What kind of balance does pericles

This is no passing and idle word, but truth and fact; and the assertion is verified by the position to which these qualities have raised the state.

For in the hour of trial Athens alone among her contemporaries is superior to the report of her. No enemy who comes against her is indignant at the reverses which he sustains at the hands of such a city; no subject complains that his masters are unworthy of him.

And we shall assuredly not be without witnesses; there are mighty monuments of our power which will make us the wonder of this and of succeeding ages; we shall not need the praises of Homer or of any other panegyrist whose poetry may please for the moment, although his representation of the facts will not bear the light of day. For we have compelled every land and every sea to open a path for our valor, and have everywhere planted eternal memorials of our friendship and of our enmity.

Such is the city for whose sake these men nobly fought and died; they could not bear the thought that she might be taken from them; and every one of us who survive should gladly toil on her behalf. I have dwelt upon the greatness of Athens because I want to show you that we are contending for a higher prize than those who enjoy none of these privileges, and to establish by manifest proof the merit of these men whom I am now commemorating.

Their loftiest praise has been already spoken. For in magnifying the city I have magnified them, and men like them whose virtues made her glorious. And of how few Hellenes 1 can it be said as of them, that their deeds when weighed in the balance have been found equal to their fame! I believe that a death such as theirs has been the true measure of a man's worth; it may be the first revelation of his virtues, but is at any rate their final seal. For even those who come short in other ways may justly plead the valor with which they have fought for their country; they have blotted out the evil with the good, and have benefited the state more by their public services than they have injured her by their private actions.

None of these men were enervated by wealth or hesitated to resign the pleasures of life; none of them put off the evil day in the hope, natural to poverty, that a man, though poor, may one day become rich. But, deeming that the punishment of their enemies was sweeter than any of these things, and that they could fall in no nobler cause, they determined at the hazard of their lives to be honorably avenged, and to leave the rest. They resigned to hope their unknown chance of happiness; but in the face of death they resolved to rely upon themselves alone.

And when the moment came they were minded to resist and suffer, rather than to fly and save their lives; they ran away from the word of dishonor, but on the battlefield their feet stood fast, and in an instant, at the height of their fortune, they passed away from the scene, not of their fear, but of their glory. Such was the end of these men; they were worthy of Athens, and the living need not desire to have a more heroic spirit, although they may pray for a less fatal issue.

The value of such a spirit is not to be expressed in words. Any one can discourse to you for ever about the advantages of a brave defense, which you know already. But instead of listening to him I would have you day by day fix your eyes upon the greatness of Athens, until you become filled with the love of her; and when you are impressed by the spectacle of her glory, reflect that this empire has been acquired by men who knew their duty and had the courage to do it, who in the hour of conflict had the fear of dishonor always present to them, and who, if ever they failed in an enterprise, would not allow their virtues to be lost to their country, but freely gave their lives to her as the fairest offering which they could present at her feast.

The sacrifice which they collectively made was individually repaid to them; for they received again each one for himself a praise which grows not old, and the noblest of all tombs, I speak not of that in which their remains are laid, but of that in which their glory survives, and is proclaimed always and on every fitting occasion both in word and deed. For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men.

Make them your examples, and, esteeming courage to be freedom and freedom to be happiness, do not weigh too nicely the perils of war.

The unfortunate who has no hope of a change for the better has less reason to throw away his life than the prosperous who, if he survive, is always liable to a change for the worse, and to whom any accidental fall makes the most serious difference. To a man of spirit, cowardice and disaster coming together are far more bitter than death striking him unperceived at a time when he is full of courage and animated by the general hope.

Wherefore I do not now pity the parents of the dead who stand here; I would rather comfort them. You know that your dead have passed away amid manifold vicissitudes; and that they may be deemed fortunate who have gained their utmost honor, whether an honorable death like theirs, or an honorable sorrow like yours, and whose share of happiness has been so ordered that the term of their happiness is likewise the term of their life.

Besides, since he was rich, of brilliant lineage, and had friends of the greatest influence, he feared that he might be ostracized, and so at first had naught to do with politics, but devoted himself rather to a military career, where he was brave and enterprising.

