PilKlCLESL 



I'KIII- 



____. Cimoi.'. character w in iUelf a entrant** against sggran- 

 dbrtneot, *ltbr on hi* own park or other* ; but we may perhaps give 

 P*rkl* credit for >in th* danger of so much power in IBM sorupu- 

 loos hu.U than Cimon s. Bo thii u it may, Perielo* took the popular 

 {tie, an 1 a* luoh became the opponent of Cimon. 



About the lim- when Cimon wai prosecuted and fined (BO. 461), 

 Ptrirlaa began hi* fint attack on the aristocracy through the *ide* of 

 th* Areopagus ; and in spite of Cimon, and of an advocate yet more 

 powerful (the port J&Khylus), succeeded in depriving the Areopagus 

 of it' judicial power, except in certain inconsiderable oases. Tl.i> 

 triumph preceded if it did not produce the ostracism of Cimon (B.C. 

 481). From this time until Ciinou's recal (n.c. 453), we find Pericles 

 acting as a military commander, and by his valour at Tanagra pre- 

 venting that regret which Cimon s absence would otherwise undoubtedly 

 hare created. What caused him to bring about the recal of Cimon is 

 doubtful , perhaps, Thirlwall suggests, to strengthen himself against 

 his more virulent opponent* by conciliating the more moderate of 

 them, such as their great leader himself. 



After the death of Cimon, Thucydidcs took his place, and for some 

 time stood at the brad of the stationary party. Ho was a better 

 rhetorician than Cimou, in fact more statesman than warrior ; but the 

 influence of Pericles was irresistible, and in u.c. 444 Thucydides was 

 ostracised, which period we may consider as the turning point of 

 Pericles's power, and after which it was well nigh absolute. We aro 

 unable to trace the exact steps by which Athens rose from the situation 

 of chief among allies to that of mistress over tributaries ; but it eeems 

 pretty clear that Pericles aided in the change, and increased their con- 

 tributions nearly one-third. His finishing blow to the independence 

 of the allies was the conquest of Samoa and Byzantium. He secured 

 his success by planting colonies in various places, so as to accustom 

 the alii' s to look on Athens as the capital of a great empire, of which 

 they themselves were component ports, but still possessed no iude- 

 peudaut existence. 



From this time till the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, Pericles 

 appears to have been engaged in peaceful pursuits. He constructed a 

 third wall from Athens to the harbour of the Piricus. He covered the 

 Acropolis with magnificent buildings, and encouraged public taste by 

 the surest of all methods the accustoming the eye to statuesque and 

 architectural beauty. At Athens, as is usually the case, poetry had 

 the start of the kindred arts, but during the age of Pericles it attained 

 to a greater height than had ever before been reached. The drama 

 was then at perfection in the hands of Sophocles ; and by enabling the 

 poor to attend theatrical representations, Pericles nurtured their taste 

 and increased his own popularity by thus throwing open the theatre 

 to all Tbia precedent, whether made by Pericles or not, ultimately 

 proved more ruinous to the state than any defeat. It made the people 

 a set of pleasure-takers, with all that restlessness in the pursuit of 

 pleasure which usually belongs to the privileged few. Another inno- 

 vation, of which l'ericle.4 is supposed to have been the author, was 

 equally injurious in its consequence*, namely, that of paying the 

 ilicasts in the courts. At first the pay \\os only moderate, but it 

 operated as a premium on attendance at law-suits, the causes became 

 a mode of excitement for a people whoso intellectual activity made 

 them particularly eager for anything of the kind, and thence resulted 

 that litigious spirit which is so admirably ridiculed iu the ' Wasps ' ol 

 Aristophanes. But we may well excuse mistakes of this kind, grounded 

 probably on a false view of civil rights and duties, such as an Athenian, 

 with the highest possible sense of the dignity of Athens, would bo 

 most likely to fall into. Pericles no doubt had an honest and serious 

 wish to establish such an empire for Athens as should enable her citi- 

 zens to subsist entirely on the contributions of their dependent allies, 

 and, like a clan* of rulers, to direct and govern the whole of thai 

 empire, of which the mere brute force and physical labour were to be 

 supplied by a lew noble race. 



Pericle* was descended, as we have seen, by his mother's side, from 

 th* family of Clisthcne.1, aud he was thus implicated, according to the 

 religious notions of those times, in thn guilt of the murder of Cylon's 

 partisans, which was committed at tho v.-ry altars in the Acropolis. 

