Chapter XI: Part 11

LXXXVI. THE CLEFT WAY.—About five miles to the south-west of Daulis the road, after skirting the eastern foot of the mighty mass of Mount Parnassus, turns sharply to the west and begins to ascend through the long, narrow, and profound valley which leads to Delphi. Just at the point where the road turns westward and before it begins the long ascent it is joined from the south-east by the direct road from Lebadea and Thebes. The meeting of the three roads—the road from Daulis, the road from Delphi, and the road from Thebes—is the Cleft Way or Triple Road, the scene of the legendary murder of Laius by Oedipus. It is now known as the Cross Road of Megas, after the gallant Johannes Megas, who met his death here in July 1856, while exterminating a band of brigands with a small troop of soldiers. His monument, on a rock at the meeting of the roads, bears a few verses in modern Greek. Apart from any legendary associations the scene is one of the wildest and grandest in Greece, recalling in its general features, though on a vastly greater scale, the mouth of Glencoe. On both sides of the valley the mountains tower abruptly in huge precipices; the cliffs of Parnassus on the northern side of the valley are truly sublime. Not a trace of human habitation is to be seen. All is desolation and silence. A more fitting spot could hardly be found for the scene of a memorable tragedy.

LXXXVII. DELPHI.—The site of Delphi, till lately occupied by the modern village of Kastri, is in the highest degree striking and impressive. The city lay at the southern foot of the tremendous cliffs of Parnassus, which form a sheer wall of rock, about eight hundred feet high. Over these frightful precipices Philomelus drove some of the defeated Locrians. Just at the angle where this vast wall of rock bends round towards the south it is rent from top to bottom by a deep and gloomy gorge, some twenty feet wide, where there is a fine echo. Facing each other across this narrow chasm rise two stupendous cliffs, whose peaked summits tower considerably above the rest of the line of cliffs. They are nearly perpendicular in front, and perfectly so where they fall sheer down into the gorge. The eastern of the two cliffs was called Hyampia in antiquity; from its top Aesop is said to have been hurled by the Delphians. It has been suggested, though perhaps without sufficient reason, that when the later writers of antiquity, especially the Roman poets, speak of the two summits of Parnassus, they are really referring to these two cliffs. In point of fact the cliffs are far indeed from being near the summit of Parnassus; but seen from Delphi they completely hide the higher slopes of the mountain. In winter or wet weather a torrent comes foaming down the gorge in a cascade about two hundred feet high, bringing down the water from the higher slopes of the mountain. At the mouth of the gorge, under the eastern cliff, is the rock-cut basin of the perennial Castalian spring, a few paces above the highway. The water from the spring joins the stream from the gorge, which, after passing over the road, plunges into a deep rocky lyn or glen, which it has scooped out for itself in the steep side of the mountain. Down this glen the stream descends to join the Plistus, which flows along the bottom of the Delphic valley from east to west, at a great depth below the town.

From the cliffs at the back of Delphi the ground slopes away so steeply to the bed of the Plistus that it is only by means of a succession of artificial terraces, rising in tiers above each other, that the soil can be cultivated and made fit for habitation. There are about thirty of these terraces, supported by stone walls, mostly of polygonal masonry. The sanctuary of Apollo occupies only the five or six highest terraces at the foot of the cliffs, on the western side of the Castalian gorge. So high does it stand above the bottom of the valley that twenty minutes are needed to descend the steep terraced slope to the bed of the Plistus. Corn is grown on the terraces below the sanctuary; and the slopes on the eastern side of the Castalian gorge are wooded with fine olive and mulberry trees. Across the valley, on the southern side of the Plistus, rise the bare precipitous cliffs of Mount Cirphis, capped with fir-woods. From the western end of the precipices which rise at the back of Delphi a high rocky ridge projects southward toward the bed of the Plistus. This ridge closes the valley of Delphi on the west, shutting out all view of the Crisaean plain and the gulf of Corinth, though a glimpse of the waters of the gulf is obtained from the stadium, the highest part of Delphi.

