CHAPTER XXV
‘Tu proverai sì come sa di sale
Lo pane altrui, e com’ è duro calle
Lo scendere e il salir per l’altrui scale.’
Dante: Par., xvii.
‘Thou shalt find how salt doth taste another’s bread,
How hard the way is up and down another’s stairs.’
In the course of this story we have had to watch the hero of it assailed by many temptations. We have seen him give way to some which many of us think we should have overcome, and overcome others to which most of us would certainly have given way. This that stood before him now, beckoning him, as it were, with wizard hand, was the greatest of them all, and came in most specious shape. All his life he had desired to excel. As a boy, and as a young man, his greater gifts had enabled him to excel and rule his compeers. The desire for pre-eminence and command had not grown less as, in his maturer years, he had found that his proper place was at their head, and that the others ceded that position to him as of right. Yet in his most ambitious moods there had not come to him the thought that he should ever rule alone, supreme, in Athens.
He had supposed that he might one day fill the place of Perikles, but to a democratic Greek the thought of usurping the sole power was almost an impossibility. And yet the urgency with which the offer came, the power and the numbers of those who made it, assured him he had only to consent, and he would be proclaimed ruler, not merely without any dangerous protest, but with the enthusiastic joy of nearly all the people. He believed, too, and not without good grounds, that this would be for the immediate good of Athens. He saw the clouds that were gathering round the state, the incapacity of the present form of government to contend against the combined power of Persia and Sparta. He knew that his own strong personal influence with one important satrap was unbounded, whenever he chose to exercise it. He believed that he had made some progress in the confidence and respect of another. The embassy now on its way to Susa might bring back to him, if he still held the reins of power, the pledged alliance of the Persian king. He knew that one strong arm, and one strong will, at the head of all, and wielding despotic power, alone could grapple with the situation, and stave off the threatening danger. His belief was justified by the event. Here was a great temptation.