Chapter III: Part 3

When Athens was thus raised to the station on which it had been the ambition of Themistocles to place it, his star began to sink, though he still continued for some time to enjoy the fruits of his memorable deeds. He was conscious of the services he had done his country, and never scrupled to show that he knew his own value. His extortion and avarice, which made him ready to do anything, and by which he accumulated extraordinary wealth, could not fail to raise enemies against him. But what perhaps contributed more to his downfall was his constant watchfulness in maintaining and promoting the interests of Athens against the encroachments of Sparta, which in its turn was ever looking out for an opportunity to crush him. The great men who had grown up by his side at Athens, such as Cimon, and who were no less indebted to him for their greatness in the eyes of Greece than to their own talents, were his natural rivals, and succeeded in gradually supplanting him in the favor of the people. They also endeavored to represent him as a man of too much power, and as dangerous to the public. The consequence of all this was that in B.C. 472, he was banished from Athens by the ostracism. He took up his residence at Argos, where he was still residing when, in the same year, B.C. 472, Pausanias was put to death at Sparta for his ambitious and treacherous designs, and his fate involved that of Themistocles. The Spartans, in their search to discover more traces of the plot of Pausanias, found a letter of Themistocles from which it was evident that he had been acquainted with his plans. This was sufficient for the Spartans to ground upon it the charge that Themistocles had been an accomplice in his crime, and ambassadors were forthwith sent to Athens to demand that he should suffer the same punishment as Pausanias.

This charge was no less welcome to his enemies at Athens than the discovery of his letter had been to the Spartans. Orders were consequently issued to arrest and convey him to Athens; and foreseeing that his destruction would be unavoidable if he should fall into the hands of his enemies, he fled to Corcyra, and thence to the opposite coast of Epirus, where he took refuge at the court of Admetus, king of the Molossians. On his arrival the king was absent, but his Queen Phthia received him kindly, and pointed out to him in what manner he might win the sympathy of Admetus. When the king returned home, Themistocles, seated on the hearth and holding the child of Admetus in his arms, implored the king not to deliver him up to his persecutors, who traced him to the court of the Molossians. It is stated that Themistocles was here joined by his wife and children. The king not only granted his request, but provided him with the means of reaching the coast of the AEgean, whence he intended to proceed to Asia and seek refuge at the court of the king of Persia. From Pydna he sailed in a merchant ship to the coast of Asia Minor. At Ephesus he received such part of his property as his friends had been able to wrest from the hands of his enemies at Athens, together with that which he had left at Argos.

A few months after his arrival in Asia, Xerxes was assassinated (B.C. 465), and was after a short interval succeeded by Artaxerxes. Various adventures are told of Themistocles before he reached the residence of the Persian king. On his arrival he sent him a letter, in which he acknowledged the evils he had inflicted upon his predecessor; but at the same time claimed the merit of having saved him from destruction by his timely advice. He added that his present exile was only the consequence of his great zeal for the interests of the king of Persia. He did not ask for an immediate interview with the king, as he was yet unacquainted with the language and the manners of the Persians, to acquire which he requested a year's time. During this period he applied himself so zealously and with such success to these studies that at the close of the year, when he was presented to the king, he is said to have excited the jealousy of the courtiers, and was most kindly received by the king, to whom he held out prospects of conquering Greece by his assistance. The king became so attached to him, that Themistocles was always in his company.

But death overtook him at the age of sixty-five, before any of his plans were carried into effect. Most of the ancient writers state that he put an end to his life by poison, or according to another strange story, by drinking the blood of a bull, because he despaired of being able to fulfil his promises to the king. The motive for his suicide is very questionable. Reflection on his past life and upon the glory of his former rivals at Athens, are much more likely to have rendered him dissatisfied with life. Before he took the poison he is said to have requested his friends to convey his remains secretly to Attica, and in later times a tomb which was believed to contain them existed in Piraeus. In the market-place of Magnesia a splendid monument was erected to his memory, and his descendants in that place continued to be distinguished by certain privileges down to the time of Plutarch.

PERICLES

(499-429 B.C.)

]

