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 PERICLES
was the leading statesman of Athens for some forty years, during
which period she reached her highest point of power and splendour.
He finally swept away the last traces of aristocratic institutions
which had been disappearing one by one since the reforms of Solon.
It was Pericles who raised Athens to be an Empire-state. The
maritime allies, who had elected her to be their leader in the
war against Persia, were gradually reduced to the position of
subjects. Their military service was commuted for money payments,
which came to be treated as tribute. Pericles maintained that
they had no claim to inquire what was done with it, as long as
they were efficiently protected from the Persians. Much of it,
therefore, was spent in the adornment of Athens with those splendid
works of art of which some of the finest remains are now treasured
in many fine museums, and on the religious festivals which, with
their poetic and spectacular accompaniments, rejoiced the hearts
and cultivated the taste of poor and rich alike. But the Athenian
of the age of Pericles was no idle lounger. He did not sit at
home at ease and leave the fighting to be done by mercenaries
as he did later on. As soldier or oarsman he accounted it holiday
work to do duty in the service of his city; he used up his body
for her as though it had been the body of another.
Pericles was an able general, but was most distinguished as
an orator. Indeed, it was with him that oratory became a political
force of the first magnitude at Athens. In this, as in many other
respects, the Periclean system contained the seeds of mischief,
nobly as it worked in the hands of its creator. Powerful from
the dignity of his character as well as from his wisdom, and
known to be incorruptible, he restrained the people with a free
hand, and was their real leader instead of being led by them.
For, not being a seeker of favour from unworthy sources, he did
not speak with any view to present favour, but had sufficient
sense of dignity to contradict the people on occasion, even braving
their displeasure; so that in name it was a democracy, but in
reality a government by the most eminent citizen. After his death
the leading statesmen were more on a level, and in their competition
for pre-eminence took to courting the people, sacrificing to
that object even important state-interests.
Early in his career Pericles procured a decree inviting all
the States of Greece to hold a congress for the purpose of establishing
a federate union. He was the first Greek who cherished this aspiration.
It met with no encouragement; but Pericles, no doubt, hoped that
an extension of the Athenian Empire would realize the same end
in a different way. He entered on the Peloponnesian war, which
was to end twenty-five years after his death in the ruin of Athens,
with cheerful confidence. The funeral oration over those who
fell in the first combats, attributed to him by Thucydides, gives
a striking and noble picture of Athenian civilization at its
best. His death in the third year of the war was an irreparable
loss to Athens and to Greece.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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