The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 03

by Unknown

This is not the opportunity, however, for trying to distinguish the good from the evil in the working of the sophists and rhetors. At present it is enough that they were the natural product of the age; supplying those wants, and answering to that stimulus, which arose partly from the deliberations of the ecclesia, but still more from the contentions before the dicastery—in which latter a far greater number of citizens took active part, with or without their own consent. The public and frequent dicasteries constituted by Pericles opened to the Athenian mind precisely that career of improvement which was best suited to its natural aptitude. They were essential to the development of that demand out of which grew not only Grecian oratory, but also, as secondary products, the speculative moral and political philosophy, and the didactic analysis of rhetoric and grammar, which long survived after Grecian creative genius had passed away. And it was one of the first measures of the oligarchy of Thirty, to forbid by an express law, any teaching of the art of speaking. Aristophanes derides the Athenians for their love of talk and controversy, as if it had enfeebled their military energy; but in his time, most undoubtedly, that reproach was not true—nor did it become true, even in part, until the crushing misfortunes which marked the close of the Peloponnesian War. During the course of that war, restless and energetic action was the characteristic of Athens even in a greater degree than oratory or political discussion, though before the time of Demosthenes a material alteration had taken place.

The establishment of these paid dicasteries at Athens was thus one of the most important and prolific events in all Grecian history. The pay helped to furnish a maintenance for old citizens, past the age of military service. Elderly men were the best persons for such a service, and were preferred for judicial purposes both at Sparta and, as it seems, in heroic Greece. Nevertheless, we need not suppose that all the dicasts were either old or poor, though a considerable proportion of them were so, and though Aristophanes selects these qualities as among the most suitable subjects for his ridicule. Pericles has been often censured for this institution, as if he had been the first to insure pay to dicasts who before served for nothing, and had thus introduced poor citizens into courts previously composed of citizens above poverty. But in the first place, this supposition is not correct in point of fact, inasmuch as there were no such constant dicasteries previously acting without pay; next, if it had been true, the habitual exclusion of the poor citizens would have nullified the popular working of these bodies, and would have prevented them from answering any longer to the reigning sentiment at Athens. Nor could it be deemed unreasonable to assign a regular pay to those who thus rendered regular service. It was indeed an essential item in the whole scheme and purpose, so that the suppression of the pay of itself seems to have suspended the dicasteries, while the oligarchy of Four Hundred was established—and it can only be discussed in that light. As the fact stands, we may suppose that the six thousand heliasts who filled the dicasteries were composed of the middling and poorer citizens indiscriminately; though there was nothing to exclude the richer, if they chose to serve.[b]

PHIDIAS ACCUSED

The public works which were undertaken through the advice of Pericles were executed under his inspection; the choice of the artists employed and of the plans adopted, was probably entrusted in a great measure to his judgment; and the large sums expended on them passed through his hands. This was an office which it was scarcely possible to exercise at Athens without either exciting suspicion or giving a handle for calumny. We find that Cratinus in one of his comedies threw out some hints as to the tardiness with which Pericles carried on the third of the Long Walls which he had persuaded the people to begin. “He had been long professing to go on with it, but in fact did not stir a step.” Whether the motives to which this delay was imputed were such as to call his integrity into question, does not appear; but in time his enemies ventured openly to attack him on this ground. Yet the first blow was not aimed directly at himself, but was intended to wound him through the side of a friend. Phidias, whose genius was the ruling principle which animated and controlled every design for the ornament of the city, had been brought, as well by conformity of taste as by the nature of his engagement, into an intimate relation with Pericles. To ruin Phidias was one of the readiest means both of hurting the feelings and of shaking the credit of Pericles. If Phidias could be convicted of a fraud on the public, it would seem an unavoidable inference that Pericles had shared the profit. The ivory statue of the goddess in the Parthenon, which was enriched with massy ornaments of pure gold, appeared to offer a groundwork for a charge which could not easily be refuted. To give it the greater weight, a man named Menon, who had been employed by Phidias in some of the details of the work, was induced to seat himself in the agora with the ensigns of a suppliant, and to implore pardon of the people as the condition of revealing an offence in which he had been an accomplice with Phidias. He accused Phidias of having embezzled a part of the gold which he had received from the treasury. But this charge immediately fell to the ground through a contrivance which Pericles had adopted for a different end. The golden ornaments had been fixed on the statue in such a manner, that they could be taken off without doing it any injury, and thus afforded the means of ascertaining their exact weight. Pericles challenged the accusers of Phidias to use this opportunity of verifying their charge; but they shrank from the application of this decisive test.