Pericles, the greatest statesman of ancient Greece, was born of distinguished parentage in the early part of the fifth century B.C. His father was that Xanthippus who won the victory over the Persians at Mycale, 479 B.C.; and by his mother, Agariste, the niece of the great Athenian reformer, Cleisthenes, he was connected with the princely line of Sicyon and the great house of the Alcmaeonidae. He received an elaborate education, but of all his teachers the one whom he most reverenced was the serene and humane philosopher, Anaxagoras. Pericles was conspicuous all through his career for the singular dignity of his manners, the Olympian grandeur of his eloquence, his "majestic intelligence" in Plato's phrase, his sagacity, probity, and profound Athenian patriotism. Both in voice and in appearance he was so like Pisistratus, who had once overturned the Athenian republic and ruled as a king, that for some time he was afraid to come forward in political life. When he entered on public life Aristides had only recently died, Themistocles was an exile, and Cimon was fighting the battles of his country abroad. Although the family to which he belonged was good, it did not rank among the first in either wealth or influence, yet so transcendent were the abilities of Pericles that he rapidly rose to the highest power in the state as the leader of the dominant democracy. The sincerity of his attachment to the popular party has been questioned, but without a shadow of evidence. At any rate, the measures which, either personally or through his adherents, he brought forward and caused to be passed, were always in favor of extending the privileges of the poorer class of the citizens, and, if he diminished the spirit of reverence for the ancient institutions of public life, he enlisted an immense body of citizens on the side of law. He extended enormously, if he did not originate, the practice of distributing gratuities among the citizens for military service, for acting as dicast and in the Ecclesia and the like, as well as for admission to the theatre--then really a great school for manners and instruction. Pericles seems to have grasped very clearly, and to have held as firmly, the modern radical idea, that as the state is supported by the taxation of the body of the citizens, it must govern with a view to general interests rather than to those of a caste alone. About 463, Pericles, through the agency of his follower, Ephialtes, struck a great blow at the influence of the oligarchy, by causing the decree to be passed which deprived the Areopagus of its most important political powers. Shortly after the democracy obtained another triumph in the ostracism of Cimon (461). During the next few years the political course pursued by Pericles is less clearly intelligible to us, but it is safe to say that in general his attitude was hostile to the desire for foreign conquest or territorial aggrandizement, so prevalent among his ambitious fellow-citizens. Shortly after the battle of Tanagra (457), in which he showed conspicuous courage, Pericles magnanimously carried the measure for the recall of Cimon. His successful expeditions to the Thracian Chersonese, and to Sinope on the Black Sea, together with his colonies planted at Naxos, Andros, Oreus in Euboea, Brea in Macedonia, and AEgina, as well as Thurii in Italy, and Amphipolis on the Strymon, did much to extend and confirm the naval supremacy of Athens, and afford a means of subsistence for her poorer citizens. But his greatest project was to form, in concert with the other Hellenic states, a grand Hellenic confederation in order to put an end to the mutually destructive wars of kindred peoples, and to make Greece one mighty nation, fit to front the outlying world. The idea was not less sagacious than it was grand. Had it been accomplished, the semi-barbarous Macedonians would have menaced the civilized Greeks in vain, and even Rome at a later period, might perhaps have found the Adriatic, and not the Euphrates, the limit of her empire. But the Spartan aristocrats were utterly incapable of appreciating such exalted patriotism, or of understanding the political necessity for it, and by their secret intrigues the well-planned scheme was brought to nothing. Athens and Sparta were already in that mood toward each other which rendered the disaster of the Peloponnesian war inevitable. When the Spartans, in 448, restored to the Delphians the guardianship of the temple and treasures of Delphi, of which they had been deprived by the Phocians, the Athenians immediately after marched an army thither and reinstated the latter. Three years later an insurrection broke out in the tributary Megara and Euboea, and the Spartans again appeared in the field as the allies of the insurgents. The position of Athens was critical. Pericles wisely declined to fight against all his enemies at once. A bribe of ten talents sent the Spartans home, and the insurgents were then thoroughly subdued. The thirty years' peace with Sparta (445) left him free to carry out his schemes for the internal prosperity of Athens.

Cimon was now dead and was succeeded in the leadership of the aristocratic party by Thucydides, son of Melesias, who in 444 B.C. made a strong effort to overthrow the supremacy of Pericles by attacking him in the popular assembly for squandering the public money on buildings and in festivals and amusements. Thucydides made an effective speech; but Pericles immediately rose and offered to execute the buildings at his own expense, if the citizens would allow him to put his own name upon them instead of theirs. The sarcasm was successful. Thucydides was ostracized, and to the end of his life, Pericles reigned the undisputed master of the public policy of Athens. During the rest of his career "there was," says the historian Thucydides, "in name a democracy, but in reality a government in the hands of the first man." And the Athens of his day was the home of AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Anaxagoras, Zeno, Protagoras, Socrates, as well as Myron and Phidias; while there flourished at the same time, but elsewhere in Greece, Herodotus, Hippocrates, Pindar, Empedocles, and Democritus. The centre of this splendid group was Pericles, of whom the truthful pen of Thucydides records that he never did anything unworthy of his high position, that he did not flatter the people or oppress his adversaries, and that with all his unlimited command of the public purse, he was personally incorruptible.

Soon after this the Samian war broke out, in which Pericles gained high renown as a naval commander. This war originated in a quarrel between Miletus and the island of Samos, in which Athens was led to take part with the former. The Samians, after an obstinate struggle, were beaten, and a peace was concluded (439). The position in which Athens then stood toward many of the Greek states was peculiar. Since the time of the Persian invasion, she had been the leader of the confederacy formed to resist the attacks of the powerful enemy, and the guardian of the confederate treasury kept in the isle of Delos. Pericles caused the treasury to be removed to Athens, and commuting the contingents of the allies for money, enormously increased the contributions to the patriotic fund, Athens herself undertaking to protect the confederacy. The grand charge against Pericles is that he applied the money thus obtained to other purposes than those for which it was designed; that, in short, he adorned and enriched Athens with the spoils of the allied states. To his mind Hellas was subordinate to Athens, and he confounded the splendor of the dominant city with the splendor of Greece, in a manner possible to a man of poetic imagination, hardly to a man of the highest honor. His enemies, who dared not attack himself, struck at him in the persons of his friends. Phidias was flung into prison for the impiety of introducing portraits of himself and Pericles into the battle of the Amazons depicted on the shield of the goddess Athena in the Parthenon; the brilliant Aspasia, the famous mistress of Pericles, was arraigned on a charge of impiety, and only acquitted through the eloquence of Pericles on her behalf; while the aged Anaxagoras was driven from the city.

