“Here it is.”
The mourning mother lingered: “We shall all meet again some day, shall we not? And then as friends—you, she, and he who is gone before to prepare a dwelling for the hearts which are separated by the narrow laws of life.”
Pericles and Socrates wandered in the avenue of plane-trees below the Hemicyklion, and conversed together.
“Phidias has been acquitted of theft, but re-arrested on the charge of blaspheming the gods of the State.”
“Arrested? Phidias!”
“They say that he has represented me and himself in Athene’s shield.”
“That is the mob’s doing, which hates all greatness! Anaxagoras banished because he was too wise; Aristides banished because he was too just; Themistocles, Pausanias.... What did you do, Pericles, when you gave the people power?”
“What was lawful and right. I fall certainly by my own sword, but honourably. I go about and am dying piecemeal, like Athens. Did we know that we adorned our statues for a funeral procession? that we were weaving our own shrouds? that the choruses of our tragedies were dirges?”
“Athens is dying—yes! But of what?”