Thus, enclosed by a rocky ridge on the west, by tremendous precipices on the north and east, and faced on the south, across the valley of the Plistus, by the lower but still precipitous sides of Mount Cirphis, Delphi lay in a secluded mountain valley; and rising on terraces in a semicircular shape, it resembled an immense theatre, to which it has justly been compared by ancient and modern writers. The whole scene is one of stern and awful majesty, well fitted to be the seat of a great religious capital. In respect of natural scenery no contrast could well be more striking than that between the two great religious capitals of ancient Greece, Delphi and Olympia—Delphi clinging to the rugged side of barren mountains, with frowning precipices above and a profound glen below; Olympia stretched out on the level margin of a river that winds in stately curves among the corn-fields and vineyards of a smiling valley set between soft wooded hills.

LXXXVIII. AESCHINES AT DELPHI.—That the place of assembly of the Amphictyonic Council at Delphi must have been situated near the chapel of St. Elias is shown by a passage of Aeschines, in which he says that the Cirrhaean plain lay spread beneath and in full view of the meeting-place of the Amphictyonic Council. The orator himself, he tells us, was one of the Athenian representatives at a meeting of the Council. Addressing it he pointed to the smiling and peaceful plain stretched at their feet, with its olive-groves and corn-fields, its cottages and potteries, and in the distance the shining waters of the gulf, with the port-town visible beside it. “You see,” he cried, “yonder plain tilled by the men of Amphissa and the potteries and cottages they have built. You see with your eyes the fortifications of the cursed and execrated port. You know for yourselves that these men levy tolls and take money from the sacred harbour.” He then reminded his hearers of the oath sworn by their ancestors that this fair plain should lie a wilderness for ever. His words were received with a tumult of applause, and next day at dawn the men of Delphi, armed with shovels and mattocks, marched down into the plain, razed the fortifications of the port to the ground, and gave the houses to the flames. It is refreshing to know that on their way back they were hotly pursued by the Amphissaeans in arms and had to run for their lives. This was the beginning of the chain of events which in a few months more brought Philip at the head of a Macedonian army into Greece and ended in the overthrow of Greek freedom at Chaeronea.

The view described by the orator, whose ill-omened eloquence brought all these miseries and disasters in its train, is to be obtained, not from the platform on which the chapel of St. Elias stands, but from a point a little way to the south-west of it, where the traveller coming from Delphi reaches the end of the high ridge that shuts in the valley of Delphi on the west. Here as he turns the corner the whole Crisaean plain, now covered with luxuriant olive-woods, comes suddenly into sight. The scene is again as rich and peaceful as it was before Aeschines raised his voice, like the scream of some foul bird snuffing the carrion afar off, and turned it into a desert. We may suppose either that in his time the Amphictyonic Council met at this point, or, what is far likelier, that the orator’s description of that day’s doings is more graphic than correct.

LXXXIX. THE PYTHIAN TUNE.—Sacadas was said to be the first who played the Pythian air on the flute at Delphi. The tune has been described for us by Pollux and Strabo. The melody, intended to represent musically Apollo’s combat with the dragon, was played by a single flute, but now and then the trumpets and fifes struck in. First Apollo was heard preparing for the fight and choosing his ground. Then followed the challenge to the dragon, then the battle, indicated by an iambic measure. Here probably the music imitated the twanging of the silver bow and the swish of the arrows as they sped to their mark. It is expressly said that the gnashing of the monster’s teeth was heard, as he ground them together in his agony. Here the trumpets came in, not in long-drawn winding bouts, but in short single blasts, one perhaps for each arrow-shot, every flourish marking a hit. The shrill wailing notes of the fifes mimicked the dragon’s dying screams. Then the flute broke into a light lilting air, beating time to the triumphal measure trodden by the victorious god.

XC. THE LACEDAEMONIAN TROPHY AT DELPHI.—The many statues of gods, admirals, and generals which formed the proud trophy of the Lacedaemonians at Delphi appear to have stood like soldiers in stiff formal rows at different heights on the steps of the pedestal, scowling at the Athenian trophy which probably faced them on the opposite side of the road.