Though however they were thus baffled in this part of their attempt, they were not abashed or deterred; for they had discovered another ground, which gave them a surer hold on the public mind. Some keen eye had observed two figures among those with which Phidias had represented the battle between Theseus and the Amazons on the shield of the goddess, in which it detected the portraits of the artist himself, as a bald old man, and that of Pericles in all the comeliness of his graceful person. To the religious feelings of the Athenians this mode of perpetuating the memory of individuals, by connecting their portraits with an object of public worship, appeared to violate the sanctity of the place; and it was probably also viewed as an arrogant intrusion, no less offensive to the majesty of the commonwealth. It seems as if Menon’s evidence was required even to support this charge. Phidias was committed to prison, and died there. The informer, who was a foreigner, was rewarded with certain immunities; and, as one who in the service of the state had provoked a powerful enemy, was placed by a formal decree under the protection of the Ten Generals.

ASPASIA AT THE BAR

This success emboldened the enemies of Pericles to proceed. They had not indeed established any of their accusations; but they had sounded the disposition of the people, and found that it might be inspired with distrust and jealousy of its powerful minister, or that it was not unwilling to see him humbled. They seem now to have concerted a plan for attacking him, both directly and indirectly, in several quarters at once; and they began with a person in whose safety he felt as much concern as in his own, and who could not be ruined without involving him in the like calamity.

This was the celebrated Aspasia, who had long attracted almost as much of the public attention at Athens as Pericles himself. She was a native of Miletus, which was early and long renowned as a school for the cultivation of female graces. She had come, it would seem, as an adventurer to Athens, and by the combined charms of her person, manners, and conversation, won the affections and the esteem of Pericles. Her station had freed her from the restraints which custom laid on the education of the Athenian matron: and she had enriched her mind with accomplishments which were rare even among the men. Her acquaintance with Pericles seems to have begun while he was still united to a lady of high birth, before the wife of the wealthy Hipponicus. We can hardly doubt that it was Aspasia who first disturbed this union, though it is said to have been dissolved by mutual consent. But after parting from his wife, who had borne him two sons, Pericles attached himself to Aspasia by the most intimate relation which the laws permitted him to contract with a foreign woman; and she acquired an ascendency over him, which soon became notorious, and furnished the comic poets with an inexhaustible fund of ridicule, and his enemies with a ground for serious charges. On the stage she was the Hera of the Athenian Zeus, the Omphale, or the Dejanira of an enslaved or a faithless Hercules. The Samian War was ascribed to her interposition on behalf of her birthplace; and rumours were set afloat which represented her as ministering to the vices of Pericles by the most odious and degrading of offices. There was perhaps as little foundation for this report, as for a similar one in which Phidias was implicated; though among all the imputations brought against Pericles this is that which it is the most difficult clearly to refute.

But we are inclined to believe that it may have arisen from the peculiar nature of Aspasia’s private circles, which, with a bold neglect of established usage, were composed not only of the most intelligent and accomplished men to be found at Athens, but also of matrons, who it is said were brought by their husbands, to listen to her conversation; which must have been highly instructive as well as brilliant, since Plato did not hesitate to describe her as the preceptress of Socrates, and to assert that she both formed the rhetoric of Pericles, and composed one of his most admired harangues. The innovation which drew women of free birth, and good condition, into her company for such a purpose, must, even where the truth was understood, have surprised and offended many; and it was liable to the grossest misconstruction. And if her female friends were sometimes seen watching the progress of the works of Phidias, it was easy, through his intimacy with Pericles, to connect this fact with a calumny of the same kind.