CHAPTER XXXI. THE PLAGUE; AND THE DEATH OF PERICLES
THE ORATION OF PERICLES
It was towards the close of autumn that Pericles, chosen by the people for the purpose, delivered the funeral oration at the public interment of those warriors who had fallen during the campaign, on the occasion of the conquest of Samos. One of the remarkable features in this discourse is its business-like, impersonal character: it is Athens herself who undertakes to commend and to decorate her departed sons, as well as to hearten up and admonish the living.
After a few words on the magnitude of the empire and on the glorious efforts as well as endurance whereby their forefathers and they had acquired it—Pericles proceeds to sketch the plan of life, the constitution, and the manners, under which such achievements were brought about.
“We live under a constitution such as noway to envy the laws of our neighbours,—ourselves an example to others, rather than mere imitators. It is called a democracy, since its permanent aim tends towards the Many and not towards the Few: in regard to private matters and disputes, the laws deal equally with every man; while looking to public affairs, and to claims of individual influence, every man’s chance of advancement is determined not by party favour but by real worth, according as his reputation stands in his own particular department: nor does poverty, or obscure station, keep him back, if he really has the means of benefiting the city. And our social march is free, not merely in regard to public affairs, but also in regard to intolerance of each other’s diversity of daily pursuits. For we are not angry with our neighbour for what he may do to please himself, nor do we ever put on those sour looks, which, though they do no positive damage, are not the less sure to offend. Thus conducting our private social intercourse with reciprocal indulgence, we are restrained from wrong on public matters by fear and reverence of our magistrates for the time being and of our laws—especially such laws as are instituted for the protection of wrongful sufferers, and even such others as, though not written, are enforced by a common sense of shame.
“Besides this, we have provided for our minds numerous recreations from toil, partly by our customary solemnities of sacrifice and festival throughout the year, partly by the elegance of our private establishments, the daily charm of which banishes the sense of discomfort. From the magnitude of our city, the products of the whole earth are brought to us, so that our enjoyment of foreign luxuries is as much our own and assured as those which we grow at home. In respect to training for war, we differ from our opponents (the Lacedæmonians) on several material points. First, we lay open our city as a common resort: we apply no xenelasia to exclude even an enemy either from any lesson or any spectacle, the full view of which he may think advantageous to him; for we trust less to manœuvres and quackery than to our native bravery, for warlike efficiency. Next, in regard to education, while the Lacedæmonians even from their earliest youth subject themselves to an irksome exercise for the attainment of courage, we with our easy habits of life are not less prepared than they, to encounter all perils within the measure of our strength. The proof of this is, that the Peloponnesian confederates do not attack us one by one, but with their whole united force; while we, when we attack them at home, overpower for the most part all of them who try to defend their own territory. None of our enemies has ever met and contended with our entire force; partly in consequence of our large navy—partly from our dispersion in different simultaneous land expeditions. But when they chance to be engaged with any part of it, if victorious, they pretend to have vanquished us all—if defeated, they pretend to have been vanquished by all.
“Now if we are willing to brave danger, just as much under an indulgent system as under constant toil, and by spontaneous courage as much as under force of law—we are gainers in the end by not vexing ourselves beforehand with sufferings to come, yet still appearing in the hour of trial not less daring than those who toil without ceasing.
“In other matters, too, as well as in these, our city deserves admiration. For we combine elegance of taste with simplicity of life, and we pursue knowledge without being enervated: we employ wealth not for talking and ostentation, but as a real help in the proper season: nor is it disgraceful to any one who is poor to confess his poverty, though he may rather incur reproach for not actually keeping himself out of poverty. The magistrates who discharge public trusts fulfil their domestic duties also—the private citizen, while engaged in professional business, has competent knowledge on public affairs: for we stand alone in regarding the man who keeps aloof from these latter not as harmless, but as useless. Moreover, we always hear and pronounce on public matters, when discussed by our leaders—or perhaps strike out for ourselves correct reasonings about them: far from accounting discussion an impediment to action, we complain only if we are not told what is to be done before it becomes our duty to do it. For in truth we combine in the most remarkable manner these two qualities—extreme boldness in execution with full debate beforehand on that which we are going about: whereas with others, ignorance alone imparts boldness—debate introduces hesitation. Assuredly those men are properly to be regarded as the stoutest of heart, who, knowing most precisely both the terrors of war and the sweets of peace, are still not the less willing to encounter peril.
“In fine, I affirm that our city, considered as a whole, is the schoolmistress of Greece; while, viewed individually, we enable the same man to furnish himself out and suffice to himself in the greatest variety of ways and with the most complete grace and refinement. This is no empty boast of the moment, but genuine reality; and the power of the city, acquired through the dispositions just indicated, exists to prove it. Athens alone of all cities stands forth in actual trial greater than her reputation: her enemy when he attacks her will not have his pride wounded by suffering defeat from feeble hands—her subjects will not think themselves degraded as if their obedience were paid to an unworthy superior. Having thus put forth our power, not uncertified, but backed by the most evident proofs, we shall be admired not less by posterity than by our contemporaries. Nor do we stand in need either of Homer or of any other panegyrist, whose words may for the moment please, while the truth when known would confute their intended meaning. We have compelled all land and sea to become accessible to our courage, and have planted everywhere imperishable monuments of our kindness as well as of our hostility.