It is unnecessary to give a detailed account of all that Pericles did to make his native city the most glorious in the ancient world. Greek architecture and sculpture under his patronage reached perfection. To him Athens owed the Parthenon, the Erechtheum, left unfinished at his death, the Propylaea, the Odeum, and numberless other public and sacred edifices; he also liberally encouraged music and the drama; and during his life, industry and commerce were in so flourishing a condition that prosperity was universal in Attica.

At length, in 431, the long foreseen and inevitable Peloponnesian war broke out between Athens and Sparta. The plan of Pericles was for Athens to adopt a defensive attitude, to defend the city itself, leaving Attica to be ravaged by the enemy, but to cripple the power of Sparta by harassing its coasts. The story of the war must be told elsewhere; here it is enough to say that the result was unfavorable to Athens for reasons for which Pericles was only in small part to blame. He trusted in the ultimate success of Athens, both from her superior wealth and from her possessing the command of the sea, but he had not calculated upon the deterioration in her citizens' spirit, nor upon the robust courage of the Boeotian and Spartan infantry. Nor was his advice to keep behind the city walls rather than face the enemy in the field, best calculated to arouse the Athenians' courage. The plague ravaged the city in 430, and in the autumn of the following year, Pericles died after a lingering fever. His two sons had been carried off by the plague, he had been harassed by a charge of peculation brought by Cleon, and the actual infliction of a fine by the dicastery, while he had been without office from July, 430, to July, 429, but before the last he recovered his hold over the Ecclesia, and was gratified in the closing days of his life by its legitimation of his and Aspasia's son.

As a statesman his greatest fault was a failure to foresee that personal government is ultimately ruinous to a nation. He taught the people to follow a leader, but he could not perpetuate a descent of leaders like himself. Hence we cannot wonder, when days of trouble broke over Athens, how that men spoke bitterly of Pericles and all his glory. Yet he was a lofty-minded statesman, inspired by noble aspirations, and his heart was full of a noble love for the city and her citizens. Plutarch tells the story that, as he lay dying and apparently unconscious, his friends around his bed were passing in review the great achievements of his life, and the nine trophies which he had erected at different times for so many victories. The dying patriot quietly interrupted with the characteristic sentence: "What you praise in my life belongs partly to good fortune, and is, at best, common to me with many generals. But that of which I am proudest, you have left unnoticed--no Athenian has ever put on mourning through any act of mine."

SOCRATES

From the French of FENELON

(468-399 B.C.)

]

Socrates, who, by the consent of all antiquity, has been considered as the most virtuous and enlightened of Pagan philosophers, was a citizen of Athens, and belonged to the town of Alopece.

He was born in the fourth year of the 77th Olympiad. His father, Sophroniscus, was a sculptor; and his mother, Phanarete, a midwife.

He first studied philosophy under Anaxagoras, and next under Archelaus, the natural philosopher. But finding that all these vain speculations concerning natural objects served no useful purpose, and had no influence in rendering the philosopher a better man, he devoted himself to the study of ethics; and (as Cicero, in the third book of his Tusculan Questions, observes) may be said to be the founder of moral philosophy among the Greeks. In the first book, speaking of him still more particularly and more extensively, he expresses himself thus: "It is my opinion (and it is an opinion in which all are agreed) that Socrates was the first who, calling off the attention of philosophy from the investigation of secrets which nature has concealed (but to which alone all preceding philosophers had attached themselves), engaged her in those things which concern the duties of common life; his object was to investigate the nature of virtue and vice; and to point out the characteristics of good and evil; saying, that the investigation of celestial phenomena was a subject far above the reach of our powers; and that even were they more within the reach of our faculties, it could have no influence in regulating our conduct."

That part of philosophy, then, whose province is the cultivation of morals, and which embraces every age and condition of life, he made his only study. This new mode of philosophizing was the better received on this account, that he who was the founder of it, fulfilling with the most scrupulous care all the duties of a good citizen, whether in peace or in war, enforced by example the precepts which he taught.

Of all the philosophers who have acquired celebrity, he (as Lucian in his dialogue of the Parasite remarks) was the only one that ever subjected himself to the hardships of war. He served two campaigns, in both of which, though unsuccessful, he served in person and exhibited a manly courage. In the one, he saved the life of Xenophon, who when retreating, had fallen from his horse and would have been killed by the enemy, had not Socrates taking him upon his shoulders, removed him from the danger and carried him several furlongs, till his horse, which had run off, was brought back. This fact is related by Strabo.

In his other campaign, the Athenians having been entirely defeated and put to flight, Socrates was the last to retreat, and showed such a stern aspect that the pursuers of those who fled, seeing him every moment ready to turn upon them, never had the boldness to attack him. This testimony is given him by Athenaeus.

