The Good Book (100 page)

  4. They raised him into yet greater credit and esteem with the citizens, as a man whom their enemies most hated and feared.

  5. In the same way, also, before Archidamus, who was at the head of the Peloponnesians, made his invasion into Attica,

  6. Pericles told the Athenians beforehand, that if Archidamus, while he laid waste the rest of the country, should spare his estate, either on the ground of friendship or right of hospitality that was betwixt them,

  7. Or on purpose to give his enemies an occasion of traducing him; then he would freely bestow upon the state all his land and the buildings on it for the public use.

  8. 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 as far as Acharnae,

  9. And there pitched their camp, presuming that the Athenians would never endure that,

10. But would come out and fight them for their country's and their honour's sake.

11. But Pericles looked upon it as dangerous to engage in battle, to the risk of the city itself, against sixty thousand Peloponnesians and Boeotians; for that is how many had invaded;

12. And he endeavoured to appease those who were eager to fight, 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'.

13. He did not convene the people into an assembly, for fear lest they should force him to act against his judgement;

14. But, like a skilful steersman, who, when a sudden squall comes on at sea, makes all his arrangements, sees that all is tight and fast,

15. And then follows the dictates of his skill, taking no notice of the tears and entreaties of the seasick and fearful passengers,

16. So he, having shut the city gates and posted guards, followed his own judgement,

17. Little regarding those who cried out against him; although many of his friends urged him, and many of his enemies threatened and accused him,

18. And many made songs and lampoons upon him, which were sung about the town to his disgrace,

19. Reproaching him with the cowardly exercise of his office of general, and the tame abandonment of everything to the enemy's hands.

20. Cleon was already among his assailants, making use of the feeling against him as a step to the leadership of the people, as appears in the verses of Hermippus:

21. ‘Satyr-king, instead of swords, Will you always handle words? Very brave indeed we find them, But a Teles lurks behind them.

22. ‘Yet to gnash your teeth you're seen, When the little dagger keen, Whetted every day anew, Of sharp Cleon touches you.'

23. Pericles, however, was unmoved by these attacks, but took all patiently, and submitted in silence to the disgrace they threw upon him and the ill-will they bore him;

24. And sending out a fleet of a hundred galleys to Peloponnesus, he did not go along with it in person,

25. 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.

26. Yet to soothe the common people, jaded and distressed with the war, he relieved them with distributions of public moneys,

27. 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.

28. Some comfort also, and ease in their miseries, they might receive from what their enemies endured.

29. For the fleet, sailing round the Peloponnese, ravaged a great deal of the country, and pillaged and plundered the towns and smaller cities;

30. And by land he himself entered with an army the Megarian country, and made havoc of it all.

 

Chapter 47

  1. Whence it is clear that the Peloponnesians, though they did the Athenians much mischief by land,

  2. Yet suffering as much themselves from them by sea, would not have protracted the war to such a length,

  3. But would quickly have given it over, as Pericles at first foretold they would, had not accident entered the picture.

  4. In the first place, plague seized upon the city, and ate up all the flower and prime of their youth and strength.

  5. The people, afflicted in their minds as well as bodies, were enraged like madmen against Pericles,

  6. And, like patients grown delirious, sought to lay violent hands on their physician, or, as it were, their father.

  7. They had been persuaded by Pericles' enemies that the reason for the plague was the crowding of the country people into the town,

  8. Forcing everyone, in the heat of summer, to huddle together in small tenements and stifling hovels,

  9. And to follow a lazy course of life within doors, whereas before they lived in the open air.

10. The author of all this, they said, is he who on account of the war has poured a multitude of people in upon us within the walls,

11. And uses all these men that he has here upon no employ or service, but keeps them pent up like cattle,

12. To be overrun with infection from one another, affording them neither shift of quarters nor any refreshment.

13. With the design to remedy these evils, and do the enemy some inconvenience, Pericles got a hundred and fifty galleys ready,

14. And having embarked many tried soldiers, both foot and horse,

15. 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.

16. When the vessels had their complement of men, and Pericles had gone aboard his own galley,

17. It happened that the sun was eclipsed, and it suddenly grew dark, to the affright of all, for the ignorant did not understand the cause.

18. Pericles, therefore, seeing his steersman seized with fear, took his cloak and held it before the man's face, screening him so that he could not see,

19. And asked him whether he imagined there was any great hurt in this. The steersman answering No,

20. ‘Why,' said Pericles, ‘and what does that differ from this, only that what has caused that darkness there, is something bigger than a cloak?'

