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

by Unknown

Among the important personages of antiquity, there is none on whom posterity has so fully agreed in its judgment, as on Pericles. When we meet with this name in modern works, we find but one general voice acknowledging his greatness, one voice of admiration for the unusual qualities which distinguished him.

Even the opposers of his political administration were just to him, even those who, in the great rising of Athenian democracy, saw the beginning of a splendid misery, did not deny their respect to the man, who by this development was assigned a place in the first rank. Without wishing to do so they heaped praise on him, in which we must decline to join, although we are the last to wish to rob him of his well-deserved fame. In the political revolution which resulted in the sovereignty of the constitutional demos, and in checking the ruin which only too soon followed, they credited him with so much blame and merit, as even had he divided it with Ephialtes and others, would still have surpassed the power of any mortal, though he were the greatest of the great.

Such great political events as those here mentioned, are not the work of individual men, not the act of a party, however great may be the aggregate of the particular forces it may have at command. They have their root in the nature of the conditions, in the disposition of the circumstances, in the requirements of society, in alliance with which the individual, like Antæus, derives fresh strength out of every defeat, and without which he is but rolling the stone of Sisyphus.

For such a deeply rooted change in the forms of political life in a community, whether that change be for good or evil, elementary forces are necessary which are neither subject to the command nor to the violence of the individual, which human will can neither loose nor arrest, and in the present case we have to deal with a revolution to effect which the agitators employed but a single lever, a single weapon, the convincing word, the power of oratory, the weight of reason.

Also the advent of the internal decay which, as is supposed, followed so rapidly on the violent exertion of the power of the Athenian mob at home, would not, had the times really been ripe for it, have awaited the death of Pericles, an event usually regarded, in flattering enough recognition of the greatness of the man, as the thunderbolt which struck and came to set fire to the heaped-up seeds of corruption.

But the unsought-for praise which springs from this misunderstanding again strikingly proves how universally spread, how deeply rooted is the respect of posterity for this one great Athenian. It is remarkable, however, that his immediate and more remote contemporaries, held an opinion quite different. In examining their judgments on this statesman, we see that with all the deplorable incompleteness of tradition an almost complete unanimity of opinion is found, but this unanimity is not for, but against, Pericles. To our great surprise we discover that the most diverse channels which voiced public opinion, the most various representatives of the universal judgment, seem to have entered into a regular conspiracy against the memory of this man, against the fame of his public and of his personal character.

Highly gifted comic poets such as Cratinus and Eupolis, not to mention others, frivolous anecdote-mongers such as Stesimbrotus of Thasos and Idomeneus of Lampsacus, rhetorical historians like Ephorus, whom Diodorus follows, and earnest philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, are unanimous in repudiating and condemning Pericles. One would understand if they satisfied themselves with a truly Greek disparagement of his great qualities, and exaggeration of his defects, although one might wonder at the unanimity of this proceeding: but they do not stop at this; some at least even go so far as to stamp Pericles as a criminal.

Idomeneus of Lampsacus reproached him with an assassination of the worst kind, committed on his true friend and confederate Ephialtes. Ephorus accused him of embezzling public money and of extensive thefts of public property entrusted to his administration; and comparatively speaking Plato’s judgment is mild, when he consigns him to the ranks of those common demagogues who are not particular as to their means of fraudulently obtaining the favour of the populace. And Aristotle who had cleared him of many serious accusations does not admit him among the statesmen and patriots of the highest rank, but gives preference to such men as Nicias, Thucydides, and even Theramenes.

The reason of this extraordinary fact lies in the partisan spirit which though notorious is not always rightly estimated, and by which the overwhelming majority of the Greek writers whose works have come down to us were animated against the Athenian democracy, so that the champion of popular government which they condemned in principle, cannot possibly find favour in their sight.

On what then does the judgment of posterity repose, a judgment that is in direct opposition to such an imposing number of authorities? Is it a conjecture to which a tacit agreement of competent judges gave a legal authority? Is it the result of an arbitrary process which on grounds of innate probability and by an undisputed verdict clears the historical kernel of all the dross with which the hate and envy, mistakes and calumnies of contemporaries had surrounded it? Or if this judgment is based on the authentic foundation of evidence, is it surely not merely commended, by its innate rectitude, but also confirmed by an unequivocal testimony?