After these two expeditions, Socrates never set a foot out of Athens. In this, his conduct was very different from that of the other philosophers, who all devoted a part of their life to travelling, that by intercourse with the learned of other countries they might acquire new knowledge. But as that kind of philosophy to which Socrates limited himself led a man to use every effort to know himself rather than to burden his mind with knowledge which has no influence on moral conduct, he thought it his duty to dispense with tedious travelling, in which nothing was to be learned which he might not learn at Athens among his countrymen, for whose reformation, besides, he thought his labors ought to be devoted, rather than to that of strangers. And as moral philosophy is a science which is taught better by example than by precept, he laid it down as a rule to himself, to follow and practise all that right reason and the most rigid virtue could demand.

It was in compliance with this maxim that, when elected one of the senators of the city, and having taken the oath to give his opinion "according to the laws," he peremptorily refused to subscribe to the sentence by which the people, in opposition to the laws, had condemned to death nine officers; and though the people took offence at it, and some of the most powerful even threw out severe menaces against him, he always firmly adhered to his resolution; thinking it inconsistent with the principles of a man of virtue or honor, to act contrary to his oath merely to please the people. Except on this single occasion, we know not whether he ever acted in a civil capacity; but insulated as the occasion was, he acquired such reputation by it at Athens, for probity and the other virtues, that he was more respected there than the magistrates themselves.

He was very careful of his person, and blamed those who paid no attention to themselves, or who affected exterior negligence. He was always neat, dressed in a decent, becoming manner; observing a just medium between what might seem gross and rustic, and what savored of pride and effeminacy.

Though furnished with few of the blessings of fortune, he always maintained perfect disinterestedness by receiving no remuneration from those who attended on his instructions. By such conduct he condemned the practice of the other philosophers, whose custom it was to sell their lessons, and to tax their scholars higher or lower, according to the degree of reputation they had acquired.

Thus Socrates, as Xenophon relates, used to say that he could not conceive how a man, whose object it was to teach virtue, should think of turning it to gain; as if to form a man of virtue, and to make of his pupil a good friend, were not the richest advantages and the most solid profit with which his cares could be rewarded.

It must further be remarked that Socrates kept no class, as did the other philosophers, who had a fixed place where their scholars assembled, and where lectures were delivered to them at stated hours. Socrates' manner of philosophizing consisted simply in conversing with those who chanced to be where he was, without any regard to time or place.

He was always poor; but in his poverty so contented, that though to be rich was within the reach of a wish, by receiving the presents which his friends and scholars often urged him to accept, he always returned them; to the great displeasure of his wife, who had no relish for carrying philosophy to such a height. In regard to food and clothes, so hardy was his manner of life that Antiphon, the Sophist, sometimes reproached him, by saying that he had not a slave so miserable as would be contented with it: "For," said he, "your food is disgustingly mean; besides, not only are you always very poorly dressed, but winter or summer you have the same robe; and never anything above it: with this, you on all occasions, go barefoot."

But Socrates proved to him that he was greatly mistaken if he thought that happiness depended on wealth or finery; and that, poor as he might seem to him, he was in fact happier than he. "I consider," said he, "that as to want nothing is the exclusive prerogative of the gods, so the fewer wants a man has, the nearer he approaches to the condition of the gods."

It was impossible that virtue so pure as that of Socrates should have no effect in exciting admiration, especially in a city such as Athens, where that example must have appeared very extraordinary. For those very persons who have not the happiness to follow virtue themselves, cannot refrain from doing justice to those who do follow it. This soon gained Socrates the universal esteem of his fellow-citizens, and attracted to him many scholars of every age; by whom the advantages of listening to his instructions, and engaging in conversation with him, were preferred to the most fascinating pleasure and the most agreeable amusements.

What rendered the manner of Socrates peculiarly engaging was, that though in his own practice he maintained the most rigid severity, yet to others he was in the highest degree gentle and complaisant. The first principle with which he wished to inspire his youthful auditors was piety and reverence for the gods; he then allured them as much as possible to observe temperance, and to avoid voluptuousness; representing to them how the latter deprives a man of liberty, the richest treasure of which he is possessed.

His manner of treating the science of morals was the more insinuating, as he always conducted his subject in the way of conversation and without any apparent method. For without proposing any point for discussion, he kept by that which chance first presented. Like one who himself wished information, he first put a question, and then, profiting by the concessions of his respondent, brought him to a proposition subversive of that which in the beginning of the debate had been considered as a first principle. He spent one part of the day in conferences of this kind, on _morals_. To these everyone was welcome, and according to the testimony of Xenophon, none departed from them without becoming _a better man_.

Though Socrates has left us nothing in writing, yet by what we find in the works of Plato and Xenophon, it is easy to judge both of the principles of his ethical knowledge and of the manner in which he communicated them. The uniformity observable (especially in his manner of disputing), as transmitted by these two scholars of Socrates, is a certain proof of the method which he followed.

