The Good Book (98 page)

Chapter 40

  1. But of all his expeditions, that to the Chersonese gave most satisfaction and pleasure,

  2. Having proved the safety of the Greeks who inhabited there. For he took with him a thousand fresh citizens of Athens to give new strength and vigour to the cities,

  3. And by fortifying the neck of land which joins the peninsula to the continent with bulwarks and forts from sea to sea,

  4. He put a stop to the inroads of the Thracians, who lay all about the Chersonese,

  5. And closed the door against a continual and grievous war, with which that country had been long harassed,

  6. Lying exposed to the encroachments of barbarous neighbours.

  7. Nor was Pericles less admired and talked of abroad for his sailing around the Peloponnesus,

  8. Having set out from Pegae, or The Fountains, the port of Megara, with a hundred galleys.

  9. For he not only laid waste the sea-coast, as Tolmides had done before, but also, advancing far up into the mainland with the soldiers he had on board,

10. By the terror of his appearance drove many within their walls;

11. And at Nemea, with main force, routed and raised a trophy over the Sicyonians, who stood their ground and joined battle with him.

12. And having taken on board a supply of soldiers into the galleys out of Achaia, then in league with Athens, he crossed with the fleet to the opposite continent,

13. And, sailing along by the mouth of the River Achelous, overran Acarnania and shut up the Oeniadae within their city walls,

14. And having ravaged and wasted their country, weighed anchor for home with the double advantage of having shown himself formid­able to his enemies,

15. And at the same time safe and energetic to his fellow citizens;

16. For there was not so much as any chance miscarriage that happened, the whole voyage through, to those who were under his charge.

17. Entering also the Euxine Sea with a large and finely equipped fleet, he obtained for the Greek cities any new arrangements they wanted, and entered into friendly relations with them;

18. And to the barbarous nations, and kings and chiefs round about them, displayed the greatness of the power of the Athenians,

19. Their perfect ability and confidence to sail wherever they had a mind, and to bring the whole sea under their control.

20. He left the Sinopians thirteen ships of war, with soldiers under the command of Lamachus, to assist them against Timesileus the tyrant;

21. And when this tyrant and his accomplices had been thrown out,

22. Obtained a decree that six hundred of the Athenians that were willing should sail to Sinope and plant themselves there with the Sinopians,

23. Sharing among them the houses and land which the tyrant and his party had previously held.

24. But in other things he did not comply with the giddy impulses of the citizens, nor quit his own resolutions to follow their fancies,

25. When, carried away with the thought of their strength and great success, they were eager to interfere again in Egypt,

26. And to disturb the King of Persia’s maritime dominions.

27. Indeed, there were a good many who were, even then, possessed with that profoundly unwise passion for Sicily,

28. Which afterward the orators of Alcibiades’ party blew up into a flame.

29. There were some also who dreamt of conquering Tuscany and Carthage,

30. And not without plausible reason in their present large dominion and prosperous course of their affairs.

31. But Pericles curbed this passion for foreign conquest, and unsparingly pruned and cut down their ever busy fancies for a multitude of undertakings;

32. And directed their power for the most part to securing and consolidating what they had already got,

33. Supposing it would be quite enough for them to do, if they could keep the Lacedaemonians in check;

34. To whom he entertained all along a sense of opposition; which, as upon many other occasions,

35. He particularly showed by what he did in the time of the Delphic war.

Chapter 41

  1. The Lacedaemonians, having gone with an army to Delphi to recapture it from the Phocians who had taken it from the Delphians;

  2. Immediately after their departure, Pericles, with another army, came and restored the Phocians.

  3. That he did well and wisely in thus restraining the exertions of the Athenians within the compass of Greece,

  4. The events themselves that happened afterward bore sufficient witness.

  5. For, in the first place, the Euboeans revolted, against whom he passed over with forces;

  6. And then, immediately after, news came that the Megarians were turned their enemies,

  7. And a hostile army was on the borders of Attica, under the conduct of Plistoanax, king of the Lacedaemonians.

  8. So Pericles hastened back with his army from Euboea, to meet the invasion which threatened at home;

  9. And did not venture to engage a numerous and brave army eager for battle; but perceiving that Plistoanax was a very young man,

10. And governed mostly by the counsel and advice of Cleandrides, whom the ephors had sent with him to be a guardian and assistant,

11. He secretly tested this youth’s integrity, and, in a short time, having corrupted him with money, persuaded him to withdraw the Peloponnesians from Attica.

12. When the army had retired and dispersed into their several states, the Lacedaemonians in anger fined their king so large a sum of money, that, unable to pay it, he quitted Lacedaemon;

13. While Cleandrides fled, and had sentence of death passed upon him in his absence.

14. This was the father of Gylippus, who later overpowered the Athenians in Sicily.

15. And it seems that this covetousness was an hereditary disease transmitted from father to son;

16. For Gylippus also afterwards was caught in foul practices, and expelled from Sparta for it.

17. When Pericles, in giving up his accounts of this expedition, stated a disbursement of ten talents, as laid out upon fit occasion,

