odeum, or music-room, which in its interior was full of seats
and ranges of pillars, and outside had its roof made to slope and
descend from one single point at the top, was constructed, we are
told, in imitation of the king of Persia's Pavilion; this likewise
by Pericles's order; which Cratinus again, in his comedy called
The Thracian Women, made an occasion of raillery, -
So, we see here,
Jupiter Long-pate Pericles appear,
Since ostracism time he's laid aside his head,
And wears the new Odeum in its stead.
Perils, also eager for distinction, then first obtained the decree
for a contest in musical skill to be held yearly at the
Panathenaea, and he himself, being chosen judge, arranged the
order and method in which the competitors should sing and play on
the flute and the harp. And both at that time, and at other times
also, they sat in this music-room to see and hear all such trials
of skill.
The propylaea, or entrances to the Acropolis, were finished in
five years' time, Mnesicles being the principal architect. A
strange accident happened in the course of building, which showed
that the goddess was not averse to the work, but was aiding and
co-operating to bring it to perfection. One of the artificers, the
quickest and the handiest workmen among them all, with a slip of
his foot, fell down from a great height, and lay in a miserable
condition, the physician having no hopes of his recovery. When
Pericles was in distress about this, Athenia appeared to him at
night in a dream, and ordered a course of treatment which he
applied, and in a short time, and with great ease, cured the man.
And upon this occasion it was that he set up a brass statue of
Athena, surnamed Health, in the citadel near the altar, which they
say was there before. But it was Phidias who wrought the goddess's
image in gold, and he has his name inscribed on the pedestal as
the workman of it; and indeed the whole work in a manner was under
his charge, and he had, as we have said already, the oversight
over all the artists and workmen, through Pericles's friendship
for him.
When the orators, who sided with Thucydides and his party, were at
one time crying out, as their custom was, against Pericles, as one
who squandered away public money and made havoc of the state
revenues, he rose in the open assembly and put the question to the
people, whether they thought that he had laid out much; and
saying, "Too much, a great deal," "Then," said he, "since it is
so, let the cost not go to your account, but to mine; and let the
inscription upon the buildings stand in my name." When they heard
him say thus, whether it were out of a surprise to see the
greatness of his spirit, or out of emulation of the glory of the
works, they cried aloud, bidding him to spend on, and lay out what
he thought fit from the public purse, and to spare no cost, till
all were finished.
At length, coming to a final contest with Thucydides, which of the
two should ostracize the other out of the country, and, having
gone through this peril, he threw his antagonist out, and broke up
the confederacy that had been organized against him. So that now
all schism and division being at an end, and the city brought to
evenness and unity, he got all Athens and all affairs that
pertained to the Athenians into his own hands, their tributes,
their armies and their galleys, the islands, the sea, and their
wide-extended power, partly over other Greeks and partly over
barbarians, and all that empire which they possessed, founded and
fortified upon subject nations and royal friendships and
alliances.
After this he was no longer the same man he had been before, nor
as tame and gentle and familiar as formerly with the populace, so
as readily to yield to their pleasures and to comply with the
desires of the multitude, as a steersman shifts with the winds.
Quitting that loose, remiss, and, in some cases, licentious court
of the popular will, he turned those soft and flowery modulations
to the austerity of aristocratical and regal rule; but, employing
this uprightly and undeviatingly for the country's best interests,
he was able generally to lead the people along, with their own
will and consent, by persuading and showing them what was to be
done.
The source of this predominance was not barely his power of
language, but, as Thucydides the historian assures us, the
reputation of his life, and the confidence felt in his character;
his manifest freedom from every kind of corruption, and
superiority to all considerations of money. Notwithstanding he had
made the city of Athens, which was great of itself, as great and
rich as can be imagined, and though he were himself in power and
interest more than equal to many kings and absolute rulers, who
some of them also bequeathed by will their power to their
children, he for his part, did not make the patrimony his father
left him greater than it was by one drachma.
Teleclides says the Athenians had surrendered to him -
The tributes of the cities, and, with them, the cities, too, to do
with them as he pleases, and undo;
To build up, if he likes, stone walls around a town; and again, if
so he likes, to pull them down;
Their treaties and alliances, power, empire, peace, and war, their
wealth and their success forevermore.