It will be difficult to conceive how a person who exhorted all men to honor the gods, and who preached, so to speak, to the young to avoid and abandon every vice, should himself be condemned to death for impiety against the gods received at Athens, and as a corrupter of youth. This infamously unjust proceeding took place in a time of disorder and under the seditious government of the thirty tyrants. The occasion of it was as follows:

Critias, the most powerful of these thirty tyrants, had formerly, as well as Alcibiades, been a disciple of Socrates. But both of them being weary of a philosophy the maxims of which would not yield to their ambition and intemperance, they, at length, totally abandoned it. Critias, though formerly a scholar of Socrates, became his most inveterate enemy. This we are to trace to that firmness with which Socrates reproached him for a certain shameful vice; and to those means by which he endeavored to thwart his indulging in it. Hence it was that Critias, having become one of the thirty tyrants, had nothing more at heart than the destruction of Socrates, who, besides, not being able to brook their tyranny, was wont to speak against them with much freedom. For, seeing that they were always putting to death citizens and powerful men, he could not refrain from observing, in a company where he was, that if he to whom the care of cattle was committed, exhibited them every day leaner and fewer in number, it would be very strange if he would not himself confess that he was a bad cow-herd.

Critias and Charicles, two of the most powerful of the thirty tyrants, feeling the weight of the allusion fall upon themselves, first enacted that no one should teach in Athens the art of reasoning. Although Socrates never had professed that art, yet it was easy to discover that he was aimed at; and that it was intended thus to deprive him of the liberty of conversing as usual, on moral subjects, with those who resorted to him.

That he might have a precise explanation of this law, he went to the two authors of it; but as he embarrassed them by the subtlety of his questions, they plainly told him that they prohibited him from entering into conversation with young people.

But, seeing Socrates' reputation was so great that to attack him and serve him with an indictment would have drawn upon them public odium, it was thought necessary to begin by discrediting him in the view of the public. This was attempted by the comedy of Aristophanes entitled "The Clouds," in which Socrates was represented as teaching the art of making that which is just appear unjust.

The comedy having had its effect, by the ridicule which it threw upon Socrates, Melitus brought a capital accusation against him, in which he alleged; first, that he did not honor those as gods, who were acknowledged such at Athens, and that he was introducing new ones; secondly, that he corrupted the youth; that is to say, that he taught them not to respect their parents, or the magistrates. The accuser required that for these two crimes he should be condemned to death.

Enraged as the tyrants were (and especially Critias and Charicles) against Socrates, it is certain that they would have been very reluctant to condemn him, had he availed himself in the least of the favorable circumstances in his case. But the intrepidity and resolution with which he heard the accusation, refusing even to pay any fine, as that would have been to avow himself in some degree culpable; and especially the firmness with which he addressed the judges when called upon to state the punishment which he thought he deserved, enraged them against him. For, with confidence in his integrity, he answered them, "That he thought he deserved to be maintained at the public expense during the rest of his life." This whetted afresh the resentment of the thirty tyrants, who caused him now to be condemned to death.

Lysias, a very eloquent philosopher, had composed an apologetical oration that Socrates might avail himself of it, and pronounce it before the judges, when called to appear before them. Socrates having heard it, acknowledged it to be a very good one, but returned it, saying that it did not suit him. "But why," replied Lysias, "will it not suit you, since you think it a good one?"

"Oh, my friend!" returned Socrates, "may there not be shoes and different articles of dress very good in themselves, and yet not suitable for me?"

The fact is, though the oration was very fine and energetic, yet the manner in which it was conducted, did not suit the uprightness and candor of Socrates.

Now condemned to death, Socrates was put into prison, where some days after, he died by drinking the poison hemlock. For this was the instrument of death, then used by the Athenians, in the case of those who were condemned for capital crimes.

According to Diogenes Laertius, Socrates was twice married, but of the two wives he has given him, we know nothing except of the famous Xantippe, by whom he had a son named Tamprocles; Xantippe rendered herself celebrated by her ill-humor, and by the exercise which she afforded to the patience of Socrates. He had married her, he said, from a persuasion that if he were able to bear with her bad temper, there could be nothing which he might not support.

He died in the first year of the 95th Olympiad, aged seventy.

DIOGENES

From the French of FENELON

(412-323 B.C.)

]

Diogenes the Cynic, son of Icesius a banker, was born about the 91st Olympiad, in Sinope, a city of Paphlagonia. He was accused of having forged money, in concert with his father. Icesius was arrested, and died in prison. Alarmed at the fate of his father, Diogenes fled to Athens. When he had arrived at that city, he inquired for Antisthenes; but the latter, having resolved never to take a scholar, repulsed him and beat him off with his stick. Diogenes was by no means discouraged by this treatment. "Strike--fear not," said he to him, bowing his head; "you shall never find a stick hard enough to make me run off, so long as you continue to speak." Overcome by the importunity of Diogenes, Antisthenes yielded, and permitted him to become his scholar.

Banished from his native country and without any resource, Diogenes was reduced to great indigence. He perceived one day, a mouse running briskly up and down, without any fear of being surprised by the approach of night, without any anxiety about a lodging-place, and even without thinking of food. This reconciled him to his misery. He resolved to live at his ease, without constraint, and to dispense with everything which was not absolutely necessary for the preservation of life. He doubled his cloak, that by rolling himself up in it, it might serve the purposes both of a bed and of a coverlet. His movables consisted of a bag, a jug, and a staff; and wherever he went he always carried his furniture along with him. His stick, however, he used only when he went to the country, or on some emergency. Persons really lame were, he said, neither the deaf nor the blind, but those who had no bag.