On one street only in the city was he to be seen walking, — the one which took him to the market-place and the council-chamber. Whereas, in the case of true and genuine virtue, "fairest appears what most appears," and nothing in the conduct of good men is so admirable in the eyes of strangers, as their daily walk and conversation is in the eyes of those who share it. The rest of his policy he carried out by commissioning his friends and other public speakers.

It is not at all unlikely that his reputation was the result of the blending in him of many high qualities. When Archidamus, the king of the Lacedaemonians, asked him whether he or Pericles was the better wrestler, he replied: "Whenever I throw him in wrestling, he disputes the fall, and carries his point, and persuades the very men who saw him fall.

And since he was the inferior in wealth and property, by means of which Cimon would win over the poor, — furnishing a dinner every day to any Athenian who wanted it, bestowing raiment on the elderly men, and removing the fences from his estates that whosoever wished might pluck the fruit, — Pericles, outdone in popular arts of this sort, had recourse to the distribution of the people's own wealth.

This was on the advice of Damonides, of the Deme Oa, as Aristotle has stated. Of this body he himself was not a member, since the lot had not made him either First Archon, or Archon Thesmothete, or King Archon, or Archon Polemarch. These offices were in ancient times filled by lot, and through them those who properly acquitted themselves were promoted into the Areiopagus. Such was the power of Pericles among the people.

So Cimon came back from his banishment and stationed himself with his tribesmen in line of battle, and determined by his deeds to rid himself of the charge of too great love for Sparta, in that he shared the perils of his fellow-citizens.

But the friends of Pericles banded together and drove him from the ranks, on the ground that he was under sentence of banishment. And there fell in this battle all the friends of Cimon to a man, whom Pericles had accused with him of too great love for Sparta.

Wherefore sore repentance fell upon the Athenians, and a longing desire for Cimon, defeated as they were on the confines of Attica, and expecting as they did a grievous war with the coming of spring. For the Lacedaemonians were as kindly disposed towards him as they were full of hatred towards Pericles and the other popular leaders. These charges he has raked up from some source or other and hurled them, as if so much venom, against one who was perhaps not in all points irreproachable, but who had a noble disposition and an ambitious spirit, wherein no such savage and bestial feelings can have their abode.

He would not suffer the party of the "Good and True," as they called themselves, to be scattered up and down and blended with the populace, as heretofore, the weight of their character being thus obscured by numbers, but by culling them out and assembling them into one body, he made their collective influence, thus become weighty, as it were a counterpoise in the balance.

All this he did by way of lightening the city of its mob of lazy and idle busybodies, rectifying the embarrassments of the poorer people, and giving the allies for neighbours an imposing garrison which should prevent rebellion. They cried out in the assemblies: "The people has lost its fair fame and is in ill repute because it has removed the public moneys of the Hellenes from Delos into its own keeping, 2 and that seemliest of all excuses which it had to urge against its accusers, to wit, that out of fear of the Barbarians it took the public funds p37 from that sacred isle and was now guarding them in a stronghold, of this Pericles has robbed it.

And surely Hellas is insulted with a dire insult and manifestly subjected to tyranny when she sees that, with her own enforced contributions the war, we are gilding and bedizening our city, which, for all the world like a wanton woman, adds to her wardrobe precious stones and costly statues and temples worth their millions.

And since each particular art, like a general with the army under his separate command, kept its own throng of unskilled and untrained labourers in compact array, to be as instrument unto player and as body unto soul in subordinate service, it came to pass that for every age, almost, and every capacity the city's great abundance was distributed and scattered abroad by such demands. And yet the most wonderful thing about them was the speed with which they rose.

Each one of them, men thought, would require many successive generations to complete it, but all of them were p41 fully completed in the heyday of a single administration. Each one of them, in its beauty, was even then and at once antique; but in the freshness of its vigour it is, even to the present day, recent and newly wrought. Such is the bloom of perpetual newness, as it were, upon these works of his, which makes them ever to look untouched by time, as though the unfaltering breath of an ageless spirit has been infused into them.

