Old Continental Towns

by Walter M. Gallichan

A picture of his daily life is given by Plutarch, who tells us how the admiral kept open house each night for his friends and any citizens who chose to join the repast. Cimon had a following of young men; and when walking out, if he met a poor man in meagre garments, he enjoined one of his friends to give him his clothes in exchange for the rags. “This was great and noble,” says Plutarch. The admiral loved riches, but not from a passion for amassing money. It was his pleasure to distribute money to the needy.

His naval skill and enterprise were the wonder of the inhabitants of Athens. In one engagement with the Persians, Cimon captured two hundred vessels.

During the siege of Citium, the great warrior died, either from a wound, or from natural causes. His body was brought to Athens, where a monument was erected in memory of his prowess on land and sea.

During the rule of Pericles, Athens was beautified by the building of a new Parthenon under the direction of Callicrates and Ictinus. At this time the walls of the city were extended, the Odeum, or music theatre, erected, and numerous statues set up in the buildings. Phidias was chosen by Pericles as superintendent of all public buildings in Athens.

The name of Phidias is spoken with reverence by every student of sculpture. He was a supreme artist of varied parts; he carved in marble, made images of ivory and gold, and cast effigies in bronze, besides exercising the art of the painter. Some of his matchless statuary has been happily preserved for us in the British Museum. It was the chisel of Phidias that adorned the frieze of the Parthenon. It was this genius who made the famous statue of Minerva, and the image of Athene in ivory, thirty feet high, for the Erechtheum.

Unfortunately, the Minerva image was the cause of the undoing of Phidias. A man so eminent was sure to evoke envy among his contemporaries. First he was falsely charged with theft; then his work was condemned on the score that he had introduced his own image upon the shield of Minerva.

For this breach of convention, in representing a modern figure in a historical subject, the sculptor was deemed disloyal to the ancient fame of Athens. He was sent to prison, where he died. “Some say poison was given to him,” writes Plutarch.

Praxiteles, another mighty image-maker of Athens, lived over a hundred years before the days of Phidias. He carved the youthful figure with surpassing delicacy and grace. His Aphrodite was one of the world’s masterpieces; and among his finest works were statues of Hermes and Niobe and her children.

We must now glance at an Attic social phenomenon of much importance. The power of the courtesan among the cultured Athenians is instanced in the life of Pericles. We can learn but little of the Grecian social life, without inquiring into the status of the hetæræ at this period in the history of Athens. Xenophon and Socrates were the visitors of Aspasia, the friend and adviser of Pericles. The influence of this clever woman was almost unbounded. Philosophers, soldiers, and poets were of her court; she was one of the causes of the Median faction, and her sway over Pericles was supreme.

“The business that supported her was neither honourable nor decent,” writes Plutarch. She was, indeed, of Mrs Warren’s profession. Pericles never set out upon important affairs, nor returned from them, without waiting upon this fascinating mistress, who combined beauty of body with much wit and skill in conversation. At the advice of Aspasia, the ruler of Athens proclaimed war against the Samians, in which memorable conflict battering-rams were first used by the Greeks. And it was through the intervention of Pericles that Aspasia was acquitted of the charge of impiety, adduced by Hermippus, a comic rhymer. In the court Pericles “shed many tears” for the woman he loved, and thus obtained her pardon.