This Lacedaemonian trophy, commemorative of the great naval victory of Aegospotami, is repeatedly referred to by Plutarch. He says that from the spoils of the battle Lysander set up bronze statues of himself and of all the admirals, together with golden stars of the Dioscuri; and elsewhere he tells us that in his time these old bronze statues of the admirals were covered with a beautiful blue patina, the growth of ages, so that people spoke of them as being true blue salts. Cicero specially mentions the statue of Lysander at Delphi. The reason for dedicating golden stars of the Dioscuri would seem to have been that Castor and Pollux were said to have appeared on the side of the Lacedaemonians at the battle of Aegospotami, just as they appeared on the Roman side at the battle of Lake Regillus. It is related that after the battle of Leuctra, which gave the death-blow to Spartan prestige and power, the golden stars disappeared from Delphi and were never seen again, as if in token that the star of Sparta’s fortunes had set. The dedication of the stars in memory of the appearance of the Dioscuri is an interesting confirmation of the view that the twins Castor and Pollux were the Morning and Evening Star, the equivalents of the Sanscrit Aśvins. It is notable that in Roman history the appearances of the Dioscuri as messengers of victory seem always to have taken place in the same season of the year, namely at the summer solstice or the first full moon after it. By a curious coincidence the old chronicler Holinshed reports that on the eve of the battle of Bannockburn, which was also Midsummer Eve, two men appeared at Glastonbury saying they were going to help the Scots in a battle next day; and a single knight in bright armour rode into Aberdeen on the afternoon of the battle and was seen to pass over into the Orkneys in the evening.[9]

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Footnote 9:

For this modern instance I have to thank my friend Mr. R. A. Neil, of
Pembroke College.

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XCI. THE GODS IN BATTLE.—Apollo,

Artemis, and Athena are said to have appeared in person fighting for the Greeks against the Gauls. The heroes Theseus and Echetlus were seen combating on the Greek side at Marathon. In the great sea-fight of Salamis phantoms of armed men were perceived stretching out their hands from Aegina to protect the Greek ships; they were believed to be the Aeacids, who had been prayed to for help before the battle. The spirit of Aristomenes was said to have fought for the Thebans against his old foes the Spartans at Leuctra. The Mantineans fancied they saw Poseidon warring on their side against the Lacedaemonians. In a battle between the people of Crotona and the people of Locri, two unknown youths, of wondrous stature, in strange armour, clad in scarlet and riding white horses, were seen fighting on the wings of the Locrian army; after the battle they disappeared. These two youths were probably regarded as Castor and Pollux, whose reported appearance at the battle of the Lake Regillus, charging with lances in rest at the head of the Roman cavalry, is well known. It is said that when Alaric approached Athens he beheld Athena in full armour patrolling the walls, and Achilles guarding them with the same fiery valour with which he had avenged the death of Patroclus; terrified by the vision, the fierce barbarian gave up all thought of attacking the city. Similarly in the battles between the Spaniards and the Indians of Mexico it is affirmed by grave historians that St. James, the patron Saint of Spain, was seen tilting on his milk-white steed at the head of the Christian chivalry. In one of these battles a lady robed in white, supposed to be the Virgin, was visible by the side of St. James, throwing dust in the eyes of the infidels. The stout old chronicler Bernal Diaz, who fought in these wars, confesses that for his sins he was not found worthy to behold the glorious Apostle.[10]

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Footnote 10:

For these Spanish parallels I am indebted to my lamented friend the
late W. Robertson Smith. Niebuhr had previously made exactly the same
comparison.

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XCII. THE SIBYL’S WISH.—The author of the _Exhortation to the Greeks_ was shown at Cumae a bronze bottle in which the remains of the Sibyl were said to be preserved. Trimalchio in Petronius says: “At Cumae I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the children said to her, ‘Sibyl, what do you wish?’ she used to answer, 'I wish to die.'” Ampelius tells us that the Sibyl was said to be shut up in an iron cage which hung from a pillar in an ancient temple of Hercules at Argyrus. It has been pointed out by Dr. M. R. James that parallels to the story of the Sibyl’s wish are to be found in German folk-tales. One of these tales runs as follows: “Once upon a time there was a girl in London who wished to live for ever, so they say:

‘London, London is a fine town.
A maiden prayed to live for ever.’