“Such is the city on behalf of which these warriors have nobly died in battle, vindicating her just title to unimpaired rights—and on behalf of which all of us here left behind must willingly toil. It is for this reason that I have spoken at length concerning the city, at once to draw from it the lesson that the conflict is not for equal motives between us and enemies who possess nothing of the like excellence—and to demonstrate by proofs the truth of my encomium pronounced upon her.”
Pericles pursues at considerable additional length the same tenor of mixed exhortation to the living and eulogy of the dead; with many special and emphatic observations addressed to the relatives of the latter, who were assembled around and doubtless very near him. But the extract which we have already made is so long, that no further addition would be admissible: yet it was impossible to pass over lightly the picture of the Athenian commonwealth in its glory, as delivered by the ablest citizen of the age. The effect of the democratical constitution, with its diffused and equal citizenship, in calling forth not merely strong attachment, but painful self sacrifice, on the part of all Athenians—is nowhere more forcibly insisted upon than in the words above cited of Pericles, as well as in others afterwards. “Contemplating as you do daily before you the actual power of the state, and becoming passionately attached to it, when you conceive its full greatness, reflect that it was all acquired by men daring, acquainted with their duty, and full of an honourable sense of shame in their actions”—such is the association which he presents between the greatness of the state as an object of common passion, and the courage, intelligence, and mutual esteem, of individual citizens, as its creating and preserving causes; poor as well as rich being alike interested in the partnership.
But the claims of patriotism, though put forward as essentially and deservedly paramount, are by no means understood to reign exclusively, or to absorb the whole of the democratical activity. Subject to these, and to those laws and sanctions which protect both the public and individuals against wrong, it is the pride of Athens to exhibit a rich and varied fund of human impulse—an unrestrained play of fancy and diversity of private pursuit coupled with a reciprocity of cheerful indulgence between one individual and another—and an absence even of those “black looks” which so much embitter life, even if they never pass into enmity of fact. This portion of the speech of Pericles deserves particular attention, because it serves to correct an assertion, often far too indiscriminately made, respecting antiquity as contrasted with modern societies—an assertion that the ancient societies sacrificed the individual to the state, and that only in modern times has individual agency been left free to the proper extent. This is preeminently true of Sparta—it is also true in a great degree of the ideal societies depicted by Plato and Aristotle: but it is pointedly untrue of the Athenian democracy, nor can we with any confidence predicate it of the major part of the Grecian cities.
Connected with this reciprocal indulgence of individual diversity, was not only the hospitable reception of all strangers at Athens, which Pericles contrasts with the xenelasia or jealous expulsion practised at Sparta—but also the many-sided activity, bodily and mental, visible in the former, so opposite to that narrow range of thought, exclusive discipline of the body, and never-ending preparation for war, which formed the system of the latter. His assertion that Athens was equal to Sparta even in her own solitary excellence—efficiency on the field of battle—is doubtless untenable. But not the less impressive is his sketch of that multitude of concurrent impulses which at this same time agitated and impelled the Athenian mind—the strength of one not implying the weakness of the remainder: the relish for all pleasures of art and elegance, and the appetite for intellectual expansion, coinciding in the same bosom with energetic promptitude as well as endurance: abundance of recreative spectacles, yet noway abating the cheerfulness of obedience even to the hardest calls of patriotic duty: that combination of reason and courage which encountered danger the more willingly from having discussed and calculated it beforehand: lastly, an anxious interest, as well as a competence of judgment, in public discussion and public action, common to every citizen rich and poor, and combined with every man’s own private industry. So comprehensive an ideal of many-sided social development, bringing out the capacities for action and endurance, as well as those for enjoyment, would be sufficiently remarkable, even if we supposed it only existing in the imagination of a philosopher: but it becomes still more so when we recollect that the main features of it at least were drawn from the fellow citizens of the speaker. It must be taken however as belonging peculiarly to the Athens of Pericles and his contemporaries; nor would it have suited either the period of the Persian War fifty years before, or that of Demosthenes seventy years afterwards.
At the former period, the art, letters, philosophy, adverted to with pride by Pericles, were as yet backward, while even the active energy and democratical stimulus, though very powerful, had not been worked up to the pitch which they afterwards reached: at the latter period, although the intellectual manifestations of Athens subsist in full or even increased vigour, we shall find the personal enterprise and energetic spirit of her citizens materially abated. As the circumstances, which we have already recounted, go far to explain the previous upward movement, so those which fill the coming chapters, containing the disasters of the Peloponnesian War, will be found to explain still more completely the declining tendency shortly about to commence. Athens was brought to the brink of entire ruin, from which it is surprising that she recovered at all—but noway surprising that she recovered at the expense of a considerable loss of personal energy in the character of her citizens.
And thus the season at which Pericles delivered his discourse lends to it an additional and peculiar pathos. It was delivered at a time when Athens was as yet erect and at her maximum: for though her real power was doubtless much diminished compared with the period before the Thirty Years’ Truce, yet the great edifices and works of art, achieved since then, tended to compensate that loss, in so far as the sense of greatness was concerned; and no one, either citizen or enemy, considered Athens as having at all declined. It was delivered at the commencement of the great struggle with the Peloponnesian confederacy, the coming hardships of which Pericles never disguised either to himself or to his fellow citizens, though he fully counted upon eventual success. Attica had been already invaded; it was no longer “the unwasted territory,” as Euripides had designated it in his tragedy Medea, represented three or four months before the march of Archidamus—and a picture of Athens in her social glory was well calculated both to arouse the pride and nerve the courage of those individual citizens, who had been compelled once, and would be compelled again and again, to abandon their country residences and fields for a thin tent or confined hole in the city. Such calamities might indeed be foreseen: but there was one still greater calamity, which, though actually then impending, could not be foreseen.[b]
[430 B.C.]
