Pericles of Athens

“ Pericles was unmoved by any of these attacks, but quietly endured all this storm of obloquy. He sent a fleet of a hundred ships to attack Peloponnesus, but did not sail with it himself, remaining at home to keep a tight hand over Athens until the Peloponnesians drew off their forces. He regained his popularity with the common people, who suffered much from the war, by giving them allowances of money from the public revenue, and grants of land; for he drove out the entire population of the island of Aegina, and divided the land by lot among the Athenians. ”

“ Her great citizen Pericles changed the government of Athens to a pure democracy. And then, by the magic of his influence, it sprang from its ashes in a form so beautiful, it was known as the "City of the Gods." The matchless temples and colonnades which arose on the Acropolis, adorned by the sculptures of Phidias, are still the wonder of the world.
But that was not all. No men have ever thought so profoundly, nor spoken so wisely, nor with such eloquence, as did the men in those temples and under those Greek arcades. ”

“ As the memories of Platæa and Salamis faded and the new buildings grew familiar, Pericles and the pride of Athens became more and more offensive to the homely humour of the crowd. He was never ostracized—his prestige with the quieter citizens saved him from that; but he was attacked with increasing boldness and steadfastness. He lived and died a poor man ”

“ In such a society, Pericles saw that his own soul would grow; so sustained, he should be more for Athens and himself. He was no Christian to deny himself for the sake of that unhappy wife and children,—a wife whose discontent had already infected the state. The gods he knew—Zeus and Eros—smiled on the step he took. What if the laws of Athens forbade a legal marriage with a foreigner? Pericles was Athens; and what he respected, all men must honor. Aspasia had, so far as we know, a free maiden heart ”

“ On one such occasion, Pericles was the orator, and in the great Funeral Speech he made, he set forth to the Athenians what he considered Athens stood for in the world. There are no better words in which to describe the greatness of Athens at this time and the ideals at which she aimed, so listen to the words of Pericles, describing the city he loved:
Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbours, but are an example to them. ”

“ For this reason it was that Pericles, when he gained strength with the populace, destroyed this senate, making Ephialtes bring forward a bill which restricted its judicial powers, while he himself succeeded in getting Cimon banished by ostracism, as a friend of Sparta and a hater of the people, although he was second to no Athenian in birth or fortune, and won most brilliant victories over the Persians, and had filled Athens with plunder and spoils of war. So great was the power of Pericles with the common people. ”

“ AGE OF PERICLES, 461-429 B.C. The period, about thirty years in length, between the ostracism of Cimon and the death of Pericles, forms the most brilliant epoch in Greek history. Under the guidance of Pericles the Athenian naval empire reached its widest extent. Through his direction Athens became a complete democracy. Inspired by him the Athenians came to manifest that love of knowledge, poetry, art, and all beautiful things which, even more than their empire or their democracy, has made them famous in the annals of mankind. ”

“ But Pericles had lived long enough to secure the immortality of what was greatest in his city—to make of Athens in her beauty "a joy forever."
"If the army of Nicias had not been defeated under the walls of Syracuse; if the Athenians had, acquiring Sicily, held the balance between Rome and Carthage, sent garrisons to the Greek colonies in the south of Italy, Rome might have been all that its intellectual condition entitled it to be, a tributary, not the conqueror, of Greece; the Macedonian power would never have attained to the dictatorship of the civilized states of the world." ”

“ To this Pericles replied that the allies had no right to consider how their money was spent, so long as Athens defended them from the Persians; while they supplied neither horses, ships, nor men, but merely money, which the Athenians had a right to spend as they pleased, provided they afforded them that security which it purchased. ”

“ This blossoming age of poetry and the drama came after the desperate struggles of the Persian War, which had left Athens a heap of ruins. In the new Athens which rose under the fostering care of Pericles, not only literature flourished but art reached its culmination, temple and hall, colonnade and theatre showing the artistic beauty and grandeur of the new architecture, while such sculptors as Phidias and such painters as Zeuxis adorned the city with the noblest products of art. ”

“ It is well-nigh impossible to relate all that Pericles did to make Athens the most glorious city in the ancient world. Under his patronage Greek architecture and sculpture reached their highest development. To him Athens owed the Parthenon, the Odeum and the Propylaeum, that most stupendous of all architectural constructions of Greece. He also encouraged music and the drama; and during his rule industry and commerce were in so flourishing a condition that there was universal prosperity in Attica. ”

“ Events proved that Pericles was right in confining the Athenian empire to Greece. First of all Euboea revolted, and he was obliged to lead an army to subdue that island. Shortly after this, news came that the Megarians had become hostile, and that an army, under the command of Plistoanax, king of the Lacedaemonians, was menacing the frontier of Attica. Pericles now in all haste withdrew his troops from Euboea, to meet the invader. ”

“ We must, then, admit that Pericles sincerely contemplated the good of his fellow-countrymen, and we may believe that he endeavoured to realize that ideal Athens which Thucydides sketches in the Funeral Speech—an Athens where free and intelligent obedience is rendered to an equitable code of laws, where merit finds its way to the front, where military efficiency is found along with a free development in other directions and strangles neither commerce nor art. ”

“ Events soon made the loss of Pericles felt and regretted by the Athenians. Those who during his lifetime had complained that his power completely threw them into the shade, when after his death they had made trial of other orators and statesmen, were obliged to confess that with all his arrogance no man ever was really more moderate, and that his real mildness in dealing with men was as remarkable as his apparent pride and assumption. ”

