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The Historians' History of the World 03 [Greece to the Peloponnesian War]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
Электронная книга - «The Historians' History of the World 03 [Greece to the Peloponnesian War]». Краткое содержание книги:
THE END AND GLORY OF PERICLES
[430-429 B.C.]
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—430 B.C. 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.”
Such a cause of self-gratulation, doubtless more satisfactory to recall at such a moment than any other, illustrates that long-sighted calculation, aversion to distant or hazardous enterprise, and economy of the public force, which marked his entire political career; a career long, beyond all parallel in the history of Athens—since he maintained a great influence, gradually swelling into a decisive personal ascendency, for between thirty and forty years. His character has been presented in very different lights by different authors, both ancient and modern, and our materials for striking the balance are not so good as we could wish. But his immense and long-continued supremacy, as well as his unparalleled eloquence, are facts attested not less by his enemies than by his friends—nay, even more forcibly by the former than by the latter. The comic writers, who hated him, and whose trade it was to deride and hunt down every leading political character, exhaust their powers of illustration in setting forth both the one and the other: Telecleides, Cratinus, Eupolis, Aristophanes, all hearers and all enemies, speak of him like Olympian Zeus hurling thunder and lightning—like Hercules and Achilles—as the only speaker on whose lips persuasion sat and who left his sting in the minds of his audience: while Plato the philosopher, who disapproved of his political working and of the moral effects which he produced upon Athens, nevertheless extols his intellectual and oratorical ascendency—“his majestic intelligence.” There is another point of eulogy, not less valuable, on which the testimony appears uncontradicted: throughout his long career, amidst the hottest political animosities, the conduct of Pericles towards opponents was always mild and liberal.[52]
The conscious self-esteem and arrogance of manner, with which the contemporary poet Ion reproached him, contrasting it with the unpretending simplicity of his own patron Cimon, though probably invidiously exaggerated, is doubtless in substance well founded, and those who read the last speech just given out of Thucydides will at once recognise in it this attribute. His natural taste, his love of philosophical research, and his unwearied application to public affairs, all contributed to alienate him from ordinary familiarity, and to make him careless, perhaps improperly careless, of the lesser means of conciliating public favour.
But admitting this latter reproach to be well founded, as it seems to be, it helps to negative that greater and graver political crime which has been imputed to him, of sacrificing the permanent well-being and morality of the state to the maintenance of his own political power—of corrupting the people by distributions of the public money. “He gave the reins to the people.” in Plutarch’s words, “and shaped his administration for their immediate spectacle or festival or procession, thus nursing up the city in elegant pleasures—and by sending out every year sixty triremes manned by citizen-seamen on full pay, who were thus kept in practice and acquired nautical skill.”
The charge here made against Pericles, and supported by allegations in themselves honourable rather than otherwise—of a vicious appetite for immediate popularity, and of improper concessions to the immediate feelings of the people against their permanent interests—is precisely that which Thucydides in the most pointed manner denies; and not merely denies, but contrasts Pericles with his successors in the express circumstance that they did so, while he did not. The language of the contemporary historian well deserves to be cited: “Pericles, powerful from dignity of character as well as from wisdom, and conspicuously above the least tinge of corruption, held back the people with a free hand, and was their real leader instead of being led by them. For not being a seeker of power from unworthy sources, he did not speak with any view to present favour, but had sufficient sense of dignity to contradict them on occasion, even braving their displeasure. Thus whenever he perceived them insolently and unseasonably confident, he shaped his speeches in such a manner as to alarm and beat them down; when again he saw them unduly frightened, he tried to counteract it and restore their confidence; so that the government was in name a democracy, but in reality an empire exercised by the first citizen in the state. But those who succeeded after his death, being more equal one with another, and each of them desiring pre-eminence over the rest, adopted the different course of courting the favour of the people and sacrificing to that object even important state interests. From whence arose many other bad measures, as might be expected in a great and imperial city, and especially the Sicilian expedition.”
It will be seen that the judgment here quoted from Thucydides contradicts, in the most unqualified manner, the reproaches commonly made against Pericles of having corrupted the Athenian people—by distributions of the public money, and by giving way to their unwise caprices—for the purpose of acquiring and maintaining his own political power. Nay, the historian particularly notes the opposite qualities—self-judgment, conscious dignity, indifference to immediate popular applause or wrath when set against what was permanently right and useful—as the special characteristic of that great statesman. A distinction might indeed be possible, and Plutarch professes to note such distinction, between the earlier and the later part of his long political career. Pericles began (so that biographer says) by corrupting the people in order to acquire power; but having acquired it, he employed it in an independent and patriotic manner, so that the judgment of Thucydides, true respecting the later part of his life, would not be applicable to the earlier.