At the very beginning of the next summer the Peloponnesians and their allies, with two-thirds of their forces, as on the first occasion, invaded Attica, under the command of Archidamus, the son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedæmonians; and after encamping, they laid waste the country. When they had not yet been many days in Attica, the plague first began to show itself among the Athenians; though it was said to have previously lighted on many places, about Lemnos and elsewhere. Such a pestilence, however, and loss of life as this, was nowhere remembered to have happened. For neither were physicians of any avail at first, treating it as they did, in ignorance of its nature,—nay, they themselves died most of all, inasmuch as they most visited the sick,—nor any other art of man. And as to the supplications that they offered in their temples, or the divinations, and similar means, that they had recourse to, they were all unavailing; and at last they ceased from them, being overcome by the pressure of the calamity.
THUCYDIDES’ ACCOUNT OF THE PLAGUE
It is said to have first begun in the part of Ethiopia above Egypt, and then to have come down into Egypt, and Libya, and the greatest part of the king’s territory.[49] On the city of Athens it fell suddenly, and first attacked the men in the Piræus; so that it was even reported by them that the Peloponnesians had thrown poison into the cisterns; for as yet there were no fountains there. Afterwards it reached the upper city also; and then they died much more generally. Now let every one, whether physician or unprofessional man, speak on the subject according to his views; from what source it was likely to have arisen, and the causes which he thinks were sufficient to have produced so great a change from health to universal sickness. I, however, shall only describe what was its character; and explain those symptoms by reference to which one might best be enabled to recognise it through this previous acquaintance, if it should ever break out again; for I was both attacked by it myself, and had personal observation of others who were suffering with it.
That year then, as was generally allowed, happened to be of all years the most free from disease, so far as regards other disorders; and if any one had any previous sickness, all terminated in this. Others, without any ostensible cause, but suddenly, while in the enjoyment of health, were seized at first with violent heats in the head, and redness and inflammation of the eyes; and the internal parts, both the throat and the tongue, immediately assumed a bloody tinge, and emitted an unnatural and fetid breath. Next after these symptoms, sneezing and hoarseness came on; and in a short time the pain descended to the chest, with a violent cough. When it settled in the stomach, it caused vomiting; and all the discharges of bile that have been mentioned by physicians succeeded, and those accompanied with great suffering. An ineffectual retching also followed in most cases, producing a violent spasm, which in some cases ceased soon afterwards, in others not until a long time later.
Externally the body was not very hot to the touch, nor was it pale; but reddish, livid, and broken out in small pimples and sores. But the internal parts were burnt to such a degree that they could not bear clothing or linen of the very lightest kind to be laid upon them, nor to be anything else but stark naked; but would most gladly have thrown themselves into cold water if they could. Indeed many of those who were not taken care of did so, plunging into cisterns in the agony of their unquenchable thirst: and it was all the same whether they drank much or little. Moreover, the misery of restlessness and wakefulness continually oppressed them. The body did not waste away so long as the disease was at its height, but resisted it beyond all expectation: so that they either died in most cases on the ninth or the seventh day, through the internal burning, while they had still some degree of strength; or if they escaped that stage of the disorder, then, after it had further descended into the bowels, and violent ulceration was produced in them, and intense diarrhœa had come on, the greater part were afterwards carried off through the weakness occasioned by it. For the disease, which was originally seated in the head, beginning from above, passed throughout the whole body; and if any one survived its most fatal consequences, yet it marked him by laying hold of his extremities; for it settled on the pudenda, and fingers, and toes, and many escaped with the loss of these, while some also lost their eyes. Others, again, were seized on their first recovery with forgetfulness of everything alike, and did not know either themselves or their friends.
Greek Funeral Pyre
For the character of the disorder surpassed description; and while in other respects also it attacked every one in a degree more grievous than human nature could endure, in the following way, especially, it proved itself to be something different from any of the diseases familiar to man.[50] All the birds and beasts that prey on human bodies, either did not come near them, though there were many lying unburied, or died after they had tasted them. As a proof of this, there was a marked disappearance of birds of this kind, and they were not seen either engaged in this way, or in any other; while the dogs, from their domestic habits, more clearly afforded opportunity of marking the result I have mentioned.
The disease, then, to pass over many various points of peculiarity, as it happened to be different in one case from another, was in its general nature such as I have described. And no other of those to which they were accustomed afflicted them besides this at that time; or whatever there was, it ended in this. And of those who were seized by it some died in neglect, others in the midst of every attention. And there was no one settled remedy, so to speak, by applying which they were to give them relief: for what did good to one, did harm to another. And no constitution showed itself fortified against it, in point either of strength or weakness: but it seized on all alike, even those that were treated with all possible regard to diet. But the most dreadful part of the whole calamity was the dejection felt whenever any one found himself sickening (for by immediately falling into a feeling of despair, they abandoned themselves much more certainly to the disease, and did not resist it), and the fact of their being charged with infection from attending on one another, and so dying like sheep. And it was this that caused the greatest mortality amongst them; for if through fear they were unwilling to visit each other, they perished from being deserted, and many houses were emptied for want of some one to attend to the sufferers; or if they did visit them, they met their death, and especially such as made any pretensions to goodness; for through a feeling of shame they were unsparing of themselves, in going into their friends’ houses when deserted by all others; since even the members of the family were at length worn out by the very moanings of the dying, and were overcome by their excessive misery. Still more, however, than even these, did such as had escaped the disorder show pity for the dying and the suffering, both from their previous knowledge of what it was, and from their being now in no fear of it themselves: for it never seized the same person twice, so as to prove actually fatal. And such persons were felicitated by others; and themselves, in the excess of their present joy, entertained for the future also, to a certain degree, a vain hope that they would never now be carried off even by any other disease.