Nor was all this the luck of some happy occasion; nor was it the
mere bloom and grace of a policy that flourished for a season; but
having for fifty-five years together maintained the first place
among statesmen, in the exercise of one continuous unintermitted
command in the office, to which he was annually reelected, of
General, he preserved his integrity unspotted; though otherwise he
was not altogether idle or careless in looking after his pecuniary
advantage; his paternal estate, which of right belonged to him, he
so ordered that it might neither through negligence be wasted or
lessened, nor yet, being so full of business as he was, cost him
any great trouble or time with taking care of it; and put it into
such a way of management as he thought to be most easy for
himself, and the most exact. All his yearly products and profits
he sold together in a lump, and supplied his household needs
afterward by buying everything that he or his family wanted out of
the market. Upon which account, his children, when they grew to
age, were not well pleased with his management; since there was
not there, as is usual in a great family and a plentiful estate,
anything to spare, or over and above; but all that went out or
came in, all disbursements and all receipts, proceeded as it were
by number and measure. His manager in all this was a single
servant, Evangelus by name, a man either naturally gifted or
instructed by Pericles so as to excel every one in this art of
domestic economy.
The Lacedaemonians beginning to show themselves troubled at the
growth of the Athenian power, Pericles, on the other hand, to
elevate the people's spirit yet more, and to raise them to the
thought of great actions, proposed a decree to summon all the
Greeks in what part soever, whether of Europe or Asia, every city,
little as well as great, to send their deputies to Athens to a
general assembly or convention, there to consult and advise
concerning the Greek temples which the barbarians had burnt down;
and also concerning the navigation of the sea, that they might
henceforward all of them pass to and fro and trade securely, and
be at peace among themselves.
Nothing was effected, nor did the cities meet by their deputies,
as was desired; the Lacedaemonians, as it is said, crossing the
design underhand, and the attempt being disappointed and baffled
first in Peloponnesus. I thought fit, however, to introduce the
mention of it, to show the spirit of the man and the greatness of
his thoughts.
In his military conduct he gained a great reputation for wariness;
he would not by his good-will engage in any fight which had much
uncertainty or hazard; he did not envy the glory of generals whose
rash adventures fortune favored with brilliant success, however
they were admired by others; nor did he think them worthy his
imitation, but always used to say to his citizens that, so far as
lay in his power, they should continue immortal, and live forever.
Seeing Tolmides, the son of Tolmaeus, upon the confidence of his
former successes, and flushed with the honor his military actions
had procured him, making preparation to attack the Boeotians in
their own country, when there was no likely opportunity, and that
he had prevailed with the bravest and most enterprising of the
youth to enlist themselves as volunteers in the service, who
besides his other force made up a thousand, he endeavored to
withhold him, and advised him against it in the public assembly,
telling him in a memorable saying of which still goes about, that,
if he would not take Pericles's advice, yet he would not do amiss
to wait and be ruled by time, the wisest counselor of all. This
saying, at that time, was but slightly commended; but, within a
few days after, when news was brought that Tolmides himself had
been defeated and slain in battle near Coronea, and that many
brave citizens had fallen with him, it gained him great repute as
well as good-will among the people, for wisdom and for love of his
countrymen.
But of all his expeditions, that to the Chersonese gave most
satisfaction and pleasure, having proved the safety of the Greeks
who inhabited there. For not only by carrying along with him a
thousand fresh citizens of Athens he gave new strength and vigor
to the cities, but also by belting the neck of land, which joins
the peninsula to the continent, with bulwarks and forts from sea
to sea, he put a stop to the inroads of the Thracians, who lay all
about the Chersonese, and closed the door against a continual and
grievous war, with which that country had been long harassed,
lying exposed to the encroachments and influx of barbarous
neighbors, and groaning under the evils of a predatory population
both upon and within its borders.
Entering also the Euxine Sea with a large and finely equipped
fleet, he obtained for the Greek cities any new arrangements they
wanted, and entered into friendly relations with them; and to the
barbarous nations, and kings and chiefs round about them,
displayed the greatness of the power of the Athenians, their
perfect ability and confidence to sail wherever they had a mind,
and to bring the whole sea under his control. He left the
Sinopians thirteen ships of war, with soldiers under the command
of Lamachus, to assist them against Timesileus the tyrant; and,
when he and his accomplices had been thrown out, obtained a decree
that six hundred of the Athenians that were willing should sail to
Sinope and plant themselves there with the Sinopians, sharing
among them the houses and land which the tyrant and his party had
previously held.