18. The people, without any question, nor troubling themselves to investigate the mystery, freely allowed of it.

19. And some historians, in which number is Theophrastus the philosopher,

20. Have given it as a truth that Pericles every year used to send privately the sum of ten talents to Sparta,

21. With which he complimented those in office, to keep off the war;

22. Not to purchase peace, but time, that he might prepare at leisure, and be the better able to carry on war hereafter.

Chapter 42

  1. Immediately after this, turning his forces against the Euboean rebels with fifty ships and five thousand men,

  2. Pericles reduced their cities, and drove out the citizens of the Chalcidians, called Hippobotae, horse-feeders, the chief persons for wealth and reputation among them;

  3. And removing all the Histiaeans out of the country, brought in a plantation of Athenians in their place,

  4. Making them his one example of severity, because they had captured an Attic ship and killed all on board.

  5. After this, having made a truce between the Athens and Sparta for thirty years,

  6. He ordered, by public decree, the expedition against the isle of Samos,

  7. On the ground that, when they were told to cease their war with the Milesians, they had not complied.

  8. And as these measures against the Samians are thought to have been taken to please his mistress Aspasia,

  9. This may be a fit point for enquiry about that woman, what art or charming faculty she had that enabled her to captivate, as she did, the greatest statesmen,

10. And to give the philosophers occasion to speak so much about her, and that, too, not to her disparagement.

11. That she was a Milesian by birth, the daughter of Axiochus, is acknowledged.

12. And they say it was in emulation of Thargelia, a courtesan of the old Ionian times, that she made her addresses to men of great power.

13. Thargelia was a great beauty, extremely charming, and at the same time sagacious;

14. She had numerous suitors among the Greeks, and brought all who had to do with her over to the Persian interest,

15. And by their means, being men of the greatest power and station, sowed the seeds of the Median faction up and down in several cities.

16. Aspasia, some say, was courted and caressed by Pericles upon account of her knowledge and skill in politics.

17. Socrates himself would sometimes go to visit her, and some of his acquaintance with him;

18. And those who frequented her company would carry their wives with them to listen to her.

19. Her house was a home for young courtesans. Aeschines tells us that Lysicles, a sheep-dealer, a man of low birth and character,

20. By keeping Aspasia company after Pericles’ death, came to be a chief man in Athens.

21. And in Plato’s
Menexenus
, though we do not take the introduction as quite serious, still thus much seems to be historical,

22. That she had the repute of being resorted to by many of the Athenians for instruction in the art of speaking.

23. Pericles’ inclination for her seems, however, to have proceeded from the passion of love.

24. He had a wife that was near kin to him, who had been married first to Hipponicus, by whom she had Callias, surnamed the Rich;

25. And also she brought Pericles, while she lived with him, two sons, Xanthippus and Paralus.

26. Afterwards, when they did not well agree, nor like to live together, he parted with her, with her own consent, to another man,

27. And himself took Aspasia, and loved her with wonderful affection;

28. Every day, both as he went out and as he came in from the marketplace, he saluted and kissed her.

29. In the comedies she goes by the nicknames of ‘the new Omphale’ and ‘Deianira’.

30. Cratinus, in downright terms, calls her a harlot: ‘To find him an embodiment of lust bore that harlot past shame, Aspasia by name.’

31. It seems also that he had a son by her.

32. Aspasia, they say, became so celebrated and renowned that Cyrus, who also made war against Artaxerxes for the Persian monarchy,

33. Gave the concubine he loved most the name of Aspasia, who before that was called Milto, a Phocaean by birth.

Chapter 43

  1. Pericles, however, was particularly charged with having proposed to the assembly the war against the Samians, from favour to the Milesians, upon the entreaty of Aspasia.

  2. For the two states were at war for the possession of Priene; and the Samians, getting the better,

  3. Refused to lay down their arms and to have the controversy betwixt them decided by arbitration by the Athenians.

  4. Pericles, therefore, fitting out a fleet, went and broke up the oligarchical government at Samos,

  5. And taking fifty of the principal men of the town as hostages, and as many of their children, sent them to the isle of Lemnos,

  6. There to be kept, though he had offers, as some relate, of a talent apiece for himself from each one of the hostages,

  7. And of many other presents from those who were anxious not to have a democracy.

  8. Moreover, Pisuthnes the Persian, one of the king’s lieutenants, bearing some goodwill to the Samians,

  9. Sent him ten thousand pieces of gold to excuse the city. Pericles, however, would have none of this;

10. But after he had dealt with the Samians as he saw fit, and set up a democracy among them, sailed back to Athens.

11. But they immediately revolted, Pisuthnes having privily got away their hostages for them,

12. And provided them with means for the war. Whereupon Pericles came out with a fleet a second time against them, and found them not idle nor slinking away,

13. But manfully resolved to contest the dominion of the sea.

14. The issue was, that after a sharp sea fight around the island of Tragia, Pericles obtained a decisive victory,

15. Having with forty-four ships routed seventy of the enemy’s, twenty of which were carrying soldiers.

16. Together with his victory and pursuit, having made himself master of the port, he laid siege to the Samians,

17. And blocked them up, who yet, one way or another, still ventured to make sallies, and fight under the city walls.

18. But after another greater fleet from Athens arrived, and the Samians were now shut up with a close leaguer on every side,

19. Pericles, taking with him sixty galleys, sailed out into the main sea, intending to meet a squadron of Phoenician ships coming for the Samians’ relief,