In addition to the original calamity, what oppressed them still more was the crowding into the city from the country, especially the newcomers. For as they had no houses, but lived in stifling cabins at the hot season of the year, the mortality amongst them spread without restraint; bodies lying on one another in the death agony, and half-dead creatures rolling about in the streets and round all the fountains, in their longing for water. The sacred places also in which they had quartered themselves, were full of the corpses of those that died there in them: for in the surpassing violence of the calamity, men not knowing what was to become of them, came to disregard everything, both sacred and profane, alike. And all the laws were violated which they before observed respecting burials; and they buried them as each one could. And many from want of proper means, in consequence of so many of their friends having died, had recourse to shameless modes of sepulture; for on the piles prepared for others, some, anticipating those who had raised them, would lay their own dead relatives and set fire to them; and others, while the body of a stranger was burning, would throw on the top of it the one they were carrying, and go away.
In other respects also the plague was the origin of lawless conduct in the city, to a greater extent than it had before existed. For deeds which formerly men hid from view, so as not to do them just as they pleased, they now more readily ventured on; since they saw the change so sudden in the case of those who were prosperous and quickly perished, and of those who before had had nothing, and at once came into possession of the property of the dead. So they resolved to take their enjoyment quickly, and with a sole view to gratification; regarding their lives and their riches alike as things of a day. As for taking trouble about what was thought honourable, no one was forward to do it; deeming it uncertain whether, before he had attained to it, he would not be cut off; but everything that was immediately pleasant, and that which was conducive to it by any means whatever, this was laid down to be both honourable and expedient. And fear of gods, or law of men, there was none to stop them; for with regard to the former they esteemed it all the same whether they worshipped them or not, from seeing all alike perishing; and with regard to their offences against the latter, no one expected to live till judgment should be passed on him, and so to pay the penalty of them; but they thought a far heavier sentence was impending in that which had already been passed upon them; and that before it fell on them, it was right to have some enjoyment of life.
Such was the calamity which the Athenians had met with, and by which they were afflicted, their men dying within the city, and their land being wasted without. In their misery they remembered this verse amongst other things, as was natural they should; the old men saying that it had been uttered long ago:
“A Dorian war shall come, and plague with it.”
Now there was a dispute amongst them, and some asserted that it was not “a plague” (loimos), that had been mentioned in the verse by the men of former times, but “a famine” (limos): the opinion, however, at the present time naturally prevailed that “a plague” had been mentioned: for men adapted their recollections to what they were suffering. But, I suppose, in case of another Dorian war ever befalling them after this, and a famine happening to exist, in all probability they will recite the verse accordingly. Those who were acquainted with it recollected also the oracle given to the Lacedæmonians, when on their inquiring of the god whether they should go to war, he answered, “that if they carried it on with all their might, they would gain the victory; and that he would himself take part with them in it.” With regard to the oracle then, they supposed that what was happening answered to it. For the disease had begun immediately after the Lacedæmonians had made their incursion; and it did not go into the Peloponnesus, worth even speaking of, but ravaged Athens most of all, and next to it the most populous of the other towns. Such were the circumstances that occurred in connection with the plague.
The Peloponnesians, after ravaging the plain, passed into the Paralian territory, as it is called, as far as Laurium, where the gold mines of the Athenians are situated. And first they ravaged the side which looks towards Peloponnesus; afterwards, that which lies towards Eubœa and Andros. Pericles being general at that time as well as before, maintained the same opinion as he had in the former invasion, about the Athenians not marching out against them.
While they were still in the plain, before they went to the Paralian territory, he was preparing an armament of a hundred ships to sail against the Peloponnesus; and when all was ready, he put out to sea. On board the ships he took four thousand heavy-armed of the Athenians, and three hundred cavalry in horse transports, then for the first time made out of old vessels: a Chian and Lesbian force also joined the expedition with fifty ships. When this armament of the Athenians put out to sea, they left the Peloponnesians in the Paralian territory of Attica. On arriving at Epidaurus, in the Peloponnesus, they ravaged the greater part of the land, and having made an assault on the city, entertained some hope of taking it; but did not, however, succeed. After sailing from Epidaurus, they ravaged the land belonging to Trœzen, Haliœ, and Hermione; all which places are on the coast of the Peloponnesus. Proceeding thence they came to Prasiæ, a maritime town of Laconia, and ravaged some of the land, and took the town itself, and sacked it. After performing these achievements, they returned home; and found the Peloponnesians no longer in Attica, but returned.
Now all the time that the Peloponnesians were in the Athenian territory, and the Athenians were engaged in the expedition on board their ships, the plague was carrying them off both in the armament and in the city, so that it was even said that the Peloponnesians, for fear of the disorder, when they heard from the deserters that it was in the city, and also perceived them performing the funeral rites, retired the quicker from the country. Yet in this invasion they stayed the longest time, and ravaged the whole country: for they were about forty days in the Athenian territory.