And still she lives and hangs in a basket in a church, and every St. John’s Day about noon she eats a roll of bread.” Another story tells of a lady who resided at Danzig and was so rich and so blest with all that life can give that she wished to live always. So when she came to her latter end, she did not really die but only looked like dead, and very soon they found her in a hollow of a pillar in the church, half standing and half sitting, motionless. She stirred never a limb, but they saw quite plainly that she was alive, and she sits there down to this blessed day. Every New Year’s Day the sacristan comes and puts a morsel of the holy bread in her mouth, and that is all she has to live on. Long, long has she rued her fatal wish who set this transient life above the eternal joys of heaven. A third story relates how a noble damsel cherished the same foolish wish for immortality. So they put her in a basket and hung her up in a church, and there she hangs and never dies, though many, many a year has come and gone since they put her there. But every year on a certain day they give her a roll and she eats it and cries out “For ever! for ever! for ever!” And when she has so cried she falls silent again till the same time next year, and so it will go on for ever and for ever. A fourth story, taken down, near Oldenburg in Holstein, tells of a jolly dame that ate and drank and lived right merrily and had all that heart could desire, and she wished to live always. For the first hundred years all went well, but after that she began to shrink and shrivel up till at last she could neither walk nor stand nor eat nor drink. But die she could not. At first they fed her as if she were a little child, but when she grew smaller and smaller they put her in a glass bottle and hung her up in the church. And there she still hangs, in the church of St. Mary at Lübeck. She is as small as a mouse, but once a year she stirs.

XCIII. ORPHEUS IN HELL.—Why in his picture of hell the painter Polygnotus should have depicted Orpheus touching the branches of a willow-tree is not clear. Pausanias has himself rightly pointed out that willows grew in the grove of Proserpine, but that does not suffice to explain the gesture of Orpheus in the picture. Mr. J. Six ingeniously suggests that when Orpheus went to hell to fetch the soul of his lost Eurydice he may have carried in his hand a willow-branch, just as Aeneas carried the Golden Bough, to serve as a passport or ‘open Sesame’ to unlock the gates of Death to a living man, and that in memory of this former deed the painter may have depicted the bard touching the willow. Virgil tells how at sight of the Golden Bough, “not seen for long,” the surly Charon turned his crazy bark to shore and received Aeneas on board. Mr. Six surmises that here the words “not seen for long” refer to the time when Orpheus, like Aeneas, had passed the ferry with the Golden Bough in his hand. If he is right, Polygnotus took a different view of that mystic branch from Virgil, who certainly regarded it as a glorified mistletoe. Professor C. Robert accepts Mr. Six’s explanation. Formerly he held that Pausanias had misinterpreted the gesture of Orpheus. The bard, on Professor Robert’s earlier view, was depicted merely holding the lyre with one hand and playing on it with the other, and a branch of the willow under which he sat drooped down and touched the hand that swept the strings. This view, which Professor Robert has wisely abandoned, is open to several objections. It substitutes a commonplace gesture, which Pausanias could hardly have so grossly mistaken, for a remarkable one which, however it is to be explained, had clearly struck Pausanias as unusual and significant. Again, if Orpheus had been depicted playing, would not some one have been represented listening? But, so far as appears from Pausanias’s description, not a soul was paying any heed to the magic strains of the great minstrel. It seems better, therefore, to suppose that, like blind Thamyris, he sat sad and silent, dreaming of life in the bright world, of love and music.

XCIV. THE ACHERON.—The Acheron is the river now known as the Suliotiko or Phanariotiko which comes down from the mountains of the once famous Suli and winds, a sluggish, turbid, and weedy stream, through the wide plain of Phanari, traversing some swamps or meres before it reaches the sea. These swamps, which extend nearly to the sea, and never dry up though they shrink in summer, are the Acherusian lake. The plain, where it is not too marshy, is covered with fields of maize and rice and meadows where herds of buffaloes browse. A few plane-trees and low tamarisks fringe the margin of the winding river. Otherwise the plain is mostly treeless. On its eastern side rise, like a huge grey wall, the wild and barren mountains of Suli.

