The Good Book

by A. C. Grayling

  6. And though their excuse for doing so was to protect it from capture by the barbarians, Pericles had now spent it;

  7. And they complained that ‘Greece cannot but resent it as an insufferable affront, and consider herself to be tyrannised over openly,

  8. ‘When she sees the treasure, which was contributed by her upon a necessity for the war, wantonly lavished out by us upon our city,

  9. ‘To gild her all over, and to adorn and set her forth, as it were some vain woman, hung round with precious stones and statues, which cost a world of money.’

  10. But Pericles informed the people that they were in no way obliged to give any account of those moneys to their allies,

  11. So long as they maintained their defence, and kept off the barbarians from attacking them;

  12. While in the meantime they did not so much as supply one horse or man or ship, but only found money for the service;

  13. ‘Which money,’ he said, ‘is not theirs that gave it, but theirs that received it,

  14. ‘So long as they perform the conditions on which they received it.’

  15. And that it was good reason, that, now the city was sufficiently provided and stored with all things necessary for the war,

  16. They should convert the overplus of its wealth to such undertakings as would hereafter, when completed, give them eternal honour,

  17. And, for the present, while in process, freely supply all the inhabitants with plenty.

  18. With their variety of workmanship and of occasions for service, which summon all arts and trades and require all hands to be employed about them,

  19. They put the whole city, in a manner, into state-pay; while at the same time she is both beautiful and maintained by herself.

  20. For as those who are of age and strength for war are provided for and maintained in the armaments abroad by their pay out of the public stock,

  21. So, it being Pericles’ desire and design that the undisciplined multitude that stayed at home should not go without their share of public salaries, and yet should not have them for sitting still and doing nothing,

  22. To that end he thought fit to bring in among them, with the approbation of the people, these projects of buildings and designs of work,

  23. That would be of some continuance before they were finished, and would give employment to numerous arts,

  24. So that the part of the people that stayed at home might, no less than those that were at sea or in garrisons or on expeditions,

  25. Have a fair and just occasion of receiving the benefit and having their share of the public moneys.

  26. The materials were stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony and cypresswood;

  27. And the arts or trades that wrought and fashioned them were smiths and carpenters, moulders,

  28. Founders and braziers, stone-cutters, dyers, goldsmiths, ivory-workers, painters, embroiderers and turners;

  29. And those who conveyed them to the town for use included merchants, mariners and ship-masters by sea,

  30. And by land, cartwrights, cattle-breeders, wagoners, rope-makers, flax-workers, shoemakers, leather-dressers, road-makers, miners.

  31. 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 labourers belonging to it banded together as in array, to be the instrument and body for the performance of the service.

  32. Thus, to say all in a word, the occasions and services of these public works distributed plenty through every age and condition.

  Chapter 35

  1. As the public works rose up, no less stately in size than exquisite in form,

  2. The workmen striving to outvie the material and the design with the beauty of their workmanship,

  3. Yet the most wonderful thing of all was the rapidity of their execution.

  4. Undertakings, any one of which singly might have required, they thought, several successions and ages of men for their completion,

  5. Were every one of them accomplished in the height and prime of one man’s political service.

  6. Although they say, too, that Zeuxis once, having heard Agatharchus the painter boast of dispatching his work with speed and ease, replied, ‘I take a long time.’

  7. For ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty;

  8. The expenditure of time allowed to a man’s pains beforehand for the production of a thing is repaid by the preservation when once completed.

  9. For which reason Pericles’ works are especially admired, as having been made quickly, yet having lasted so long.

  10. For every piece of his work was immediately antique, even at that time, for its beauty and elegance;

  11. And yet in its vigour and freshness looks to this day as if it were just executed.

  12. There is a sort of bloom of newness upon those works of his, preserving them from the touch of time,

  13. As if they had some perennial essence and undying vitality mingled in the composition of them.

  14. Phidias was in charge of all the works as surveyor-general, though upon the various parts other great masters and workmen were employed.

  15. Callicrates and Ictinus built the Parthenon;

  16. The hall at Eleusis, where the festivals were celebrated, was begun by Coroebus, who erected the pillars that stand upon the floor or pavement, and joined them to the architraves;

  17. And after his death Metagenes of Xypete added the frieze and the upper line of columns;

  18. Xenocles of Cholargus roofed or arched the lantern on top of the monument to Castor and Pollux;

  19. And the long wall, which Socrates says he himself heard Pericles propose to the people, was undertaken by Callicrates.

  20. The Odeum, or music room, which in its interior was full of seats and ranges of pillars,

  21. And outside had its roof made to slope and descend from one single point at the top,

  22. Was constructed in imitation of the King of Persia’s Pavilion; this likewise by Pericles’ order;

  23. Which Cratinus in his comedy called The Thracian Women made an occasion of raillery:

  24. ‘So, we see here, long-pate Pericles appear, since ostracism time, he’s laid aside his head, and wears the new Odeum in its stead.’

  25. Pericles, also eager for distinction, then first obtained the decree for a contest in musical skill to be held yearly at the Panathenaea,

  26. And he himself, being chosen judge, arranged the order and method in which the competitors should sing and play on the flute and on the harp.

  27. 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.

  28. The propylaea, or entrances to the Acropolis, were finished in five years, Mnesicles being the principal architect.

  29. Phidias had the whole work under his charge, along with the oversight over all the artists and workmen, through Pericles’ friendship for him;

  30. And this, indeed, made him much envied, and his patron shamefully slandered with stories,

  31. As if Phidias were in the habit of receiving, for Pericles’ use, freeborn women that came to see the works.

  32. The comic writers of the town, when they got hold of this story, made much of it, and bespattered him with all the ribaldry they could invent,

  33. Charging him falsely with the wife of Menippus, one who was his friend and served as lieutenant under him in the wars;

  34. And with the birds kept by Pyrilampes, an acquaintance of Pericles, who, they pretended, used to give presents of peacocks to Pericles’ female friends.

  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 p
iece 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;