The Good Book (97 page)

35. And how can one wonder at any number of strange assertions from men whose whole lives were devoted to mockery,

36. And who were ready at any time to sacrifice the reputation of their superiors to vulgar envy and spite,

37. When even Stesimbrotus the Thracian has dared to lay to the charge of Pericles a monstrous and fabulous piece of criminality with his son’s wife?

38. So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history,

39. When, on the one hand, those who afterwards write it find long periods of time intercepting their view,

40. And, on the other hand, the contemporary records of any actions and lives,

41. Partly through envy and ill-will, partly through favour and flattery, pervert and distort truth.

Chapter 36

  1. When the orators who sided with Thucydides and his party were crying out against Pericles,

  2. As one who squandered away the public money, and made havoc of the state revenues,

  3. He rose in the open assembly and put the question to the people, whether they thought he had laid out much;

  4. And they saying, ‘Too much, a great deal,’ ‘Then,’ said he, ‘since it is so, let the cost not go to your account,

  5. ‘But to mine; and let the inscription upon the buildings stand in my name.’

  6. When they heard him say this, whether it were out of a surprise to see the greatness of his heart or out of emulation of the glory of the works,

  7. They cried aloud, bidding him to spend on, and lay out what he thought fit from the public purse, and to spare no cost, until everything was finished.

  8. At length, coming to a final contest with Thucydides which of the two should banish the other out of the country,

  9. And having gone through this peril, Pericles threw his antagonist out, and broke up the confederacy that had been organised against him.

10. So that now all schism and division being at an end, and the city brought to evenness and unity,

11. He got all Athens and all its affairs into his own hands, the tributes, armies, fleets, islands, sea, and their wide-extended power,

12. Partly over other Greeks and partly over barbarians;

13. And all that empire which they possessed, founded and fortified upon subject nations and royal friendships and alliances.

14. After this Pericles was no longer the same man he had been before,

15. Nor as tame and gentle and familiar as formerly with the populace,

16. So as readily to yield to their pleasures and to comply with the desires of the multitude, as a steersman shifts with the winds.

17. Quitting that loose, remiss and, in some cases, licentious court of the popular will,

18. He turned those soft and flowery modulations to the austerity of aristocratical and regal rule;

19. And employing this uprightly and undeviatingly for the country’s best interests,

20. 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;

21. And sometimes, too, urging and pressing them forward extremely against their will,

22. He made them, whether they would or no, yield submission to what was for their advantage.

23. In which, to say the truth, he behaved like a skilful physician, who, in a complicated and chronic disease, as he sees occasion,

24. At one time allows his patient the moderate use of such things as please him,

25. At another gives him keen pains and bitter drugs to work the cure.

26. 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,

27. He alone, as a great master, knowing how to handle and deal fitly with each one of them,

28. And, in an especial manner, making use of hopes and fears as his two chief rudders,

29. With the one to check the career of their confidence at any time,

30. With the other to raise them up and cheer them when under any discouragement,

31. Plainly showed by this, that rhetoric, the art of speaking, is as Plato says the government of the minds of men,

32. And its chief business is to address the affections and passions, which are the strings and keys to the mind, and require a skilful touch to be played on rightly.

Chapter 37

  1. The source of Pericles’ predominance was not only his power of language, but, as Thucydides assures us, the reputation of his life, and the confidence felt in his character;

  2. His manifest freedom from every kind of corruption, and superiority to all considerations of money.

  3. Notwithstanding he had made the city of Athens, which was great of itself, as great and rich as can be imagined,

  4. And though he was himself as powerful and influential as many kings and absolute rulers,

  5. He did not make the personal patrimony left to him by his father greater than it was by a single penny.

  6. Thucydides, indeed, gives a plain statement of the greatness of his power;

  7. And the comic poets, in their spiteful manner, more than hint at it, styling his companions and friends the new Pisistratidae,

  8. And calling on him to abjure any intention of usurpation,

  9. As one whose eminence was too great to be any longer proportionable to and compatible with a democracy or popular government.

10. 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;

11. ‘To build up, if he likes, stone walls around a town; and again, if so he likes, to pull them down;

12. ‘Their treaties and alliances, power, empire, peace and war, their wealth and their success for ever more.’

Chapter 38

  1. 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;

  2. But having for forty years maintained the first place among statesmen such as Ephialtes and Leocrates and Myronides and Cimon and Tolmides and Thucydides;

  3. And then after the defeat and banishment of Thucydides, for no less than fifteen years more,

  4. In the exercise of one continuous unintermitted command in the office, to which he was annually re-elected, of General, he preserved his integrity unspotted;

  5. Though otherwise he was not altogether idle or careless in looking after his pecuniary advantage;

  6. His paternal estate, which of right belonged to him, he so ordered that it might neither through negligence be wasted or lessened,

  7. Nor yet, being so full of business as he was, cost him any great trouble or time with taking care of it;

  8. And put it into such a way of management as he thought to be the most easy for himself, and the most exact.

  9. All his yearly products and profits he sold together in a lump, and supplied his household needs afterwards by buying everything that he or his family wanted out of the market.