Before entering the plain, on its passage from these rugged highlands, the Acheron flows through a profound and gloomy gorge, one of the darkest and deepest of the glens of Greece. On either side precipices rise sheer from the water’s edge to a height of hundreds of feet, their ledges and crannies tufted with dwarf oaks and shrubs. Higher up, where the sides of the glen recede from the perpendicular, the mountains rise to a height of over three thousand feet, the black pine-woods which cling to their precipitous sides adding to the sombre magnificence of the scene. A precarious footpath leads along a perilous ledge high up on the mountain-side, from which the traveller gazes down into the depths of the tremendous ravine, where the deep and rapid river may be seen rushing and foaming along, often plunging in a cascade into a dark abyss, but so far below him that even the roar of the waterfall is lost in mid-air before it can reach his ear.

At the point where the river emerges from the defile into the plain, there are a few cottages with some ruins of a church and fortress on the right bank. The place is called Glyky. The church seems to have occupied the site of an ancient temple; some fragments of granite columns and pieces of a white marble cornice, adorned with a pattern of acanthus leaves, may be seen lying about. Here, perhaps, was the seat of that Oracle of the Dead where the envoys of Periander, tyrant of Corinth, summoned up the ghost of his murdered wife Melissa, and where Orpheus vainly sought to bring back his lost Eurydice from the world of shades.

XCV. A RIDE ACROSS PARNASSUS.—We left the new village of Delphi, which stands a little to the south-west of the ancient sanctuary, shortly after eight o’clock, and at once struck up the mountain-side at the back of the village. The path for a good way is the same as that to the Corycian cave. It climbs the bare rocky face of the mountain in a series of zigzags, from which as we rose higher and higher a wide prospect opened up behind us to the Gulf of Corinth and the distant mountains of Peloponnese. On reaching the top of this long and steep declivity we found ourselves on the edge of an expanse of comparatively level though broken ground, sparsely wooded with pines, beyond which soared the upper slopes of Parnassus, its summit lightly capped with snow. The high plateau on which we now stood is bounded on the north by an outlying spur of Parnassus, clothed with pine-forest, in the southern face of which is the Corycian cave. Instead of crossing the tableland in the direction of the cave, we skirted its south-western corner, keeping the wooded mountain on our right. The path continued to wind for hours along grey rocky slopes where pines grew more or less thickly. On either hand rose sombre mountains of the same general character—grey and rocky with patches of pine-forest on their sides. Now and then a little moss relieved with its verdure the barrenness of the rocks, and a stony glade through which we passed was speckled with pale purple crocuses. On these heights the air felt chilly, for the season was late October, and a little snow—the first of autumn—had fallen in the night, just touching with white the peaks of Parnassus and the high Locrian mountains in the west. The morning had been bright when we left Delphi, but as the day wore on the sky became overcast, its cold and lowering aspect harmonising well with the wild and desolate scenery through which we rode. The jingling of the mule-bells and the cries of the muleteers were almost the only sounds that broke the silence, though once in the forest to the right we heard the clapper-like note of a pelican, and once in an open glade we passed some woodmen hewing pine-logs. In time, the path beginning to descend, the rocks gave place to earthy slopes; a little pale thin grass and some withered ferns grew in the glades; the sun shone out between the clouds, and as we descended into the warmer lowlands it seemed as if we were pursuing the departing summer.

In about four hours from Delphi high purple mountains, sunlit and flecked with cloud-shadows, appeared in the north through and above the pine-forest. Farther down the forest grew thin and then disappeared from the stony bottom of the valley, though the upper slopes of the mountains on either side were still wrapped in their dark mantle of pines. It was near one o’clock when we reached Ano-Agoriani, a village nestling among trees in a hollow of the mountains and traversed by a murmuring brook. After a halt of about an hour we quitted the village and descended into the deep bed of the stream; then ascending steeply its western bank we pursued our way along the rocky mountain-side high above the glen. In three-quarters of an hour we came in sight of the broad valley of the Cephisus lying stretched below us and backed by mountains on the north. By steep, rocky, winding paths we now descended into the valley, and at a quarter to four reached Kato-Agoriani. The village stands just at the foot of Parnassus. About a mile to the east the grey ruined walls and towers of Lilaea climb a steep and rugged hill-side—the last fall of Parnassus to the plain. The situation of the place at the northern foot of the mountain is such that it can receive very little sun at any time of the year, which, though an advantage in the torrid heat of a Greek summer, must render the winter climate severe. As we rode downwards to Kato-Agoriani the sun set behind the mountains at our back soon after three o’clock, but it was not till nearly two hours afterwards that his light faded from the hills on the opposite or northern side of the valley. This may illustrate the remarks of Pausanias as to the climate of Lilaea.

