the top, was constructed, we are told, in imitation of the king of Persia's pavilion, this likewise by Pericles's order; which Cratinus again in his comedy called The Thracian Women, made an occasion of raillery, But the great squill-head Jupiter appear? Pericles also, eager to do honour to his building, then first obtained the decree for a contest in musical skill to be held yearly at the Panathenæa, and he himself being chosen judge, arranged the order and method in which the competitors should sing and play on the flute and on the harp. And both at that time, and at other times also, they sat in this music-room to see and hear all such trials of skill. The Propylæa, or entrances to the Acropolis, were finished in five years' time, Mnesicles being the principal architect. A strange accident happened in the course of building, which showed that the goddess was not averse to the work, but was aiding and co-operating to bring it to perfection. One of the artificers, the quickest and the handiest workman among them all, with a slip of his foot fell down from a great height and lay in a miserable condition, given up by the physicians. When Pericles was in distress about this, Minerva appeared to him at night in a dream, and ordered a course of treatment, which he applied, and in a short time, without difficulty the man got well. Upon this occasion he set up the brass statue of Minerva surnamed Health in the citadel, near the altar, which they r-the * Since his danger of being ostracised has passed overexile appointed for one or the other having fallen to his opponent, Thucydides. 14 say was there before. But Phidias made the golden standing figure, and he has his name inscribed on the pedestal as the workman of it; though indeed the whole work in a manner was under his charge, and he had, as we have said already, the oversight over all the artists and workmen, through Pericles's friendship for him; and this indeed made him much envied, and his patron shamefully slandered with stories. The comic writers of the town bespattered him with all the ribaldry they could invent, attacking him about the wife of Menippus, one who was his friend and served as lieutenant under him in the wars; and with the birds kept by Pyrilampes, an acquaintance of Pericles, who, they pretended, used to give presents of peacocks to Pericles's female friends. And how can one wonder at this in men whose lives were devoted to mockery, and whose trade it was to make these offerings of the slander of great men to the evil genius of vulgar envy, when even Stesimbrotus the Thasian has dared to lay to the charge of Pericles a monstrous and fabulous piece of criminality? So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history, when on the one hand those who afterwards write it, find long periods of time intercepting their view; and on the other hand, the cotemporary records of any actions and lives, partly through envy and ill-will, partly through favour and flattery, pervert and distort truth. When the orators, who sided with Thucydides and his party, were at one time crying out, as their custom was, against Pericles, as one who squandered away the public money, and made havoc of the state revenues, he rose in the assembly and put the question to the peo ple, whether they thought that he had laid out much; and they saying, too much, a great deal, "Then,” said he, "since it is so, let the cost not be yours, but mine; and the inscription upon the buildings shall stand in my name." When they heard him say thus, whether it were out of a surprise at the greatness of his spirit, or out of desire to retain the glory of the works, they cried aloud, bidding him spend on and lay out from the public purse, and spare no cost, till all were finished. At length coming to a final contest with OstraThucydides, which of the two should ostracise the other of Thucydides out of the country, and having gone through this peril, son of he threw his antagonist out, and broke up the confede- sias, racy that had been organised against him. cism Mele B.C, 444. So now all schism and division being at an end, and the 15 city brought to evenness and unity, he got all Athens and all affairs that depended upon Athens, into his own hands, their tributes, their armies, and their galleys; the islands, the sea, and their wide-extended power, partly over other Greeks, and partly over barbarians; and all that empire, which they possessed, founded and fortified upon subject nations, and royal friendships, and alliances.* After this he was no longer the same man he had been before, nor as tame and gentle and familiar as formerly with the populace, to yield to the pleasures and to comply with the desires of the multitude as a steersman shifts with the wind. Quitting that loose, * Thus far from chapter 9 he has been illustrating the way in which Pericles may be not untruly said to have courted the people. Here he shows him in his other character. Το carry out this comparison, he neglects the order of time, which he resumes at its close, in chapter 21. remiss, and, in some cases, licentious court of the popular will, he turned those soft and flowery modulations to the austerity of aristocratical and regal rule; and employing this uprightly and undeviatingly for the country's best interests, he was able generally to lead the people along with their own wills and consents, by persuading and showing them what was to be done; and sometimes, too, urging and pressing them forward extremely against their will, he made them, whether they would or no, yield submission to what was for their advantage; exactly like a skilful physician, who, in a complicated and lingering disease, as he sees occasion, at one while allows his patient some innocent indulgences, and at another gives him keen pains and drugs to work the cure. For there arising and growing up, as was natural, all manner of impressions and feelings in a multitude thus exercising dominion, he alone, as a great master, knowing how to handle and deal fitly with each one of them, and making use of hopes and fears, as his two chief rudders, with the one to check their over confidence at any time, with the other to raise them up and cheer them, when under any discouragement, plainly showed how truly rhetoric is, as Plato calls it, a magic power upon the souls of men, and that its chief business is to address the affections and passions, which are as it were the strings and keys to the soul, and require a skilled and careful touch. The source of this was not simply his language, but, as Thucydides assures us, the reputation of his life, and the confidence felt in his character; his conspicuous freedom from every kind of corruption, and superiority to all considerations of money. Notwithstanding he had made the city Athens, which was great indeed before, as great and as rich as can be imagined, and though he were himself in power and interest more than equal to many kings and absolute rulers, who some of them also bequeathed by will their power to their children, he, for his part, did not make the patrimony his father left him greater than it was by one drachma. Thucydides indeed makes a plain statement of the 16 greatness of his power; and the comic poets, in their spiteful manner, help us to see it, styling his companions and friends the new Pisistratidæ, and calling on him to take an oath abjuring the intention of usurpation, as one whose eminence was too great to be any longer proportionable to and compatible with a popular government. Teleclides says the Athenians had surrendered up to him The tribute of the cities, and themselves the cities too, at his pleasure both to do and to undo; To build up, if he likes, stone walls around a town; and again, if so he likes, to pull them down; Their treaties and alliances, power, empire, peace, and war, their wealth and their success for evermore. B.C. Nor was all this the luck of some happy occasion; nor was it the mere bloom and grace of a policy that flourished for a season; but holding, for forty years together, the first place among statesmen such as 468-429. Ephialtes and Leocrates and Myronides and Cimon and Tolmides and Thucydides were, for no less than B.C. fifteen years together after the defeat and banishment 444--429. of Thucydides in the exercise of one continuous unintermitted command in the office, to which he was |