The historians and philosophers.
The age of Pericles was also adorned by great historians and philosophers. Herodotus and Thucydides have never been surpassed as historians, while the Sophists who succeeded the more earnest philosophers of a previous age, gave to Athenian youth a severe intellectual training. Rhetoric, mathematics and natural history supplanted speculation, led to the practice of eloquence as an art, and gave to society polish and culture. The Sophists can not indeed be compared with those great men who preceded or succeeded them in philosophical wisdom, but their influence in educating the Grecian mind, and creating polished men of society, can not be disproved. Politics became a profession in the democratic State, which demanded the highest culture, and an extensive acquaintance with the principles of moral and political science. This was the age of lectures, when students voluntarily assembled to learn from the great masters of thought that knowledge which would enable them to rise in a State where the common mind was well instructed.
Athens declines in moral power.
But it must also be admitted that while the age of Pericles furnished an extraordinary stimulus to the people, in art, in literature, in political science, and in popular institutions, the great teachers of the day inculcated a selfish morality, and sought an æsthetic enjoyment irrespective of high moral improvement, and the inevitable result was the rapid degeneracy of Athens, and the decline even in political influence, and strength, as was seen in the superior power of Sparta in the great contest to which the two leading States of Greece were hurried by their jealousies and animosities. The prosperity was delusive and outside; for no intellectual [pg 249] triumph, no glories of art, no fascinations of literature, can balance the moral forces which are generated in self-denial and lofty public virtue.
Aspasia.
It was while the power and glory of Pericles were at their height that he formed that memorable attachment to Aspasia, a Milesian woman, which furnished a fruitful subject for the attacks of the comic poets. She was the most brilliant and intellectual woman of the age, and her house was the resort of the literary men and philosophers and artists of Athens until the death of Pericles. He formed as close a union with her as the law allowed, and her influence in creating a sympathy with intellectual excellence can not be questioned. But she was charged with pandering to the vices of Pericles, and corrupting society by her example and influence.
Latter days of Pericles. Policy of Pericles.
The latter years of Pericles were marked by the outbreak of that great war with Sparta, which crippled the power of Athens and tarnished her glories. He also was afflicted by the death of his children by the plague which devastated Athens in the early part of the Peloponnesian war, to which attention is now directed. The probity of Pericles is attested by the fact that during his long administration he added nothing to his patrimonial estate. His policy was ambitious, and if it could have been carried out, it would have been wise. He sought first to develop the resources of his country—the true aim of all enlightened statesmen—and then to make Athens the centre of Grecian civilization and political power, to which all other Stales would be secondary and subservient. But the rivalries of the Grecian States and inextinguishable jealousies would not allow this. He made Athens, indeed, the centre of cultivated life; he could not make it the centre of national unity. In attempting this he failed, and a disastrous war was the consequence.
Pericles lived long enough to see the commencement of the contest which ultimately resulted in the political ruin of Athens, and which we now present.