He always went barefoot, nor did he wear sandals even when the ground was covered with snow. He endeavored also to accustom himself to eat raw flesh, but this was a point of perfection to which he never could arrive. He entreated a person of his acquaintance to afford him some little hole in his lodging, to which he might occasionally retire. But as he was dilatory in giving him a positive answer he took possession of an earthen tub, which he always carried about with him, and which was the only house he ever had. In the heat of summer when the fields were scorched by the sun, he used to roll among the burning sands, and in winter to embrace statues covered with snow, that he might accustom himself to endure without pain the inclemencies of heat and cold.

He treated everyone with contempt. He accused Plato and his scholars of dissipation, and of the crime of loving good cheer. All the orators he styled "the slaves of the people." Crowns were, he said, as brittle marks of glory as bubbles of water, which burst in the formation; that theatrical representations were the wonder of fools only. In a word, nothing escaped his satiric humor.

He ate, he spoke, he slept, without discrimination, wherever chance placed him. Pointing to Jupiter's porticos on one occasion, he exclaimed: "How excellent a dining-room the Athenians have built for me there!"

He frequently said: "When I consider the rulers, the physicians, and the philosophers whom the world contains, I am tempted to think man considerably elevated by his wisdom above the brutes; but when, on the other hand, I behold augurs, interpreters of dreams, and people who can be inflated with pride on account of their riches or honors, I cannot help thinking him the most foolish of all animals."

When taking a walk one day, he observed a child drinking from the hollow of his hand. He felt greatly affronted at the sight. "What!" exclaimed Diogenes, "do children know better than I do with what things a man ought to be contented?" Upon which he took his jug out of his bag, and instantly broke it, as a superfluous movable.

The province in philosophy to which Diogenes attached himself, was that of morals. He did not, however, entirely neglect the other sciences. He was possessed of lively parts, and easily anticipated objections.

As he was one day discoursing on a very serious and important subject everyone passed by without giving himself the least concern about what Diogenes was saying. Upon this, he began to sing. The people crowded about him. He immediately seized the opportunity of giving them a severe reprimand for flocking about him and attending with eagerness to a mere trifle, while they would not so much as listen to things of the greatest importance.

Walking out once at noon, with a lighted torch in his hand, he was asked what he was in quest of. "I am searching for a _man_," said he. On another occasion he called out in the middle of a street: "Ho! _men_--_men_." A great many people assembling around him, Diogenes beat them away with his stick, saying "I was calling for men."

Alexander passing through Corinth on one occasion, had the curiosity to see Diogenes, who happened to be there at that time. He found him basking in the sun in the grove Craneum, where he was cementing his tub. "I am," said he to him, "the great king Alexander." "And I," replied the philosopher, "am the dog Diogenes." "Are you not afraid of me?" continued Alexander. "Are you good or bad?" returned Diogenes. "I am good," rejoined Alexander. "And who would be afraid of one who is good?" replied Diogenes.

Alexander admired the penetration and free manners of Diogenes. After some conversation, he said to him: "I see, Diogenes, that you are in want of many things; and I shall be happy to have an opportunity of assisting you: ask of me what you will." "Retire a little to one side then," replied Diogenes; "you are depriving me of the rays of the sun."

It is no wonder that Alexander stood astonished at seeing a man so completely above every human concern. "Which of the two is richest?" continued Diogenes: "he who is content with his cloak and his bag, or he for whom a whole kingdom is not sufficient, but who is daily exposing himself to a thousand dangers in order to extend its limits?" Alexander's courtiers felt indignant that so great a king should do so much honor to such a dog as Diogenes, who did not even rise from his place. Alexander perceived it, and turning about to them said: "Were I not Alexander, I should wish to be Diogenes."

As Diogenes was one day going to Egina, he was taken by pirates, who brought him to Crete, and exposed him to sale. He did not appear to be in the least disconcerted, nor to feel the least uneasiness on account of his misfortune. Seeing one Xeniades, corpulent and well-dressed, "I must be sold to that person," said he, "for I perceive he needs a master. Come, child," said he to Xeniades, as he was coming up to purchase him, "come, child, buy a man." Being asked what he could do, he said he had the talent of commanding men. "Crier," said he, "call out in the market, _If anyone needs a master, let him come here and purchase one_."

Xeniades charged him with the instruction of his children, a task which Diogenes performed with great fidelity. He made them commit to memory the finest passages of the poets, with an abridgment of his own philosophy, which he composed on purpose for them. He made them exercise themselves in running, wrestling, hunting, horsemanship, and in using the bow and the sling. He accustomed them to very plain fare, and in their ordinary meals to drink nothing but water. He ordered them to be shaven to the skin. He brought them with him into the streets very carelessly dressed, and frequently without sandals and tunics. These children had a great affection for Diogenes, and took particular care to recommend him to their parents.

When Diogenes was in slavery, some of his friends used their interest to procure him his liberty. "Fools!" said he, "you are jesting. Do you not know that the lion is not the slave of them who feed him? They who feed him are his slaves."