The same summer Hagnon, son of Nicias, and Cleopompus, son of Clinias, who were colleagues with Pericles, took the army which he had employed, and went straightway on an expedition against the Chalcidians Thrace-ward, and Potidæa, which was still being besieged: and on their arrival they brought up their engines against Potidæa, and endeavoured to take it by every means. But they neither succeeded in capturing the city, nor in their other measures, to any extent worthy of their preparations: for the plague attacked them, and this indeed utterly overpowered them there, wasting their force to such a degree, that even the soldiers of the Athenians who were there before were infected with it by the troops which came with Hagnon, though previously they had been in good health. Phormion, however, and his sixteen hundred, were no longer in the neighbourhood of the Chalcidians (and so escaped its ravages). Hagnon therefore returned with his ships to Athens, having lost by the plague fifteen hundred out of four thousand heavy-armed, in about forty days. The soldiers who were there before still remained in the country, and continued the siege of Potidæa.
After the second invasion of the Lacedæmonians, the Athenians, when their land had been again ravaged, and the disease and the war were afflicting them at the same time, changed their views, and found fault with Pericles, thinking that he had persuaded them to go to war, and that it was through him that they had met with their misfortunes; and they were eager to come to terms with the Lacedæmonians. Indeed they sent ambassadors to them, but did not succeed in their object. And their minds being on all sides reduced to despair, they were violent against Pericles. He therefore, seeing them irritated by their present circumstances, and doing everything that he himself expected them to do, called an assembly, (for he was still general) wishing to cheer them, and by drawing off the irritation of their feelings to lead them to a calmer and more confident state of mind.
The Lacedæmonians and their allies the same summer made an expedition with a hundred ships against the island of Zacynthus, which lies over against Elis. The inhabitants are a colony of the Achæans of the Peloponnesus, and were in alliance with the Athenians. On board the fleet were a thousand heavy-armed of the Lacedæmonians, and Cnemus, a Spartan, as admiral. Having made a descent on the country, they ravaged the greater part of it; and when they did not surrender, they sailed back home.
At the end of the same summer, Aristeus, a Corinthian, Aneristus, Nicolaus, and Stratodemus, ambassadors of the Lacedæmonians, Timagoras, a Tegean, and Pollis, an Argive in a private capacity, being on their way to Asia, to obtain an interview with the king, if by any means they might prevail on him to supply money and join in the war, went first to Thrace, to Sitalces the son of Teres, wishing to persuade him, if they could, to withdraw from his alliance with the Athenians. He gave orders to deliver them up to the Athenian ambassadors; who, having received them, took them to Athens. On their arrival the Athenians, being afraid that if Aristeus escaped he might do them still more mischief (for even before this he had evidently conducted all the measures in Potidæa and their possessions Thrace-ward) without giving them a trial, though they requested to say something in their own defence, put them to death that same day, and threw them into pits; thinking it but just to requite them in the same way as the Lacedæmonians had begun with; for they had killed and thrown into pits the merchants, both of the Athenians and their allies, whom they had taken on board trading vessels about the coast of the Peloponnesus. Indeed all that the Lacedæmonians took on the sea at the beginning of the war, they butchered as enemies, both those who were confederates of the Athenians and those who were neutral.
The following winter, the Athenians sent twenty ships round the Peloponnese, with Phormion as commander, who, making Naupactus his station, kept watch that no one either sailed out from Corinth and the Crissæan Bay, or into it. Another squadron of six they sent towards Caria and Lycia, with Melesander as commander, to raise money from those parts, and to hinder the privateers of the Peloponnesians from making that their rendezvous, and interfering with the navigation of the merchantmen from Phaselis and Phœnicia, and the continent in that direction. But Melesander, having gone up the country into Lycia with a force composed of the Athenians from the ships and the allies, and being defeated in a battle, was killed, and lost a considerable part of the army.
The same winter, when the Potidæans could no longer hold out against their besiegers, the inroads of the Peloponnesians into Attica having had no more effect towards causing the Athenians to withdraw, and their provisions being exhausted, and many other horrors having befallen them in their straits for food, and some having even eaten one another; under these circumstances, they made proposals for a capitulation to the generals of the Athenians who were in command against them, Xenophon, son of Euripides, Histiodorus, son of Aristoclides, and Phanomachus, son of Callimachus; who accepted them, seeing the distress of their army in so exposed a position, and the state having already expended 2000 talents [£400,000 or $2,000,000] on the siege. On these terms therefore they came to an agreement; that themselves, their children, wives, and auxiliaries, should go out of the place with one dress each—but the women with two—and with a fixed sum of money for their journey. According to this treaty, they went out to Chalcidice, or where each could: but the Athenians blamed the generals for having come to an agreement without consulting them; for they thought they might have got possession of the place on their own terms; and afterwards they sent settlers of their own to Potidæa and colonised it. These were the transactions of the winter; and so ended the second year of this war.[c]
LAST PUBLIC SPEECH OF PERICLES
In his capacity of strategus, Pericles convoked a formal assembly of the people, for the purpose of vindicating himself publicly against the prevailing sentiment, and recommending perseverance in his line of policy. The speeches made by his opponents, assuredly very bitter, are not given by Thucydides; but that of Pericles himself is set down at considerable length, and a memorable discourse it is. It strikingly brings into relief both the character of the man and the impress of actual circumstances—an impregnable mind conscious not only of right purposes but of just and reasonable anticipations, and bearing up with manliness, or even defiance, against the natural difficulty of the case, heightened by an extreme of incalculable misfortune. He had foreseen, while advising the war originally, the probable impatience of his countrymen under its first hardships, but he could not foresee the epidemic by which that impatience had been exasperated into madness; and he now addressed them not merely with unabated adherence to his own deliberate convictions, but also in a tone of reproachful remonstrance against their unmerited change of sentiment towards him—seeking at the same time to combat that uncontrolled despair which, for the moment, overlaid both their pride and their patriotism. Far from humbling himself before the present sentiment, it is at this time that he sets forth his titles to their esteem in the most direct and unqualified manner, and claims the continuance of that which they had so long accorded, as something belonging to him by acquired right.
