Bruckmann
payment of soldiers and sailors, payment to enable the poor to attend the theatre. He was, in short, what we should now call a Socialist. Abroad he was the advocate of imperial expansion by land as well as sea. He was for keeping a tight hold over the “allies,” and he justified the appropriation of their subscriptions to the private purposes of Athens. He had apparently come into power over Kimon’s shoulders as the advocate of hostility to Sparta. The Peloponnesian War was of his making. There is much in this sketch of his policy which displeases us. But there was something in the personality of Pericles which made even critics like Thucydides venerate his name, while they execrated the men who carried on precisely the same line of policy after his death. This was his idealistic patriotism, free from all sordid and selfish motives. He believed in Athenian liberty, and he was prepared to extend it by force if necessary. This illogical and paradoxical state of mind is common to idealists; we ourselves have our pugnacious “pacifists,” our churches prepared to extend the Gospel of Peace by the sword.
Conflict with Sparta was inevitable. Athens was constantly treading on her toes in various parts of Greece. She was an upstart rival aspiring openly to the foremost place in Hellas. That being so, we have no need to inquire closely into the occasion of the great war which filled the latter quarter of the century from 431 to 404, and ended in the humiliating defeat of Athens. In any case the causes of it must be sought much earlier in the century, since Athens and Sparta had long been subsisting on terms of truce only.
The main features of the Peloponnesian War, which forms the theme of the great history of Thucydides, may be briefly stated. Almost before it began Athens had to surrender all her claims to land empire. That had been a mistake from the first, for Athens could never turn out a hoplite line fit to stand against the Spartan charge. The strategy of Pericles, dictated by necessity, was to retire within the walls of the city, relying upon the fleet to keep communications open and effect reprisals on the enemy. The weakness of this strategy lay in the fact that no fleet could touch Sparta, and that it put a very serious strain on the rural population of Attica, who had to desert their homes and see their crops ravaged in yearly forays from Sparta. That state of affairs led to a disastrous plague at Athens, and to a feeling of bitterness against Pericles which darkened his closing years. He died two years after the war began, and his place was taken by Cleon, who walked in his footsteps as democrat and imperialist, but, lacking his lofty personality and high birth, has come very badly out of the hands of history and literature. Aristophanes’ perpetual appellation of “tanner” directed against him probably has its point in the fact that he openly represented commercial interests. He was responsible for the shocking decree which condemned all the male inhabitants of Mitylene to death in punishment of their revolt, a decree which was repented and repealed at the eleventh hour, and he was a frequent obstacle to peace. But there is no ground for charging him with selfishness or dishonesty, and he was certainly not devoid of talent. He should be credited with the most brilliant achievement of the Athenian campaign, the taking of Sphacteria and its Spartan garrison.
It would seem that the war might have gone on for ever, but for the insane ambition of the Athenian democracy, which led her to despatch a huge fleet in 415 to Sicily for the subjugation of that island. It was the hare-brained scheme of that good-looking rascal Alcibiades. No one except Socrates could refuse him anything, much less the mass meetings on the Athenian Pnyx. So Athens squandered two great expeditions on an enterprise undertaken in ignorance and entrusted to inefficient commanders. With all her reserves, she just managed to fit out a new fleet and gain a few more sea-fights, but the end could not be long delayed. At last an Athenian admiral was caught napping at Ægospotami. There were no more ships, no more money in the treasury. After a brief siege Athens capitulated to Lysander in 404.
Such in briefest outline is the historical content of the Great Century, and such is the story of the first of European empires. What bearing has it upon our original inquiry as to the causes of the artistic and intellectual brilliance of the fifth century? We have, to start with, a people singularly endowed by Nature with quick intelligence and a marvellous sense of form. The Persian wars and the rise of Athens had added to these natural advantages a passion of pride in their city and an almost fanatical belief in her mission. Thus all her citizens were eager to do their utmost to increase the beauty and honour of the violet-crowned city and her virgin goddess. A city-state makes a much more direct appeal to the emotion of patriotism than the large modern territorial state. Lastly, there was freedom in Athens such as no state in history has ever enjoyed, freedom in thought as well as in politics. This has been denied, but the attacks made upon Pheidias and Pericles, and upon the philosophers Anaxagoras and Socrates, may all be explained on political grounds. We have only to look at the plays of Aristophanes to see what amazing liberty of speech prevailed at Athens. Moreover, it was a privileged and educated equality. We must never forget the thousands of slaves whose cruel toil in mine and factory rendered this brilliant society possible at such an early stage in history. It must not be forgotten that Greek liberty and communism was that of an aristocracy, however democratic might be the relations between its members. Thus you have at Athens a large citizen body lifted by the state above all sordid cares and interests, living a very full social life in the open air, with everything to stimulate intellectual interests—the daily speeches and debates in law-court and Assembly, the continual festivals and dramatic exhibitions, the endless conversations in the agora, the palæstra, and the various colonnades, the daily coming and going of ships from all quarters, constant embassies from the cities of the League, visits from all the talent of Greece, just sufficient intercourse with Egypt and the East—everything to stimulate the intelligence, and yet a dominant religious or moral conviction which tended inevitably to the austerest self-restraint and abhorrence of all extravagance.
Pheidias
In the great oration over the bodies of the dead Athenian soldiers which Thucydides ascribes to Pericles the statesman is made to express his ideal of Athens. She was “the instructress of Greece.” She alone, he said, followed “culture without extravagance, and philosophy without softness.” She alone combined daring with reflection. She alone welcomed strangers, and, while reverencing the gods and the laws, permitted freedom of speech and conscience to all men. He congratulated her upon the happiness of life at Athens, the public displays and sacrificial banquets which afforded daily delight to her inhabitants. He did not lay much stress upon the outward magnificence of the city, for that, in a large measure, was his own work. But it is that aspect of his policy which we can all appreciate, whether we are democrats or imperialists or neither or both.
Pericles himself set the example which Athens followed of encouraging talent from all quarters to devote its abilities to the service of Athens. Aspasia seems to have maintained a salon which was frequented by most of the men of genius of the day. She herself was of Miletus, and being an Ionian, was accustomed to a freedom of intellectual intercourse denied to the cloistered women of Attica. Pericles had separated by mutual consent from his wife, and though the laws did not allow him to marry a foreigner, he lived with Aspasia through most of his public career. She was a wit as well as a beauty. At her house you would meet Pheidias the sculptor, Damon the musician, Anaxagoras the philosopher, Alcibiades, and Socrates. There, we may presume, the plans for the beautification of Athens were freely discussed.