Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/555

PERICLES 529 PERICLES, a great Athenian statesman, and one of the most remarkable men of antiquity, was the son of Xanthippus, who commanded the Greeks at the battle of Mycale in 479 B.C. By his mother Agariste, niece of Clisthenes, who reformed the democracy at Athens after the expulsion of the Pisistratidae, he was connected both with the old princely line of Sicyon and with the great but unfortunate house of the Alcmagonidit. 1 The date of his birth is unknown, but his youth must have fallen in the stirring times of the great Persian war. From his friendship with the poet Anacreon, his father would seem to have been a man of taste, and as he stood in relations of hospitality to the Spartan kings his house was no doubt a political as well as literary centre. Pericles received the best education which the age could supply. For masters he had Pythoclides and the distinguished musician Damon, who infused into his music lessons a tincture of philosophy, whereby he incurred the suspicions of the vulgar, and received the honour of ostracism.- Pericles listened also to the subtle dialectics of the Eleatic Zeno. But the man who swayed him most deeply and permanently was the philosopher Anaxagoras. The influence of the speculative genius and dignified and gentle character of the philosopher who resigned his property that he might turn his thoughts more steadily to heaven, which he called his home, and who begged as his last honour that the school-children might have a holiday on the day he died, can be traced alike in the intellectual breadth and the elevated moral tone of the pupil, in his superiority to vulgar superstitions, and in the unruffled serenity which he preserved through out the storms of political life. 3 It was probably the grand manner of Pericles even more than his eloquence that won him the surname of Olympian Zeus. 4 In his youth he distinguished himself in the field, but eschewed politics, fearing, it is said, the suspicions which might be excited in the populace not only by his wealth, high birth, and powerful friends, but by the striking resemblance to the tyrant Pisistratus which old men traced in his personal appearance, musical voice, and flowing speech. But, when the banishment of Themistocles 5 and the death of Aristides had somewhat cleared the political stage, Pericles came forward as the champion of the democratic or progressive party, in opposition to Cimon, the leader of the aristocratic or conservative party. The two leaders differed hardly less than their policies. Both indeed were men of aristocratic birth and temper, honourable, brave, and generous, faith ful and laborious in the service of Athens. But Cimon was a true sailor, blunt, jovial, freehanded, who sang a capital song, and was always equally ready to drink or fight, to whose artless mind (he was innocent of even a smattering of letters 6 ) the barrack-room life of the bar barous Spartans seemed the type of human perfectibility, and whose simple programme was summed up in the 1 Herod., vi. 131. 2 Plut., Per., 4 ; cp. Plato, Laches, pp. 180, 197, 200, amlfiep., 400, 424. 3 If the statement reported by Diogenes Laertius (ii. 3, 7), that Anaxagoras spent thirty years at Athens, is correct, he probably arrived there about 462, and Pericles must have reached maturity before he met him (see Zeller, Die Philosophic der Griechen, i. p. 865 sq. ). 4 It is said that once, when Pericles was transacting business in public, a low fellow railed at him all day long, and at nightfall dogged him to his house, reviling him in the foulest language. Pericles took no notice of him till he reached his own door, when he bade one of the servants take a torch and light the man home. 5 Variously placed in 476 (Kriiger), 471 (Clinton), and 470 (Cur- tius). Considerable divergence of opinion prevails as to the dates of most events between the Second Persian War and the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (see Pierson, in Philologus, 1869; Classen s Thucy- dides, book i. Anh.). Pericles, who died in 429, is said to have had a public life of forty years ; hence he probably began to take part in politics about 469. 6 Plut., dm., 4. It is amusing to read of this stout old salt sitting in judgment on the respective merits of JSschylus and Sophocles (ib.,8). maxim "fight the Persians." Naturally the new ideas of political progress and intellectual development had no place in his honest head ; naturally he was a sturdy sup porter of the good old times of which, to the popular mind, he was the best embodiment. Pericles, grave, studious, reserved, was himself penetrated by those ideas of progress and culture which he undertook to convert into political and social realities ; philosophy was his recrea tion ; during the whole course of his political career he never accepted but once an invitation to dinner, and he was never to be seen walking except between his house and the popular assembly and senate-house. He husbanded his patrimony and regulated his domestic affairs with rigid economy that he might escape both the temptation and suspicion of enriching himself at the public expense. The steps by which he rose to the commanding position which he occupied in later life cannot be traced with cer tainty. According to Plutarch, Pericles, whose fortune did not allow him to imitate the profuse hospitality by which Cimon endeared himself to the people, sought to outbid him by a lavish distribution of the public moneys among the poorer classes ; this device was suggested to him by Damonides, says Plutarch on the authority of Aristotle. We may doubt the motive alleged by Plutarch, but we cannot doubt the fact that Pericles did extend, if not originate, the practice of distributing large sums among the citizens either as gratuities or as payment for services rendered, a practice which afterwards attained most mis chievous proportions. According to Plato (Gorgias, 515 E), it was a common saying that Pericles, by the system of paymentswhichhe introduced, had corrupted the Athenians, rendering them idle, cowardly, talkative, and avaricious. It was Pericles who introduced the payment of jurymen, and, as there were 6000 of them told off annually for duty, of whom a great part sat daily, the disbursement from the treasury was great, while the poor and idle were encouraged to live at the public expense. But the payment for attendance on the public assembly or parliament (of which all citizens of mature age were members), though probably suggested by the payment of the jurymen, was not intro duced by Pericles, and indeed does not seem to have existed during his lifetime." It Avas he who instituted the payment of the citizens for military service, 8 a measure but for which the Athenians would probably not have prolonged the Peloponnesian War as they did, and in particular would not have been so ready to embark on the fatal Sicilian expedition. There was more justifica tion, perhaps, for the practice, originated by Pericles, of supplying the poorer citizens from the public treasury with the price of admission to the theatre. For in an age when the study of the poets formed a chief element of education, and when the great dramas of ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were being put on the stage in all their freshness, such a measure may almost be regarded as a state provision for the education of the citizens. It was part of the policy of Pericles at once to educate and delight the people by numerous and splendid festivals, processions, and shows. But the good was mixed with seeds of evil, which took root and spread, till, in the days of Demosthenes, the money which should have been spent in fighting the enemies of Athens was squandered in spectacles and pageants. The Spectacular Fund or Theori- kon has been called the cancer of Athens. Vast sums were further spent by Pericles in adorning the city with those buildings which even in their ruins are the wonder of the world. Amongst these were the Parthenon, or Temple of the Virgin (Athene), and the Erechtheum, 7 See Boeckh, Staatsaushaltung der Athener, i. p. 320 ; Curtius, Griech. Ge.sch., ii. pp. 227, 842. 8 Ulpian on Demosth., jrepi ffwrd^. , 50 A, ap. Boeckh, i. 377. XVIII. 67