Cratinus pokes fun at this work for its slow progress, and in these words:— "Since ever so long now In word has Pericles pushed the thing; in fact he does not budge it. He himself was elected manager, and prescribed how the contestants must blow the flute, or sing, or pluck the zither. These musical contests were witnessed, both then and thereafter, in the Odeum. A wonderful thing happened in the course of their building, which indicated that the goddess was not holding herself aloof, but was a p45 helper both in the inception and in the completion of the work.

Pericles was much cast down at this, but the goddess appeared to him in a dream and prescribed a course of treatment for him to use, so that he speedily and easily healed the man.

It was in commemoration of this that he set up the bronze statue of Athena Hygieia on the acropolis near the altar of that goddess, which was there before, as they say.

Everything, almost, was under his charge, and all the artists and artisans, as I have said, were under his superintendence, owing to his friendship with Pericles. This brought envy upon the one, and contumely on the other, to the effect that Pheidias made assignations for Pericles with free-born women who would come ostensibly to see the works of art.

Pericles therefore asked the people in assembly whether they thought he had expended too much, and on their declaring that it was altogether too much, "Well then," said he, "let it not have been spent on your account, but mine, and I will make the inscriptions of dedication in my own name.

Nay rather, forsaking his former lax and sometimes rather effeminate management of the people, he struck the high and clear note of an aristocratic and kingly statesmanship, and employing it for the best interests of all in a direct and undeviating fashion, he led the people, for the most part willingly, by his persuasions and instructions.

He made the city, great as it was when he took it, the greatest and richest of all cities, and grew to be superior in power to kings and tyrants. Some of these actually appointed him guardian of their sons, but he did not make his estate a single drachma greater than it was when his father left it to him. For this reason he was not liked by his sons when they grew up, nor did their wives find in him a liberal purveyor, but they murmured at his expenditure for the day merely and under the most exact restrictions, there being no surplus of supplies at all, as in a great house and under generous circumstances, but every outlay and every intake proceeding by count and measure.

The one exercises his intellect without the aid of instruments and independent of external matters for noble ends; whereas the other, inasmuch as he brings his superior excellence into close contact with the common needs of mankind, must sometimes find wealth not merely one of the necessities of life, but also one of its noble things, as was actually the case with Pericles, who gave aid to many poor men.

Then Anaxagoras — so the story goes — unmuffled his head and said to him, "Pericles, even those who need a lamp pour oil therein. This was to deliberate concerning the Hellenic sanctuaries which p57 the Barbarians had burned down, concerning the sacrifices which were due to the gods in the name of Hellas in fulfilment of vows made when they were fighting with the Barbarians, and concerning the sea, that all might sail it fearlessly and keep the peace.

But nothing was accomplished, nor did the cities come together by deputy, owing to the opposition of the Lacedaemonians, as it is said, since the effort met with its first check in Peloponnesus.

I have cited this incident, however, to show forth the man's disposition and the greatness of his thoughts. Not only did he bring thither a thousand Athenian colonists and stock the cities anew with vigorous manhood, but he also belted the neck of the isthmus with defensive bulwarks from sea to sea, and so intercepted the incursions of the Thracians who swarmed about the Chersonesus, 2 and shut out the perpetual and grievous war in which the country was all the time involved, in close touch as it was with neighbouring communities of Barbarians, and full to overflowing of robber bands whose haunts were on or p61 within its borders.

For nothing untoward befell, even as result of chance, those who took part in the expedition. There he effected what the Greek cities desired, and dealt with them humanely, while to the neighbouring nations of Barbarians with their king and dynasts he displayed the magnitude of his forces and the fearless courage with which they sailed whithersoever they pleased and brought the whole sea under their own control.

He also left with the banished Sinopians thirteen ships of war and soldiers under command of Lamachus to aid them against Timesileos. But in other matters he did not accede to the vain impulses of the citizens, nor was he swept along with the tide when they were eager, from a sense of their great power and good fortune, to lay hands again upon Egypt and molest the realms of the King which lay along the sea. And some there were who actually dreamed of Tuscany and Carthage, and that not without a measure of hope, in view of the magnitude of their present supremacy and the full-flowing tide of success in their undertakings.