But in other things he did not comply with the giddy impulses of
the citizens, nor quit his own resolutions to follow their
fancies, when, carried away with the thought of their strength and
great success, they were eager to interfere again in Egypt, and to
disturb the king of Persia's maritime dominions. Nay, there were a
good many who were, even then, possessed with that unblest and
unauspicious passion for Sicily, which afterward the orators of
Alciabes's party blew up into a flame. There were some also who
dreamt of Tuscany and of Carthage, and not without plausible
reason in their present large dominion and the prosperous course
of their affairs.
But Pericles curbed this passion for foreign conquest, and
unsparingly pruned and cut down their ever-busy fancies for a
multitude of undertakings, and directed their power for the most
part to securing and consolidating what they had already got,
supposing it would be quite enough for them to do, if they could
keep the Lacedaemonians in check; to whom he entertained all along
a sense of opposition; which, as upon many other occasions, he
particularly showed by what he did in the time of the holy war.
The Lacedaemonians, having gone with an army to Delphi, restored
Apollo's temple, which the Phocians had got into their possession,
to the Delphians; immediately after their departure, Pericles,
with another army, came and restored it to the Phocians. And the
Lacedaemonians having engraven the record of their privilege of
consulting the oracle before others, which the Delphians gave
them, upon the forehead of the brazen wolf which stands there, he,
also, having received from the Phocians the like privilege for the
Athenians, had it cut upon the same wolf of brass, on his right
side.
When Pericles, in giving up his accounts, stated a disbursement of
ten talents, as laid out upon fit occasion, the people, without
any question, nor troubling themselves to investigate the mystery,
freely allowed it. And some historians, in which number is
Theophtastus the philosopher, have given it as a truth that
Pericles every year used to send privately the sum of ten talents
to Sparta, with which he complimented those in office, to keep off
the war; not to purchase peace either, but time, that he might
prepare at leisure, and be the better able to carry on war
hereafter.
After this, having made a truce between the Athenians and
Lacedaemonians for thirty years, he ordered, by public decree, the
expedition against the Isle of Samos, on the ground, that, when
they were bid to leave off their war with the Milesians, they had
not complied. For the two states were at war for the possession of
Priene; and the Samians, getting the better, refused to lay down
their arms and to have the controversy betwixt them decided by
arbitration before the Athenians. Pericles, therefore, fitting out
a fleet, went and broke up the oligarchal government at Samos,
and, taking fifty of the principal men of the town as hostages,
and as many of their children, sent them to the Isle of Lemnos,
there to be kept, though he had offers, as some relate, of a
talent apiece for himself from each one of the hostages, and of
many other presents from those who were anxious not to have a
democracy. Moreover, Pissuthnes the Persian, one of the king's
lieutenants, bearing some good-will to the Samians, sent him ten
thousand pieces of gold to excuse the city. Pericles, however,
would receive none of all this; but after he had taken that course
with the Samians which he thought fit, and set up a democracy
among them, sailed back to Athens.
But they, however, immediately revolted, Pissuthnes having privily
got away their hostages for them, and provided them with means for
war. Whereupon Pericles came out with a fleet a second time
against them, and found them not idle nor slinking away, but
manfully resolved to try for the dominion of the sea. The issue
was, that, after a sharp sea-fight about the island called Tragia,
Pericles obtained a decisive victory, having with forty-four ships
routed seventy of the enemy's, twenty of which were carrying
soldiers.
Together with his victory and pursuit, having made himself master
of the port, he laid siege to the Samians, and blocked them up,
who yet, one way or other, still ventured to make sallies, and
fight under the city walls. But after another greater fleet from
Athens had arrived, and the Samians were now shut up with a close
leaguer on every side, Pericles, taking with him sixty galleys,
sailed out into the main sea, with the intention, as most authors
give the account, to meet a squadron of Phoenician ships that were
coming for the Samians' relief, and to fight them at as great a
distance as could be from the island; but, as Stesimbrotus says,
with a design of putting over to Cyprus; which does not seem to be
probable. But whichever of the two was his intent, it seems to
have been a miscalculation. For on his departure, Melissus, the
son of Ithagenes, a philosopher, being at that time general in
Samos, despising either the small number of ships that were left
or the inexperience of the commanders, prevailed with the citizens
to attack the Athenians. And the Samians having won the battle and
taken several of the men prisoners, and disabled several of the
ships, were masters of the sea, and brought into port all
necessities they wanted for the war, which they had not before.
Aristotle says, too, that Pericles himself had been once before
this worsted by the Milissus in a sea-fight.