“ Pericles, however, restrained these outbursts, and would not allow the people to meddle with foreign states, but used the power of Athens chiefly to preserve and guard her already existing empire, thinking it to be of paramount importance to oppose the Lacedaemonians, a task to which he bent all his energies, as is proved by many of his acts, especially in connection with the Sacred War. ”

“ No city ever adorned herself with such an array of temples, public buildings and works of art as the Athens of Pericles and Pheidias. Her achievements in literature are hardly less great. The Attic drama of the period produced many great masterpieces, and the scientific thought of Europe in the departments of logic, ethics, rhetoric and history mainly owes its origin to a new movement of Greek thought which was largely fostered by the patronage of Pericles himself. Besides producing numerous men of genius herself Athens attracted all the great intellects of Greece. ”

“ Themistocles had been exiled, Aristeides was dead, and a statesman named Pericles now took the leading part in Athenian affairs. His boyhood had been spent during some of the most thrilling years of Athenian history. As a child he had become a hero-worshipper of the men who had fought at Marathon; he must have been amongst the older children who were forced to flee from Athens on the approach of Xerxes ”

“ By Pericles, and by the more long-sighted Athenians, the chance of unavoidable war was foreseen even before the Corcyræan dispute. But Pericles was only the first citizen in a democracy, esteemed, trusted, and listened to, more than any one else by the body of citizens, but warmly opposed in most of his measures, under the free speech and latitude of individual action which reigned at Athens—and even bitterly hated by many active political opponents. ”

“ However, Pericles thought that it would be a very serious matter to fight for the very existence of Athens against sixty thousand Peloponnesian and Boeotian heavy-armed troops, and so he pacified those who were dissatisfied at his inactivity by pointing out that trees when cut down quickly grow again, but that when the men of a state are lost, it is hard to raise up others to take their place. ”

“ This occasion afforded Pericles an opportunity to animate the courage and the hopes of his countrymen, by such a description of the glories and the possibilities of Athens as he alone could give. Commencing his address with a eulogy on the ancestors and immediate forefathers of the Athenians, he proceeds to show the latter "by what form of civil polity, what dispositions and habits of life," they have attained their greatness; graphically contrasting their institutions with those of other states, and especially with those of the Spartans, their present enemies. ”

“ Of the surpassing skill with which he collected into one focus the rays of artistic genius at Athens, no stronger proof can be afforded, than the fact that no subsequent period, through the patronage of Macedonian or Roman princes, produced works of equal excellence, Indeed, it may be said that the creations of the age of Pericles are the only works of art which completely satisfy the most refined and cultivated taste.
But this brilliant exhibition of human excellence was not without its dark side, nor the flourishing state of Athenian civilization exempt from the elements of decay. ”

“ Just before passing to the fourth period of comparative decline, we may halt a moment to contemplate the man who represents this age of full maturity. Pericles, called half in derision by the comic poets the Zeus of Athens, called afterwards, with reverence, by Plutarch, the Olympian—Pericles expresses in himself the spirit of this age. He is the typical Athenian who governed Athens during the years in which Athens governed Greece, who formed the taste of the Athenians at the time when they were educating the world by the production of immortal works of beauty. ”

“ Unstained: to die in evil were the stain! [6]
Pericles was dead, and Cleon who had succeeded him as leader of the people had no power to inspire the Athenians to be true to their highest ideals, and as conditions grew more and more difficult, Athens was forced at length to give herself up to a fight for her life. Anger, suspicion and hatred took the place of the old ideals, and it seemed as if her strength had turned to weakness and despair. ”

“ The general excitement rose to a still higher pitch when the officers of the Eleven, the magistrates to whose custody condemned criminals were handed, were seen making their way, lighted by slaves holding torches, to the place where the accused were sitting. There was not one of the six whose features were not familiar to many in the assembly. More than one had tendered distinguished service to Athens; and one, Pericles, son of the great statesman by Aspasia, bore a name which no Athenian could pronounce without some emotion of pride and gratitude. ”

“ No greater service can be rendered Athens than to raise up noble and patriotic defenders. To this end I commit these children to your guidance, the girl no less than the boy. Give them, I beg, the benefit of your wisdom, since they have proven themselves worthy of such honor, and Athens shall one day thank you for this service."
And so it was that Dion and Daphne, the Spartans, not only mastered the learning of their time, but also became the friends of Pericles the Athenian and of Euripides the Poet, and perhaps now wander with them in the Elysian Fields. ”

“ At the beginning of the next year a calamity which no statesman could have foreseen overtook Athens. A mysterious plague of the greatest malignity scourged the city, the mortality being multiplied among the crowds of refugees. The city's strength was seriously impaired, public and private morality were undermined, inasmuch as none knew how long he had to live. Discouraged by it and by the invasions the Athenians sent a fruitless embassy to Sparta and tinned in fury on Pericles. He made a splendid defence of his policy and gave them heart to continue the struggle ”

“ Yet the Athenians did not reduce millions to a state of abject servitude, for the purpose of ministering to the wants of a few thousand persons. The object of their statesmen, such as Pericles, doubtless was, to make Athens the pride of the whole confederacy; that their allies should enjoy in common with them the productions of Athenian art, and especially should participate in the great festivals, the Panathenaea and Dionysia, on the embellishment of which all the treasures of wealth and art were lavished*. ”

“ Pericles was also a great lover of all that was beautiful, and he was honestly desirous that the youth of Athens should grow up in a city that should be a joy for ever, that would make them good and useful citizens, and inspire them with an abiding love for and pride in her. But there is a flaw in the character of a man who holds that the end, even if it is a great and glorious one, justifies any means. ”