10. Upon which account, his children, when they grew to age, were not well pleased with his management,

11. And the women that lived with him were treated with little cost, and complained of his way of housekeeping,

12. Where everything was ordered and set down from day to day, and reduced to the greatest exactness;

13. Since there was not there, as is usual in a great family and a plentiful estate, anything to spare;

14. But all that went out or came in, all disbursements and all receipts, proceeded as it were by number and measure.

15. His manager in all this was a single servant, Evangelus by name,

16. A man either naturally gifted or instructed by Pericles so as to excel everyone in this art of domestic economy.

17. All this, in truth, was very little in harmony with Anaxagoras’ wisdom;

18. If, indeed, it be true that he, by a generous impulse and greatness of heart,

19. Voluntarily quitted his house, and left his land to lie fallow and to be grazed by sheep like a common.

20. But the life of a contemplative philosopher and that of an active statesman are not the same thing;

21. 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;

22. Whereas the other, who tempers and applies his virtue to human uses, may have occasion for affluence,

23. Not as a matter of necessity, but as a noble thing; which was Pericles’ case, who relieved numerous poor citizens.

24. However, there is a story that Anaxagoras himself, while Pericles was taken up with public affairs,

25. Lay neglected, and that now being grown old, he wrapped himself up with a resolution to die by starving himself.

26. When Pericles heard this he was horror-struck, and instantly ran to Anaxagoras,

27. And used all the arguments and entreaties he could to him, lamenting not so much Anaxagoras’ condition as his own,

28. Should he lose such a counsellor as he had found him to be;

29. And that, upon this, Anaxagoras unfolded his robe, and showing his underfed ribs, made answer:

30. ‘Pericles,’ said he, ‘even those who have occasion for a lamp supply it with oil.’

Chapter 39

  1. The Lacedaemonians beginning to show themselves troubled at the growth of the Athenian power,

  2. Pericles, on the other hand, to elevate the people’s sentiments further, and to raise them to the thought of great actions,

  3. Proposed a decree, to summon all the Greeks, whether of Europe or Asia, every city, little as well as great,

  4. To send their deputies to Athens to a general assembly, or convention,

  5. There to consult and advise concerning repairs to the cities which the barbarians had burnt down,

  6. And also concerning the navigation of the sea, that they might henceforward pass to and fro and trade securely and be at peace among themselves.

  7. Upon this errand there were twenty men above fifty years of age, sent by commission;

  8. Five to summon the Ionians and Dorians in Asia, and the islanders as far as Lesbos and Rhodes;

  9. Five to visit all the places in the Hellespont and Thrace, up to Byzantium; and five more to go to Boeotia and Phocis and Peloponnesus,

10. And from thence to pass through the Locrians over to the neighbouring continent as far as Acarnania and Ambracia;

11. And the rest to take their course through Euboea to the Oetaeans and the Malian Gulf,

12. And to the Achaeans of Phthiotis and the Thessalians;

13. All of them to treat with the people as they passed,

14. And persuade them to come and take their part in the debates for settling the peace and jointly regulating the affairs of Greece.

15. Nothing came of this, nor did the cities send deputies, as was desired;

16. Because the Lacedaemonians, suspecting Pericles’ intentions, subverted the plan underhandedly.

17. But the plan shows the calibre of Pericles and the greatness of his thoughts.

18. In his military conduct, he gained a great reputation for wariness:

19. He would not by his goodwill engage in any fight which had too much risk;

20. He did not envy the glory of generals whose rash adventures were luckily favoured with brilliant success, however they were admired by others;

21. Nor did he think them worthy of his imitation, but always used to say to his citizens that, so far as lay in his power, they should never die.

22. When Pericles saw Tolmides son of Tolmaeus, made confident by his former successes and flushed with the honour his military actions had procured him,

23. Making preparations to attack the Boeotians in their own country when there was no likely opportunity,

24. And seeing also that Tolmides had prevailed with the bravest and most enterprising of the youth to enlist themselves as volunteers in the service,

25. He endeavoured to withhold him and to advise him from it in the public assembly,

26. Telling him in a memorable saying of his, which still goes about, that,

27. If he would not take Pericles’ advice, yet he would not do amiss to wait and be ruled by time, the wisest counsellor of all.

28. This saying, at that time, was but slightly commended;

29. But within a few days after, when news was brought that Tolmides had been defeated and slain in battle near Coronea,

30. And that many brave citizens had fallen with him, it gained Pericles great repute as well as goodwill among the people,

31. For wisdom and for love of his countrymen.