The Samians, that they might requite an affront which had before
been put upon them, branded the Athenians whom they took
prisoners, in their foreheads, with the figure of an owl. For so
the Athenians had marked them before with a Samaena, which is a
sort of ship, low and flat in the prow, so as to look snub-nosed,
but wide and large and well-spread in the hold, by which it both
carries a large cargo and sails well. And so it was called,
because the first of that kind was seen at Samos, having been
built by order of Polycrates the tyrant. These brands upon the
Samians' foreheads, they say, are the allusion in the passage of
Aristophanes, where he says, --
For, oh, the Samians are a lettered people.
Pericles, as soon as news was brought to him of the disaster that
had befallen his army, made all the haste he could to come in to
their relief, and having defeated Melissus, who bore up against
him, and put the enemy to flight, he immediately proceeded to hem
them in with a wall, resolving to master them and take the town,
rather with some cost and time than with the wounds and hazards of
his citizens. But as it was a hard matter to keep back the
Athenians, who were vexed at the delay, and were eagerly bent to
fight, he divided the whole multitude into eight parts, and
arranged by lot that that part which had the white bean should
have leave to feast and take their ease, while the other seven
were fighting. And this is the reason, they say, that people, when
at any time they have been merry, and enjoyed themselves, call it
white day, in allusion to this white bean.
Ephorus, the historian, tells us besides, that Pericles made use
of engines of battery in this siege, being much taken with the
curiousness of the invention, with the aid and presence of Artemon
himself, the engineer, who, being lame, used to be carried about
in a litter, where the works required his attendance, and for that
reason was called Periphoretus. But Heraclides Ponticus disproves
this out of Anacreon's poems, where mention is made of this
Artemon Periphoretus several ages before the Samian war, or any of
these occurrences. And he says that Artemon, being a man who loved
his ease, and had a great apprehension of danger, for the most
part kept close within doors, having two of his servants to hold a
brazen shield over his head, that nothing might fall upon him from
above; and if he were at any time forced upon necessity to go
abroad, that he was carried about in a little hanging-bed, close
to the very ground, and that for this reason he was called
Periphoretus.
In the ninth month, the Samians surrendering themselves and
delivering up the town, Pericles pulled down their walls, and
seized their shipping, and set a fine of a large sum upon them,
part of which they paid down at once, and they agreed to bring in
the rest by a certain time, and gave hostages for security.
Pericles, however, after the reduction of Samos, returning back to
Athens, took care that those who died in the war should be
honorably buried, and made a funeral harangue, as the custom is,
in their commendation at their graves, for which he gained great
admiration. As he came down from the stage on which he spoke, all
the women except Elpinice, the aged sister of Cimon, came out and
complimented him, taking him by the hand, and crowning him with
garlands and ribbons, like a victorious athlete in the games.
After this was over, the Peloponnesian war beginning to break out
in full tide, he advised the people to send help to the
Corcyraeans, who were attacked by the Corinthians, and to secure
to themselves an island possessed of great naval resources, since
the Peloponnesians were already all but in actual hostilities
against them. Archidamus, the king of the Lacedaemonians,
endeavoring to bring the greater part of the complaints and
matters in dispute to a fair determination, and to pacify and
allay the heats of the allies, it is very likely that the war
would not upon any other grounds of quarrel have fallen upon the
Athenians, could they have been prevailed upon to be reconciled
with the inhabitants of Megara.
The true occasion of the quarrel is not easy to find out. The
worst motive of all, which is confirmed by most witnesses, is to
the following effect. Phidias the Moulder had, as has before been
said, undertaken to make the statue of Athena. Now he, being
admitted to friendship with Pericles, and a great favorite of his,
had many enemies upon this account, who envied and maligned him;
and they, to make trial in a case of his what kind of judges the
commons would prove, should there be occasion to bring Pericles
himself before them, having tampered with Menon, one who had been
a workman with Phidias, stationed him in the marketplace, with a
petition desiring public security upon his discovery and
impeachment of Phidias. The people admitting the man to tell his
story, and, the prosecution proceeding in the assembly, there was
nothing of theft or cheat proved against him; for Phidias, from
the very first beginning, by the advice of Pericles, had so
wrought and wrapt the gold that was used in the work about the
statue, that they might take it all off and make out the just
weight of it, which Pericles at that time bade the accusers do.
But the repudiation of his works was what brought envy upon
Phidias, especially that where he represents the fight of the
Amazons upon the goddesses' shield, he had introduced a likeness
of himself as a bald old man holding up a great stone with both
hands, and had put in a very fine representation of Pericles
fighting with an Amazon. And the position of the hand, which holds
out the spear in front of the face, was ingeniously contrived to
conceal in some degree the likeness, which, meantime, showed
itself on either side.