Diogenes one day heard a herald publish that Dioxippus had conquered men at the Olympic games. "Say slaves and wretches," said he to them. "It is I who have conquered men."

When it was said to him, "You are old, you must take your ease," he said, "What? must I slacken my pace at the end of my course? Would it not be fitter that I should redouble my efforts?"

When walking in the streets, he observed a man let fall some bread which he was ashamed to lift. In order to show him that a man ought never to blush when he is desirous to save anything, Diogenes collected the fragments of a broken bottle and carried them through the town. "I am like good musicians," said he, "who leave the true sound that others may catch it." To one who came to him to be his disciple, he gave a gammon of bacon to carry and desired him to follow him. Ashamed to carry it through the streets, the man threw it down and made off. Diogenes meeting him a few days after, said to him, "What? has a gammon of bacon broken our friendship?"

After reflecting on his life, Diogenes smiling said: "That all the imprecations generally uttered in tragedies had fallen upon him; that he had neither house, nor city, nor country; and that, in a state of indigence he lived from day to day; but that to fortune he opposed firmness; to custom, nature; and reason to the disorders of the soul."

Diogenes was greatly beloved and highly esteemed by the Athenians. They publicly scourged one who had broken his tub, and gave the philosopher another.

He was one day asked where he chose to be buried after his death? He replied: "In an open field." "How!" said one, "are you not afraid of becoming food for birds of prey and wild beasts?" "Then I must have my stick beside me," said Diogenes, "to drive them away when they come." "But," resumed the other, "you will be devoid of all sensation." "If that be the case," replied he, "it is no matter whether they eat me or not, seeing I shall not be sensible to it."

Some say that having arrived at the age of ninety, he ate a neat's-foot raw, which caused indigestion to such a degree that he burst. It is said by others that feeling himself burdened with age, he retained his breath, and was thus the cause of his own death. His friends coming next day, found him muffled up in his cloak. Upon first discovering him they doubted whether he were not asleep (which with him, was very unusual); they were soon convinced that he was dead. There was a great dispute among them about who should bury him; but when on the eve of breaking out into open violence, the magistrates and old men of Corinth opportunely arrived to appease the disturbance.

Diogenes was buried beside the gate lying toward the isthmus. There was erected, beside his tomb, a dog of Parian marble. The death of this philosopher happened in the first year of the 114th Olympiad, on the same day that Alexander died at Babylon.

DEMOSTHENES[6]

By E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS, PRES'T OF BROWN UNIVERSITY.

(385-322 B.C.)

[Footnote 6: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

]

Demosthenes, the foremost orator of all history, was born in Athens about July in the year 385 B.C. His father, also named Demosthenes, a manufacturer of swords, was a gentleman widely and justly esteemed. His mother was Cleobule, the daughter of Gylon by a Scythian lady. The father died when the son was about seven years of age, leaving an estate of fourteen or fifteen talents, equal to some $200,000 now. The guardians partly embezzled, partly wasted the property, and the young orator's first law business, occupying several years, was the prosecution of these criminals to recover what he might. His success was but partial, yet his patrimony, with what he earned, always kept him in relative affluence, spite of his expensive tastes and great public and private munificence. As a boy he was weak, and did not avail himself of the physical training then usual among Greek youth of good families. He, however, employed the best teachers in his studies and his mental education was thorough. To Thucydides and the old rhetoricians he was ardently devoted, and these, with personal instruction by the orator Isaeus, did most to form his style.

The early years of Demosthenes's manhood were spent in preparing speeches for sale, in instructing pupils in rhetoric, and in the severe and painstaking education of himself as a public speaker. His resolution in overcoming obstacles is much dwelt upon by ancient writers. He at first lisped and stammered and had a weak voice. To cure these faults he enunciated with pebbles in his mouth and declaimed while walking uphill and by the roaring breakers of the sea-shore. He shut himself in an underground study, which he constructed for the purpose, and practised going through long trains of thought there alone. "When he went out upon a visit or received one," says Plutarch, "he would take something that passed in conversation, some business or fact that was reported to him, for a subject to exercise himself upon. As soon as he had parted from his friends, he went to his study, where he repeated the matter in order as it passed, together with the arguments for and against it. The substance of the speeches which he heard he committed to memory, and afterward reduced them to regular sentences and periods, meditating a variety of corrections and new forms of expression, both for what others had said to him and he had addressed to them. Hence it was concluded that he was not a man of much genius, and that all his eloquence was the effect of labor. A strong proof of this seemed to be that he was seldom heard to speak anything extempore, and though the people often called upon him by name as he sat in the assembly, to speak to the point debated, he would not do it unless he came prepared." It is related that when in speaking he happened to be thrown into confusion by any occurrence in the assembly, the orator Demades, the foremost extempore speaker of the age, often arose and supported him in an extempore address, but that he never did this for Demades. Demosthenes was not, however, the slave of manuscript or memory. He declared that "he neither wrote the whole of his orations nor spoke without first committing part to writing." There was said to be greater spirit and boldness in his impromptu speeches than in those which he had elaborately prepared. People thought that sometimes when he spoke out thus on a sudden, his eloquence was inspired from above, as when once he uttered, in regular though unpremeditated verse, the forceful oath:

"By earth, by all her fountains, streams, and floods."

