To Plutarch are we indebted for much of our knowledge of Pericles, and fortunately we are in position to verify most of Plutarch's gossipy chronicles.
The vanishing-point of time is seen in that Plutarch refers to Pericles as an "ancient"; and through the mist of years it hardly seems possible that between Plutarch and Pericles is a period of five hundred years. Plutarch resided in Greece when Paul was at Athens, Corinth and other Grecian cities. Later, Plutarch was at Miletus, about the time Saint Paul stopped there on his way to Rome to be tried for blasphemy—the same offense committed by Socrates, and a sin charged, too, against Pericles. Nature punishes for most sins, but sacrilege, heresy and blasphemy are not in her calendar, so man has to look after them. Plutarch visited Patmos where Saint John was exiled and where he wrote the Book of Revelation. Plutarch was also at "Malta by the Sea," where Saint Paul was shipwrecked; but so far as we know, he never heard of Paul nor of Him of whom, upon Mars Hill, Paul preached.
Paul bears testimony that at Athens the people spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. They were curious as children, and had to be diverted and amused. They were the same people that Pericles had diverted, amused and used—used without their knowing it, five hundred years before.
The gentle and dignified Anaxagoras, who abandoned all his property to the State that he might be free to devote himself to thought, was the first and best teacher of Pericles. Under his tutorship—better, the companionship of this noble man—Pericles acquired that sublime self-restraint, that intellectual breadth, that freedom from superstition, which marked his character.
Superstitions are ossified metaphors, and back of every religious fallacy lies a truth. The gods of Greece were once men who fought their valiant fight and lived their day; the supernatural is the natural not yet understood—it is the natural seen through the mist of one, two, three, ten or twenty-five hundred years, when things loom large and out of proportion—and all these things were plain to Pericles. Yet he kept his inmost belief to himself, and let the mob believe whate'er it list. Morley's book on "Compromise" would not have appealed much to Pericles—his answer would have been, "A man must do what he can, and not what he would." Yet he was no vulgar demagog truckling to the caprices of mankind, nor was he a tyrant who pitted his will against the many and subdued by a show of arms. For thirty years he kept peace at home, and if this peace was once or twice cemented by an insignificant foreign war, he proved thereby that he was abreast of Napoleon, who said, "The cure for civil dissension is war abroad." Pericles stands alone in his success as a statesman. It was Thomas Brackett Reed, I believe, who said, "A statesman is a politician who is dead."
And this is a sober truth, for, to reveal the statesman, perspective is required.
Pericles built and maintained a State, and he did it, as every statesman must, by recognizing and binding to him ability. It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test. While Pericles lived, there also lived Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Pythagoras, Socrates, Herodotus, Zeno, Hippocrates, Pindar, Empedocles and Democritus. Such a galaxy of stars has never been seen before nor since—unless we have it now—and Pericles was their one central sun.
Pericles was great in many ways—great as an orator, musician, philosopher, politician, financier, and great and wise as a practical leader. Lovers of beauty are apt to be dreamers, but this man had the ability to plan, devise, lay out work and carry it through to a successful conclusion. He infused others with his own animation, and managed to set a whole cityful of lazy people building a temple grander far in its rich simplicity than the world had ever seen. By his masterly eloquence and the magic of his presence, Pericles infused the Greeks with a passion for beauty and a desire to create. And no man can inspire others with the desire to create who has not taken sacred fire from the altar of the gods. The creative genius is the highest gift vouchsafed to man, and wherein man is likest God. The desire to create does not burn the heart of the serf, and only free people can respond to the greatest power ever given to any First Citizen.
In beautifying the city there was a necessity for workers in stone, brass, iron, ivory, gold, silver and wood. Six thousand of the citizens were under daily pay as jurors, to be called upon if their services were needed; most of the other male adults were soldiers. Through the genius of Pericles and his generals these men were set to work as masons, carpenters, braziers, goldsmiths, painters and sculptors. Talent was discovered where before it was supposed there was none; music found a voice; playwriters discovered actors; actors found an audience; and philosophy had a hearing. A theater was built, carved almost out of solid stone, that seated ten thousand people, and on the stage there was often heard a chorus of a thousand voices. Physical culture developed the perfect body so that the Greek forms of that time are today the despair of the human race. The recognition of the sacredness of the temple of the soul was taught as a duty; and to make the body beautiful by right exercise and by right life became a science. The sculptor must have models approaching perfection, and the exhibition of the sculptor's work, together with occasional public religious processions of naked youths, kept before the people ideals superb and splendid.