He considered it a great achievement to hold the Lacedaemonians in check, and set himself in opposition to these in every way, as he showed, above all other things, by what he did in the Sacred War. And whereas the Lacedaemonians had had the " promanteia ," or right of consulting the oracle in behalf of others also, which the Delphians had bestowed upon them, carved upon the forehead of the bronze wolf in the sanctuary, he secured from the Phocians this high privilege for the Athenians, and had it chiselled along the right side of the same wolf.

Then straightway word was brought to him that the Megarians had gone over to the enemy, and that an army of the enemy was on the confines of Attica under the leadership of Pleistoanax, the king of the Lacedaemonians. He did not venture to join battle with hoplites who were so many, so brave, and so eager for battle, but seeing that Pleistoanax was a very young man, and that out of all his advisers he set most store by Cleandridas, whom the ephors had sent along with him, by reason of his youth, to be a guardian and an assistant to him, he secretly made trial of this man's integrity, speedily corrupted him with bribes, and persuaded him to lead the Peloponnesians back out of Attica.

He was the father of that Gylippus who overcame the Athenians in Sicily. And nature seems to have imparted covetousness to the son, as it were a congenital disease, owing to which he too, after noble achievements, was caught in base practices and banished from Sparta in disgrace.

This story, however, I have told at length in my life of Lysander. But some writers, among whom is Theophrastus the philosopher, have stated that every year ten talents found their way to Sparta from Pericles, and that with these he conciliated all the officials there, and so staved off the war, not purchasing peace, but time, in which he could make preparations at his leisure and then carry on war all the better.

Now, since it is thought that he proceeded thus against the Samians to gratify Aspasia, this may be a fitting place to raise the query what great art or power this woman had, that she managed as she pleased the foremost men of the state, and afforded the philosophers occasion to discuss her in exalted terms and at great length.

Pericles's overall foreign policy centered around consolidation of the empire. Recall that the Delian League began as a voluntary association of city-states, led by Athens. As Athenian control over the Aegean Sea region continued to grow, Athens pressured Persia along the coastline of modern-day Turkey and attempted though ultimately failed to invade Egypt, which was under Persian control.

This expansion, however, stretched the Athenians' ability to manage their empire. Athens found itself facing occasional difficulty in collecting tribute as some city- and island-states refused to pay and some members of the empire openly revolted. Pericles became convinced that repairing the internal weaknesses of the existing empire, rather than trying to extend control over new areas, was the best way of increasing Athens's overall power.

Eventually, Pericles's foreign policy of efficient rather than aggressive imperialism succeeded. In , Athenian tribute lists, which are still intact today, listed paying members. By , that number had increased to The increase in tribute-paying states did not reflect new conquests as much as the re-establishment of members who had previously paid but had dropped off the lists.

In many cases, the amount of tribute city-states were paying was less than they had previously been assessed. Thus, while he enforced membership through coercive threats and sometimes military action, Pericles tried to moderate the burden of tribute. For him, the empire represented a contract between Athens and its allies. Athens would bear the physical burden of building ships, manning them, and enforcing peace in the region protection against piracy was particularly important for trade , and the allies would pay for this protection.

In this sense, according to Pericles, use of tribute at home was Athens's compensation for all its hard international work. Of course, such a twin policy was an extremely adept political strategy. Who could challenge a political leader who made the empire more efficient and used the proceeds to help the general population? The most significant challenge to the Periclean majority was organized by an Athenian named Thucydides not the historian , who led a faction of antidemocratic aristocrats.

Thucydides's faction attempted to undermine Periclean policy in the hope that eventually the aristocrats could reduce the de facto democratic power of the Assembly. The brilliance of Pericles's domestic-international policy, however, was that it placated both the imperialists, who saw Athenian power grow, and the anti-imperialists, who could focus on domestic arts and welfare projects.

Pericles was able to engineer against Thucydides an effective use of a process known as ostracism, which banned from Athens for ten years anyone suspected of growing too powerful, who could use that power to undermine the democratic will.

Ironically, of course, Pericles himself could have been said to have attained that level of individual power and influence, but he had the majority of citizens behind him. By , Pericles had created a domestic political consensus around his policies "the like of which Athens had never seen" Kagan, Donald. The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War.

Ithaca, N. Although his father had focused on the Persian threat and Pericles himself supported continued action against Persia, Pericles understood that Sparta was Athens's main competitor.