The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

In the midst of these several personal trials he received the intimation, through Alcibiades and some other friends, of the restored confidence of the people toward him, and of his reelection to the office of strategus. But it was not without difficulty that he was persuaded to present himself again at the public assembly and resume the direction of affairs. The regret of the people was formally expressed to him for the recent sentence—perhaps, indeed, the fine may have been repaid to him, or some evasion of it permitted, saving the forms of law—in the present temper of the city; which was further displayed toward him by the grant of a remarkable exemption from a law of his own original proposition.

He had himself, some years before, been the author of that law whereby the citizenship of Athens was restricted to persons born both of Athenian fathers and Athenian mothers, under which restriction several thousand persons, illegitimate on the mother's side, are said to have been deprived of the citizenship, on occasion of a public distribution of corn. Invidious as it appeared to grant, to Pericles singly, an exemption from a law which had been strictly enforced against so many others, the people were now moved not less by compassion than by anxiety to redress their own previous severity. Without a legitimate heir, the house of Pericles, one branch of the great Alcmaeonid gens by his mother's side, would be left deserted, and the continuity of the family sacred rites would be broken—a misfortune painfully felt by every Athenian family, as calculated to wrong all the deceased members, and provoke their posthumous displeasure toward the city. Accordingly, permission was granted to Pericles to legitimize, and to inscribe in his own gens and phratry, his natural son by Aspasia, who bore his own name.

It was thus that Pericles was reinstated in his post of strategus as well as in his ascendency over the public counsels—seemingly about August or September, B.C. 430. He lived about one year longer, and seems to have maintained his influence as long as his health permitted. Yet we hear nothing of him after this moment, and he fell a victim, not to the violent symptoms of the epidemic, but to a slow and wearing fever, which undermined his strength as well as his capacity. To a friend who came to ask after him when in this disease, Pericles replied by showing a charm or amulet which his female relations had hung about his neck—a proof how low he was reduced, and how completely he had become a passive subject in the hands of others.

And according to another anecdote which we read—yet more interesting and equally illustrative of his character—it was during his last moments, when he was lying apparently unconscious and insensible, that the friends around his bed were passing in review the acts of his life, and the nine trophies which he had erected at different times for so many victories. He heard what they said, though they fancied that he was past hearing, and interrupted them by remarking: "What you praise in my life belongs partly to good fortune—and is, at best, common to me with many other generals. But the peculiarity of which I am most proud, you have not noticed—no Athenian has ever put on mourning through any action of mine."