Let us start by taking as a text some memorable words of the statesman who above all other Athenians, in the golden days of Athens, perceived what the State might do for the individual, and the individual for the State, towards the realisation of "the good life." When Athens at last became involved in war with Sparta, at the funeral of the first victims of battle Pericles was chosen to deliver an oration over them, of which Thucydides the historian, himself doubtless among the audience, has preserved for us the spirit and the thoughts in his own weighty and subtle phraseology. One passage in this immortal speech seems to embody in living words the statesman's idea of what life in democratic Athens ought to be, expressed as though it actually were so; as in moments of deep emotion we are apt to speak of one whom we profoundly admire and love with an enthusiasm suggested and justified by his character, even if it fall short in truth of the perfection with which our strong feeling invests it. But Pericles must have known well the shortcomings of the Athenians, as well as their wonderful capacities; and if at this moment of supreme feeling he expressed not only the bare truth about them, but also his own hopes for them, and his ideal of a perfect civic life, we need not shrink on that account to take these words of his as the best possible text from which to set about learning what Athens actually was in his day. I shall quote the passage in full.[1]
- ↑ Thucydides, ii. 37. I quote from Jowett's translation, but