 (Thucyd., L 126 ; Herod., v. 70, ftc.) The Lacedaemonians, before the 

 actual commencement of the Pelopounesian war, urged on the Athe 

 nians tho necessity of banishing the members of the family who uu 

 committed this offence against religion, which was only an indirec 

 way of attacking Pericles and driving him into exile. The Athenians 

 retorted by urging th* Lacedtomonians to cleanse themselves from the 

 guilt incurred by th* death of Pauaanias. [ I'AUSANI AS.] 



Pericles lived to direct the Peloponnesiau war for two years. Hi 

 policy was that of uncompromising although cautious resistance, on< 

 bis great effort was to indue* the Athenians to consider Attica in the 

 light merely of a post, to be held or resigned as occasion required, no 

 of hallowed ground, to lose which was to be equivalent to the loss o 

 all. In til* speech which he mad* before war was declared, as it is 

 recorded by Thueydidc*, he impressed the Athenians with thes 

 opinion*, representing the superiority of their navy and the importance 

 of avoiding conflicts in the field, which, if successful, ci.nl. 1 only brin 

 temporary advantage- if the contrary, would be irretrievable. At tb 

 end of the fint campaign, Pericles delivered an oration upon those 

 who had falic i in tb* war, M be had done before at tho close of th 

 Samiaa war. From that speech (at least if Thucydidcs reported well 



we learn what Pericles considered to be the character of a good citi/en, 

 and we see in what strong contrast he pi iced the Spartan to the 

 .thenian method of bringing up members of the state. This >pech, 

 IB most remarkable of all the oompoiitions of antiquity tliu full 

 ransfusion of which into a modern language is an impossibility 

 xhiuit* a more complete view of the intellectual power and moral 

 tiaracter of Pericles than all that the historian aud biographer have 

 aid of him. The form in which the great orator and statesman has 

 mbodied his lofty conceptions, is beauty chastened and elevated by a 

 oble severity. Athens and Athenians are the objects whkli his 

 mbition seeks to immortalise, and the whole world is the theatre and 

 be witness of her glorious exploits. His philosophy teaches that life 

 a thing to be enjoyed : death a thing not to be feared. 

 The plague at Athens soon followed, and its debilitating effects 

 made restraint less irksome to the people; but while it damped their 

 activity it increased their impatience of war. In spite of another 

 iarangue, in which he represented most forcibly how absurd it would 

 je to allow circumstances like a plague to interfere with well-laid 

 >lans, he was brought to trial aud fined, but his iutluonc; returned 

 when the fit was over. 



Periclo, from a butt in the British Mv 



In the third year of the war, having lost his two legitimate sons, 

 ais sister, and many of his best friends, by the plague, he fell ill, and 

 after a lingering sickness died. Some beautiful tales are tld of his 

 death-bed, all tending to show that the calm foresight and humanity 

 Tor which he was so remarkable in Ufa did not desert him in death. 

 It is an interesting question, and one which continually presents it -elf 

 to a student of history, how far those great men who always appear 

 at important junctures for the assertion of some principle or tho 

 carrying out some great national object, are conscious of the work 

 which is appointed for them to do. It would for instance be most 

 instructive, could wo now ascertain to what extent Pericles foresaw 

 that approaching contest of principles, a small part only of which ho 

 lived to direct. Looking from a distance, we can see a kind of neces- 

 sity imprinted on his actions, and think we trace their dependence on 

 each other, and the manner in which they harmonise. Athens was to 

 be prepared by accessions of power, wealth, and civilisation to 

 tain a conflict in which, had she been vanquished, the peculiar charac- 

 ter of Spartan institutions might have irreparably blighted those germs 

 of civilisation, the fruit of which all succeeding generations have 

 enjoyed. But how should this be ? Her leader must have been a 

 single person, for energetic unity of purpose was needed, such as no 

 cluster of contemporary or string of successive rulers could have been 

 expected to show. That ruler must have governed according to tho 

 laws, for a tyrant would have been expelled by the sword of tho 

 Spartans, as so many other tyrants were, or by the voice of tho com- 

 monalty, every day growing up into greater power. Moreover, with- 

 out being given to change, he must have been prepared to modify 

 existing institutions, so as to suit the alt -red character of the times. 

 He must have been above his nge in matters of religious belief, nn 1 

 yet of so Catholic a temper as to respect prejudices in which he had no 

 share, for otherwise in so intolerant an age ho would probably have 

 incurred the fate of Annxa^oras, and destroyed his ov 

 influence without making hin countrymen one whit the wiser. II. 

 must have been a man of taste, or he would not have been able to go 

 along with and direct that artistic skill which arose instantly on tho 

 abolition of those old religious notions forbidding auy departure from 