His main object, throughout this discourse, is to fill the minds of his audience with patriotic sympathy for the weal of the entire city, so as to counterbalance the absorbing sense of private woe. If the collective city flourishes (he argues), private misfortunes may at least be borne: but no amount of private prosperity will avail, if the collective city falls (a proposition literally true in ancient times and under the circumstances of ancient warfare—though less true at present). “Distracted by domestic calamity, ye are now angry both with me who advised you to go to war, and with yourselves who followed the advice. Ye listened to me, considering me superior to others in judgment, in speech, in patriotism, and in incorruptible probity—nor ought I now to be treated as culpable for giving such advice, when in point of fact the war was unavoidable and there would have been still greater danger in shrinking from it. I am the same man, still unchanged—but ye in your misfortunes cannot stand to the convictions which ye adopt when yet unhurt. Extreme and unforeseen, indeed, are the sorrows which have fallen upon you: yet inhabiting as ye do a great city and brought up in dispositions suitable to it, ye must also resolve to bear up against the utmost pressure of adversity, and never to surrender your dignity. I have often explained to you that ye have no reason to doubt of eventual success in the war, but I will now remind you, more emphatically than before, and even with a degree of ostentation suitable as a stimulus to your present unnatural depression—that your naval force makes you masters not only of your allies, but of the entire sea—one-half of the visible field for action and employment. Compared with so vast a power as this, the temporary use of your houses and territory is a mere trifle—an ornamental accessory not worth considering: and this too, if ye preserve your freedom, ye will quickly recover. It was your fathers who first gained this empire, without any of the advantages which ye now enjoy; ye must not disgrace yourselves by losing what they acquired. Delighting as ye all do in the honour and empire enjoyed by the city, ye must not shrink from the toils whereby alone that honour is sustained: moreover ye now fight, not merely for freedom instead of slavery, but for empire against loss of empire, with all the perils arising out of imperial unpopularity. It is not safe for you now to abdicate, even if ye chose to do so; for ye hold your empire like a despotism—unjust perhaps in the original acquisition, but ruinous to part with when once acquired. Be not angry with me, whose advice ye followed in going to war, because the enemy have done such damage as might be expected from them; still less on account of this unforeseen distemper: I know that this makes me an object of your special present hatred, though very unjustly, unless ye will consent to give me credit also of any unexpected good luck which may occur. Our city derives its particular glory from unshaken bearing up against misfortune: her power, her name, her empire of Greeks over Greeks, are such as have never before been seen: and if we choose to be great, we must take the consequence of that temporary envy and hatred which is the necessary price of permanent renown. Behave ye now in a manner worthy of that glory; display that courage which is essential to protect you against disgrace at present, as well as to guarantee your honour for the future. Send no further embassy to Sparta, and bear your misfortunes without showing symptoms of distress.”
The irresistible reason, as well as the proud and resolute bearing of this discourse, set forth with an eloquence which it was not possible for Thucydides to reproduce—together with the age and character of Pericles—carried the assent of the assembled people; who, when in the Pnyx and engaged according to habit on public matters, would for a moment forget their private sufferings in considerations of the safety and grandeur of Athens. Possibly indeed, those sufferings, though still continuing, might become somewhat alleviated when the invaders quitted Attica, and when it was no longer indispensable for all the population to confine itself within the walls. Accordingly, the assembly resolved that no further propositions should be made for peace, and that the war should be prosecuted with vigour. But though the public resolution thus adopted showed the ancient habit of deference to the authority of Pericles, the sentiments of individuals taken separately were still those of anger against him as the author of that system which had brought them into so much distress. His political opponents—Cleon, Simmias, or Lacratidas, perhaps all three in conjunction—took care to provide an opportunity for this prevalent irritation to manifest itself in act, by bringing an accusation against him before the dicastery. The accusation is said to have been preferred on the ground of pecuniary malversation, and ended by his being sentenced to pay a considerable fine, fifteen, fifty, or eighty talents, according to different authors.[51]
The accusing party thus appeared to have carried their point, and to have disgraced, as well as excluded from re-election, the veteran statesman. But the event disappointed their expectations. The imposition of the fine not only satiated all the irritation of the people against him, but even occasioned a serious reaction in his favour, and brought back as strongly as ever the ancient sentiment of esteem and admiration. It was quickly found that those who had succeeded Pericles as generals neither possessed nor deserved in an equal degree the public confidence and he was accordingly soon re-elected, with as much power and influence as he had ever in his life enjoyed.
But that life, long, honourable, and useful, had already been prolonged considerably beyond the sixtieth year, and there were but too many circumstances, besides the recent fine, which tended to hasten as well as to embitter its close. At the very moment when Pericles was preaching to his countrymen, in a tone almost reproachful, the necessity of manful and unabated devotion to the common country, in the midst of private suffering—he was himself among the greatest of sufferers, and most hardly pressed to set the example of observing his own precepts. The epidemic carried off not merely his two sons (the only two legitimate, Xanthippus and Paralus), but also his sister, several other relatives, and his best and most useful political friends. Amidst this train of domestic calamities, and in the funeral obsequies of so many of his dearest friends, he remained master of his grief, and maintained his habitual self command, until the last misfortune—the death of his favourite son Paralus, which left his house without any legitimate representative to maintain the family and the hereditary sacred rites. On this final blow, though he strove to command himself as before, yet at the obsequies of the young man, when it became his duty to place a wreath on the dead body, his grief became uncontrollable, and he burst out, for the first time in his life, into profuse tears and sobbing.