Phidias then was carried away to Prison, and there died of a
disease; but, as some say, of poison administered by the enemies
of Pericles, to raise a slander, or a suspicion at least, as
though he had procured it. The informer Menon, upon Glycon's
proposal, the people made free from payment of taxes and customs,
and ordered the generals to take care that nobody should do him
any hurt. And Pericles, finding that in Phidias's case he had
miscarried with the people, being afraid of impeachment, kindled
the war, which hitherto had lingered and smothered, and blew it up
into a flame; hoping, by that means, to disperse and scatter these
complaints and charges, and to allay their jealousy; the city
usually throwing herself upon him alone, and trusting to his sole
conduct, upon the urgency of great affairs and public dangers, by
reason of his authority and the sway he bore.
These are given out to have been the reasons which induced
Pericles not to suffer the people of Athens to yield to the
proposals of the Lacedaemonians; but their truth is uncertain.
The Lacedaemonians, therefore, and their allies, with a great
army, invaded the Athenian territories, under the conduct of king
Archidamus, and laying waste the country, marched on as far as
Acharnae, and there pitched their camp, presuming that the
Athenians would never endure that, but would come out and fight
them for their country's and their honor's sake. But Pericles
looked upon it as dangerous to engage in battle, to the risk of
the city itself, against sixty thousand men-at-arms of
Peloponnesians and Boeotians; for so many they were in number that
made the inroad at first; and he endeavored to appease those who
were desirous to fight, and were grieved and discontented to see
how things went, and gave them good words, saying, that "trees,
when they are lopped and cut, grow up again in a short time, but
men, being once lost, cannot easily be recovered." He did not
convene the people into an assembly, for fear lest they should
force him to act against his judgement; and many of his enemies
threatened and accursed him for doing as he did, and many made
songs and lampoons upon him, which were sung about the town to his
disgrace, reproaching him with the cowardly exercise of his office
of general, and the tame abandonment of everything to the enemy's
hands.
Cleon, also, already was among his assailants, making use of the
feeling against him as a step to the leadership of the people, as
appears in the anapaestic verses of Hermippus.
Satyr-king, instead of swords,
Will you always handle words?
Very brave indeed we find them,
But a Teles lurks behind them. (Teles was apparently some
notorious coward.)
Yet to gnash your teeth you're seen,
When the little dagger keen,
Whetted every day anew,
Of sharp Cleon touches you.
Pericles, however, was not at all moved by any attacks, but took
all patiently, and submitted in silence to the disgrace they threw
upon him and the ill-will they bore him; and, sending out a fleet
of a hundred galleys to Peloponnesus, he did not go along with it
in person, but stayed behind, that he might watch at home and keep
the city under his own control, till the Peloponnesians broke up
their camp and were gone. Yet to soothe the common people, jaded
and distressed with the war, he relieved them with distributions
of public moneys, and ordained new divisions of subject land. For
having turned out all the people of Aegina, he parted the island
among the Athenians, according to lot. Some comfort, also, and
ease in their miseries, they might receive from what their enemies
endured. For the fleet, sailing round the Peloponnesus, ravaged a
great deal of the country, and pillaged and plundered the towns
and smaller cities; and by land he himself entered with an army
the Megarian country, and made havoc of it all. Whence it is clear
that the Peloponnesians, though they did the Athenians much
mischief by land, yet suffering as much themselves from them by
sea, would not have protracted the war to such a length, but would
quickly have given it over, as Pericles at first foretold they
would, had not some divine power crossed human purposes.
In the first place, the pestilential disease, or plague, seized
upon the city, and ate up all the flour and prime of their youth
and strength. Upon occasion of which the people, distempered and
afflicted in their souls, as well as in their bodies, were utterly
enraged like madmen against Pericles, and, like patients grown
delirious, sought to lay violent hands on their physician, or, as
it were, their father.
Finding the Athenians ill affected and highly displeased with him,
he tried and endeavored what he could to appease and re-encourage
them. But he could not pacify or allay their anger nor persuade or
prevail with them anyway, til they freely passed their votes upon
him, resumed their power, took away his command from him, and
fined him in a sum of money.