21. This is a story philosophers tell their students. Pericles, however, after putting out to sea, seems not to have done any other exploit befitting such preparations,

22. And when he had laid siege to Epidaurus, which gave him some hope of surrender, miscarried in his design by reason of the plague.

23. For it not only seized upon the Athenians, but upon all others, too, that held any sort of communication with the army.

24. Finding the Athenians ill affected towards him after this, he tried what he could to re-encourage them.

25. But he could not allay their anger, nor persuade them, till they freely passed their votes on him, and resumed their power,

26. Taking away his command and fining him in a sum of money;

27. Which by their account that say least, was fifteen talents, while they who reckon most, name fifty.

28. The name prefixed to the accusation was Cleon, as Idomeneus tells us; Simmias, according to Theophrastus; and Heraclides Ponticus gives it as Lacratidas.

29. After this, public troubles were soon to leave him unmolested; the people discharged their anger against him in this stroke, and lost their stings in the wound.

30. But his domestic concerns were in an unhappy condition, many of his friends and acquaintances having died in the plague time,

31. And those of his family having long since been in disorder and in a kind of mutiny against him.

32. For the eldest of his lawful sons, Xanthippus by name, being naturally prodigal, and marrying a young and expensive wife,

33. Was highly offended at his father's economy in giving him only a scanty allowance, a little at a time.

34. He therefore borrowed some money in his father's name, pretending it was by his order.

35. The lender coming afterwards to demand the debt, Pericles was so far from yielding to pay it, that he entered an action against his son.

36. Upon which the young man, Xanthippus, thought himself so ill used and disobliged that he openly reviled his father;

37. 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.

38. As, for instance, how one who was a practiser of the five games of skill,

39. Having with a dart or javelin unawares against his will struck and killed Epitimus the Pharsalian,

40. His father spent a whole day with Protagoras in a serious dispute, whether the javelin, or the man that threw it,

41. 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.

42. Besides this, Stesimbrotus tells us that it was Xanthippus who spread abroad the infamous story concerning his own wife, Pericles' daughter-in-law,

43. That Pericles had fallen in love with her; and in general that this difference of the young man's with his father,

44. And the breach betwixt them, continued never to be healed or made up till his death; for Xanthippus died in the plague.

 

Chapter 48

  1. In the plague Pericles also lost his sister, and the greatest part of his relations and friends,

  2. And those who had been most useful and serviceable to him in managing the affairs of state.

  3. However, he did not shrink or give in upon these occasions, nor betray or lower his character and the greatness of his mind under all these misfortunes;

  4. He was not seen to weep or mourn, or even attend the burial of any of his friends or relations, till at last he lost his only remaining legitimate son.

  5. Subdued by this blow, and yet striving still, as far as he could, to maintain the greatness of his mind,

  6. When he came 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,

  7. So that he burst into exclamations, and shed copious tears, having never done any such thing in his life before.

  8. The city having tried other generals for the conduct of war, and politicians for business of state,

  9. When they found there was no one who was of weight enough to be trusted with so great a command,

10. Regretted the loss of him, and invited him again to advise them, and to reassume the office of general.

11. He was lying 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;

12. Who on his appearance made their acknowledgements, and apologised for their treatment of him.

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

14. Requested that the statute concerning base-born children, which he himself had formerly caused to be made, might be suspended;

15. So that the name and race of his family might not, for want of a lawful heir to succeed, be lost and extinguished.

16. The case of the statute was this: Pericles, when long ago at the height of his power in the state,

17. Having then had lawfully begotten children, proposed a law that those only should be reputed true citizens of Athens who were born of parents who were both Athenians.

18. Sometime later the king of Egypt sent a present of forty thousand bushels of wheat to be shared among the citizens.

19. There followed a great many actions and suits about legitimacy by virtue of that edict; cases which, till that time, had never occurred;

20. And several persons suffered by false accusations.

21. There were little less than five thousand who were convicted and sold for slaves as non-citizens;

22. Those who, passing the test, proved to be true Athenians were found on census to be fourteen thousand and forty persons in number.

23. It looked strange that a law which had been carried so far against so many people should be cancelled again by the same man that made it;

24. Yet the present distress which Pericles laboured under in his family broke through all objections,

25. And prevailed with the Athenians to pity him, as one whose misfortunes had sufficiently punished his former arrogance.

26. His sufferings deserved, they thought, their pity, and even indignation,

27. And his request was such as became a man to ask and men to grant; so they gave him permission to enrol his son in the register of his tribe, giving him his own name.

28. This son afterwards, after having defeated the Peloponnesians at Arginusae, was, with his fellow-generals, put to death by the people.

29. 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,