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 towards him, and his re-election 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 towards 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 Alcmæonid 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 towards the city. Accordingly, permission was granted to Pericles to legitimise, and to inscribe in his own gens and phratry, his natural son by Aspasia, who bore his own name.
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.
The internal political changes at Athens, respecting the Areopagus and the dicasteries, took place when Pericles was a young man, and when he cannot be supposed to have yet acquired the immense personal weight which afterwards belonged to him (Ephialtes in fact seems in those early days to have been a greater man than Pericles, if we may judge by the fact that he was selected by his political adversaries for assassination)—so that they might with greater propriety be ascribed to the party with which Pericles was connected, rather than to that statesman himself. But next, we have no reason to presume that Thucydides considered these changes as injurious, or as having deteriorated the Athenian character. All that he does say as to the working of Pericles on the sentiment and actions of his countrymen is eminently favourable.
Though Thucydides does not directly canvass the constitutional changes effected in Athens under Pericles, yet everything which he does say leads us to believe that he accounted the working of that statesman, upon the whole, on Athenian power as well as on Athenian character, eminently valuable, and his death as an irreparable loss. And we may thus appeal to the judgment of an historian who is our best witness in every conceivable respect, as a valid reply to the charge against Pericles of having corrupted the Athenian habits, character, and government. If he spent a large amount of the public treasure upon religious edifices and ornaments, and upon stately works for the city—yet the sum which he left untouched, ready for use at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, was such as to appear more than sufficient for all purposes of defence, or public safety, or military honour. It cannot be shown of Pericles that he ever sacrificed the greater object to the less—the permanent and substantially valuable, to the transitory and showy—assured present possessions, to the lust of new, distant, or uncertain conquests. If his advice had been listened to, the rashness which brought on the defeat of the Athenian Tolmides at Coronea in Bœotia would have been avoided, and Athens might probably have maintained her ascendency over Megara and Bœotia, which would have protected her territory from invasion, and given a new turn to the subsequent history.
Pericles is not to be treated as the author of the Athenian character: he found it with its very marked positive characteristics and susceptibilities, among which, those which he chiefly brought out and improved were the best. The lust of expeditions against the Persians, which Cimon would have pushed into Egypt and Cyprus, he repressed, after it had accomplished all which could be usefully aimed at: the ambition of Athens he moderated rather than encouraged: the democratical movement of Athens he regularised, and worked out into judicial institutions which ranked among the prominent features of Athenian life, and worked with a very large balance of benefit to the national mind as well as to the individual security, in spite of the many defects in their direct character as tribunals. But that point in which there was the greatest difference between Athens, as Pericles found it and as he left it, is unquestionably, the pacific and intellectual development—rhetoric, poetry, arts, philosophical research, and recreative variety. To which, if we add great improvement in the cultivation of the Attic soil, extension of Athenian trade, attainment and laborious maintenance of the maximum of maritime skill (attested by the battles of Phormion), enlargement of the area of complete security by construction of the Long Walls, lastly, the clothing of Athens in her imperial mantle, by ornaments architectural and sculptural—we shall make out a case of genuine progress realised during the political life of Pericles, such as the evils imputed to him, far more imaginary than real, will go but little way to alloy. How little, comparatively speaking, of the picture drawn by Pericles in his funeral harangue of 431 B.C., would have been correct, if the harangue had been delivered over those warriors who fell at Tanagra twenty-seven years before!
Taking him altogether, with his powers of thought, speech, and action, his competence civil and military, in the council as well as in the field, his vigorous and cultivated intellect, and his comprehensive ideas of a community in pacific and many-sided development, his incorruptible public morality, caution, and firmness, in a country where all those qualities were rare, and the union of them in the same individual of course much rarer—we shall find him without a parallel throughout the whole course of Grecian history.[b]
WILHELM ONCKEN’S ESTIMATE OF PERICLES
Among the important personages of antiquity, there is none on whom posterity has so fully agreed in its judgment, as on Pericles. When we meet with this name in modern works, we find but one general voice acknowledging his greatness, one voice of admiration for the unusual qualities which distinguished him.
Even the opposers of his political administration were just to him, even those who, in the great rising of Athenian democracy, saw the beginning of a splendid misery, did not deny their respect to the man, who by this development was assigned a place in the first rank. Without wishing to do so they heaped praise on him, in which we must decline to join, although we are the last to wish to rob him of his well-deserved fame. In the political revolution which resulted in the sovereignty of the constitutional demos, and in checking the ruin which only too soon followed, they credited him with so much blame and merit, as even had he divided it with Ephialtes and others, would still have surpassed the power of any mortal, though he were the greatest of the great.
Such great political events as those here mentioned, are not the work of individual men, not the act of a party, however great may be the aggregate of the particular forces it may have at command. They have their root in the nature of the conditions, in the disposition of the circumstances, in the requirements of society, in alliance with which the individual, like Antæus, derives fresh strength out of every defeat, and without which he is but rolling the stone of Sisyphus.