After this, public troubles were soon to leave him unmolested; the
people, so to say, discharged their passion in their stroke, and
lost their stings in the wound. But his domestic concerns were in
an unhappy condition, many of his friends and acquaintance having
died in the plague time, and those of his family having long since
been in disorder and in a kind of mutiny against him. For the
eldest of his sons, Xanthippus by name, being naturally prodigal,
and marrying a young and expensive wife, was highly offended at
his father's economy in making him but a scanty allowance, by
little and little at a time. He sent therefore, to a friend one
day, and borrowed some money of him in his father Pericles's name,
pretending it was by his order. The man coming afterward to demand
the debt, Pericles was so far from yielding to pay it, that he
entered an action against him. Upon which the young man,
Xanthippus, thought himself so ill used and disobliged, that he
openly reviled his father; telling first, by way of ridicule,
stories about his conversations at home, and the discourses he had
with the sophists and scholars that came to his house. As for
instance, how one who was a practicer of the five games of skill,
* having with a dart or javelin unawares against his will struck
and killed Epitimus the Pharsalian, his father spent a whole day
with Protagoras in a serious dispute, whether the javelin, or the
man that threw it, or the masters of the games who appointed these
sports, were, according to the strictest and best reason, to be
accounted the cause of this mischance. And in general, this
difference of the young man's with his father, in the breach
betwixt them, continued never to be healed or made up til his
death. For Xanthippus died in the plague time of the sickness. At
which time Pericles also lost his sister, and the greatest part of
his relations and friends, and those who had been most useful and
serviceable to him in managing the affairs of state. However, he
did not shrink or give in on these occasions, nor betray or lower
his high spirit and even the greatness of his mind under all his
misfortunes; he was not even so much as seen to weep or to mourn,
or even attend the burial of his friends or relations, till at
last he lost his only remaining son. Subdued by this blow, yet
striving still, as far as he could, to maintain his principle, and
yet to preserve and keep up the greatness of his soul, when he
came, however, to perform the ceremony of putting a garland of
flowers on the head of the corpse, he was vanquished by his
passion at the sight, so that he burst into exclamations, and shed
copious tears, having never done any such thing in all his life
before.
The city having made trial of other generals for the conduct of
war, and orators for business of state, when they found there was
no one who was of weight enough for such a charge, or of authority
sufficient to be trusted with so great a command, regretted the
loss of him, and invited him again to address and advise them, and
to resume the office of general. He, however, lay at home in
dejection and mourning; but was persuaded by Alcibiades and others
of his friends to come abroad and show himself to the people; who
having, upon his appearance, made their acknowledgements, and
apologized for their untowardly treatment of him, he undertook the
public affairs once more.
About this time, it seems, the plague seized Pericles, not with
sharp and violent fits, as it did others that had it, but with a
dull and lingering distemper, attended with various changes and
alterations, leisurely, by little and little, wasting the strength
of his body, and undermining the noble faculties of his soul.
When he was now near his end, the best of citizens and those of
his friends who were left alive, sitting about him, were speaking
of the greatness of his merit, and his power, and reckoning up his
famous actions and the number of his victories; there were no less
than nine trophies which, as their chief commander and conqueror
of their enemies, he had set up, for the honor of the city. They
talked thus among themselves, as though he were unable to
understand or mind what they said, but had now lost his
consciousness. He had listened, however, all the while, and
attended to all, and speaking out among them, said, that he
wondered they should commend and take notice of things which were
as much owing to fortune as to anything else, and had happened to
many other commanders, and, at the same time, should not speak or
make mention of that which was the most excellent and greatest
thing of all. "For," said he, "no Athenian through my means, ever
wore mourning."
He was indeed a character deserving our high admiration, not only
for his equable and mild temper, which all along, in the many
affairs of his life, and the great animosities which he incurred,
he constantly maintained; but also for the high spirit and feeling
which made him regarded the noblest of all his honors, that, in
the exercise of such immense power, he never had gratified his
envy or his passion, nor ever had treated any enemy as
irreconcilably opposed to him. And to me it appears that this one
thing gives an otherwise childish and arrogant title a fitting and
becoming significance; so dispassionate a temper, a life so pure
and unblemished, in the height of power and place, might well be
called "Olympian," in accordance with our conceptions of divine
beings, to whom, as the natural of all good and of nothing evil,
we ascribe the rule and government of the world.
The course of public affairs after his death produced a quick and
speedy sense of the loss of Pericles. Those who, while they live,
resented his great authority, as that which eclipsed themselves,
presently after quitting the stage, making trial of other orators
and demagogues, readily acknowledged that there never had been in
nature such a disposition as his was, more moderate and reasonable
in the height of that state he took upon him, or more grave and
impressive in the mildness which he used.
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