Demosthenes's first speeches were harsh and obscure. The sentences were too long, the metaphors violent and inapt. On the occasion of his first set address before a public assembly he even broke down. He was, however, indomitable in his determination and efforts to speak well, and persevered until at last the most critical heard him with delight. Notwithstanding certain defects which nice critics very early remarked, such as undue vehemence, argumentation and intensity too long sustained, and, in general, lack of variety and relief, Demosthenes's oratory is worthy the exalted regard which the best readers have in all ages accorded to it. His thought is always lucid and weighty, his argument fair and convincing, his diction manly and solid. He never uses a superfluous or a far-fetched word, never indulges in flowers, word-painting, or rhetorical trickery of any kind. He shows no trace of affectation, no effort to surprise or to be witty He depends for effect upon truth logically and earnestly presented. If such a style, everywhere perfectly kept up, was in any degree artificial, how matchless the art which concealed the art! So plain and straightforward are many of the speeches, that one is tempted to refer their wonderful power when spoken to some richness of elocution not appreciable now. Says Hume, treating of Demosthenes' manner, "Could it be copied, its success would be infallible over a modern assembly. It is rapid harmony exactly adjusted to the sense. It is vehement reasoning without any appearance of art; it is disdain, anger, boldness, freedom, involved in a continued stream of argument; and, of all human productions, the orations of Demosthenes present to us the models which approach nearest to perfection." ("Essay of Eloquence." Comp. Lord Brougham's Works, vii., 59 foll.)

Demosthenes was between twenty-five and thirty when Philip of Macedon began his astonishing career of conquest. It was soon clear that he was to be the rival of Athens for the headship of Greece. Demosthenes became the champion of the Athenian cause, and henceforth, so long as he lived, used all his powers against Macedonian aggressions. Most of his best speeches relate to this issue. His eloquence, argument, and personal influence won nearly all the Grecian states to a coalition that, for a time, successfully forbade Philip to set foot in Greece proper. Only Thebes and Sparta stood out, and when Philip, daring them all, ventured south and conquered Phocis, even the Thebans yielded to Demosthenes's pleas and joined the league. In vain, however. At the decisive battle of Chaeronea, B.C. 338, Philip was entirely victorious. The allies fled, Demosthenes himself among them, leaving Philip to become at his leisure the master of every city so far south at least as the northern confines of Sparta. He might have realized his wish at once but for his excesses. He drank himself drunk, dancing over his slain foes, and beating time in maudlin song to the caption of the Athenian decree which Demosthenes had procured against him. But it is said that when sober again he trembled to remember "the prodigious power of that orator who had obliged him to put both empire and life on the cast of a day." Two years after the battle of Chaeronea Philip is stricken down by the assassin Pausanias. Alexander mounts the throne, a youth of twenty. Greece flies to arms against him, not dreaming that a greater than Philip is here. Marching quickly against the Thracians and the Illyrians, who at once succumb, he volts to smite rebellious Thebes and Athens, whom Demosthenes's incessant appeals have again induced to take the field. In spite of him, the Athenians now basely desert the Thebans, leaving them to stand the entire fury of the war alone. Greece is thus soon quieted again, and the boy warrior, leaving Antipater behind with a sufficient home guard, crosses to Asia never to return. Once, later, when Harpalus, Alexander's renegade treasurer, came to Athens with his bags of Asiatic gold, and again after Alexander's death, it for a moment seemed possible to throw off Macedonia's yoke. Each time the orator led in an attempt to do this, but failed. Fined fifty talents for taking some of Harpalus' gold, he fled from Athens, living for a time in Troezen and AEgina. The new hope for the former Greek regime evoked by Alexander's death was brief. Athens recalled Demosthenes and he made a successful tour of the cities to rally them against Antipater. Antipater, however, was too strong, and his victory at Cranon, B.C. 322, fully restored Macedonia's supremacy. Pursued to Calaurea by Antipater's emissaries, Demosthenes fled for refuge to the temple of Neptune there, took poison, which he had long carried with him for that purpose, and died, aged sixty-two.

It is clear that both the Macedonian conquerors deemed Demosthenes their most powerful foe. Drunk or sober, Philip thought constantly of him as the great force to be reckoned with. When he with nine other deputies visited Philip's court, it was Demosthenes's speech to which Philip felt called to give special reply, treating him with argument, while bestowing his choicest hospitality upon the others. AEschines and Philocrates accordingly came home full of praise for Philip. He was eloquent, they said, handsome, and could drink more liquor than any other man. Demosthenes, showing for the nonce some wit, ridiculed these traits, the first as that of a sophist, the second as that of a woman, the third as that of a sponge. "The fame of Demosthenes reached the Persian court; and the king wrote letters to his lieutenants commanding them to supply him with money and to attend to him more than to any other man in Greece; because he best knew how to make a diversion in his favor by raising fresh troubles and finding employment for the Macedonian arms nearer home. This Alexander afterward discovered by letters of Demosthenes which he found at Sardis, and the papers of the Persian government expressing the sums which had been given him." (Plutarch.)