For such a deeply rooted change in the forms of political life in a community, whether that change be for good or evil, elementary forces are necessary which are neither subject to the command nor to the violence of the individual, which human will can neither loose nor arrest, and in the present case we have to deal with a revolution to effect which the agitators employed but a single lever, a single weapon, the convincing word, the power of oratory, the weight of reason.
Also the advent of the internal decay which, as is supposed, followed so rapidly on the violent exertion of the power of the Athenian mob at home, would not, had the times really been ripe for it, have awaited the death of Pericles, an event usually regarded, in flattering enough recognition of the greatness of the man, as the thunderbolt which struck and came to set fire to the heaped-up seeds of corruption.
But the unsought-for praise which springs from this misunderstanding again strikingly proves how universally spread, how deeply rooted is the respect of posterity for this one great Athenian. It is remarkable, however, that his immediate and more remote contemporaries, held an opinion quite different. In examining their judgments on this statesman, we see that with all the deplorable incompleteness of tradition an almost complete unanimity of opinion is found, but this unanimity is not for, but against, Pericles. To our great surprise we discover that the most diverse channels which voiced public opinion, the most various representatives of the universal judgment, seem to have entered into a regular conspiracy against the memory of this man, against the fame of his public and of his personal character.
Highly gifted comic poets such as Cratinus and Eupolis, not to mention others, frivolous anecdote-mongers such as Stesimbrotus of Thasos and Idomeneus of Lampsacus, rhetorical historians like Ephorus, whom Diodorus follows, and earnest philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, are unanimous in repudiating and condemning Pericles. One would understand if they satisfied themselves with a truly Greek disparagement of his great qualities, and exaggeration of his defects, although one might wonder at the unanimity of this proceeding: but they do not stop at this; some at least even go so far as to stamp Pericles as a criminal.
Idomeneus of Lampsacus reproached him with an assassination of the worst kind, committed on his true friend and confederate Ephialtes. Ephorus accused him of embezzling public money and of extensive thefts of public property entrusted to his administration; and comparatively speaking Plato’s judgment is mild, when he consigns him to the ranks of those common demagogues who are not particular as to their means of fraudulently obtaining the favour of the populace. And Aristotle who had cleared him of many serious accusations does not admit him among the statesmen and patriots of the highest rank, but gives preference to such men as Nicias, Thucydides, and even Theramenes.
The reason of this extraordinary fact lies in the partisan spirit which though notorious is not always rightly estimated, and by which the overwhelming majority of the Greek writers whose works have come down to us were animated against the Athenian democracy, so that the champion of popular government which they condemned in principle, cannot possibly find favour in their sight.
On what then does the judgment of posterity repose, a judgment that is in direct opposition to such an imposing number of authorities? Is it a conjecture to which a tacit agreement of competent judges gave a legal authority? Is it the result of an arbitrary process which on grounds of innate probability and by an undisputed verdict clears the historical kernel of all the dross with which the hate and envy, mistakes and calumnies of contemporaries had surrounded it? Or if this judgment is based on the authentic foundation of evidence, is it surely not merely commended, by its innate rectitude, but also confirmed by an unequivocal testimony?
The latter is the case. Our judgment of Pericles is based on the immovable foundation of a testimony which stands alone, not only in this respect but also in the whole of Greek literature, the testimony of Thucydides. It is to Thucydides that his greatest contemporary owes the honour accorded to his name by posterity. His summing up amounts to this: Pericles owes the authoritative position which he occupies in the Athenian state, neither to cunning nor force, but exclusively to the trust of his fellow citizens: their trust in the tried greatness of his spirit, the universally recognised purity of his character, the immovable firmness of his will.
He stood, in truth, above the people, whom he ruled as a prince; raised even above the suspicion of dishonesty, raised above the reproach of cringing submissiveness, he stood firm in his superior influence on the resolution of the multitude, because he had not gained possession of it by the employment of unseemly means, but through the esteem of the citizens for his aptitude for government. He did not give way to the pressure of the changing fancies and moods of the moment. He met the anger of the multitude with unflinching pride, he brought the insolent to their senses, and encouraged the faint hearted to self-confidence. It was a democracy in appearance only, in deed and truth it was the rule of an individual man, of the greatest of the great, over the people.[e]
FOOTNOTES
[49] At the same time a plague was raging in Rome. The pestilence is believed to have been carried along the Carthaginian trade routes. It brought the population of Athens from 100,000 down below 80,000.
[50] According to Grote, “Diodorus mentions similar distresses in the Carthaginian army besieging Syracuse, during the terrible epidemic with which it was attacked in 395 B.C.; and Livy, respecting the epidemic at Syracuse when it was besieged by Marcellus and the Romans.”
[51] Bury[d] says: “He was found guilty of ‘theft’ to the trifling amount of five talents; the verdict was a virtual acquittal, though he had to pay a fine of ten times the amount.” But as an Attic talent was equal to £200 or $1000, the theft of five talents was hardly trifling and a fine of £10,000 or $50,000 was a rather unsatisfactory “acquittal.”
[52] “Pericles,” says Plutarch,[h] “undoubtedly deserved admiration, not only for the candour and moderation which he ever retained, amidst the distractions of business and the rage of his enemies, but for that noble sentiment which led him to think it his most excellent attainment, never to have given way to envy or anger, notwithstanding the greatness of his power, nor to have nourished an implacable hatred against his greatest foe. In my opinion, this one thing, I mean his mild and dispassionate behaviour, his unblemished integrity and irreproachable conduct during his whole administration, makes his appellation of Olympius, which would otherwise be vain and absurd, no longer exceptionable; nay, gives it a propriety.”
Greek War Galley