XCVI. PERICLES.—Pericles, a great Athenian statesman, and one of the most remarkable men of antiquity, was the son of Xanthippus, who commanded the Greeks at the battle of Mycale. By his mother Agariste, niece of Clisthenes, who reformed the democracy at Athens after the expulsion of the Pisistratidae, he was connected both with the old princely line of Sicyon and with the great but unfortunate house of the Alcmaeonidae. The date of his birth is unknown, but his youth must have fallen in the stirring times of the great Persian war. From his friendship with the poet Anacreon, his father would seem to have been a man of taste, and as he stood in relations of hospitality to the Spartan kings his house was no doubt a political as well as literary centre. Pericles received the best education which the age could supply. For masters he had Pythoclides and the distinguished musician Damon, who infused into his music lessons a tincture of philosophy, whereby he incurred the suspicions of the vulgar, and received the honour of ostracism. Pericles listened also to the subtle dialectics of the Eleatic Zeno. But the man who swayed him most deeply and permanently was the philosopher Anaxagoras. The influence of the speculative genius and dignified and gentle character of the philosopher who resigned his property that he might turn his thoughts more steadily to heaven, which he called his home, and who begged as his last honour that the school-children might have a holiday on the day he died, can be traced alike in the intellectual breadth and the elevated moral tone of the pupil, in his superiority to vulgar superstitions, and in the unruffled serenity which he preserved throughout the storms of political life. It was probably the grand manner of Pericles even more than his eloquence that won him the surname of Olympian Zeus.[11]

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Footnote 11:

It is said that once, when Pericles was transacting business in
public, a low fellow railed at him all day long, and at nightfall
dogged him to his house, reviling him in the foulest language.
Pericles took no notice of him till he reached his own door, when he
bade one of the servants take a torch and light the man home.

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In his youth he distinguished himself in the field, but eschewed politics, fearing, it is said, the suspicions which might be excited in the populace not only by his wealth, high birth, and powerful friends, but by the striking resemblance to the tyrant Pisistratus which old men traced in his personal appearance, musical voice, and flowing speech. But when the banishment of Themistocles and the death of Aristides had somewhat cleared the political stage, Pericles came forward as the champion of the democratic or progressive party, in opposition to Cimon, the leader of the aristocratic or conservative party. The two leaders differed hardly less than their policies. Both indeed were men of aristocratic birth and temper, honourable, brave, and generous, faithful and laborious in the service of Athens. But Cimon was a true sailor, blunt, jovial, free-handed, who sang a capital song, and was always equally ready to drink or fight, to whose artless mind (he was innocent of even a smattering of letters[12]) the barrack-room life of the barbarous Spartans seemed the type of human perfectibility, and whose simple programme was summed up in the maxim “fight the Persians.” Naturally the new ideas of political progress and intellectual development had no place in his honest head; naturally he was a sturdy supporter of the good old times of which, to the popular mind, he was the best embodiment. Pericles, grave, studious, reserved, was himself penetrated by those ideas of progress and culture which he undertook to convert into political and social realities; philosophy was his recreation; during the whole course of his political career he never accepted but once an invitation to dinner, and he was never to be seen walking except between his house and the popular assembly and senate-house. He husbanded his patrimony and regulated his domestic affairs with rigid economy that he might escape both the temptation and the suspicion of enriching himself at the public expense.

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Footnote 12:

It is amusing to read in Plutarch of this stout old salt sitting in
judgment on the respective merits of Aeschylus and Sophocles.

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The steps by which he rose to the commanding position which he occupied in later life cannot be traced with certainty. According to Plutarch, Pericles, whose fortune did not allow him to imitate the profuse hospitality by which Cimon endeared himself to the people, sought to outbid him by a lavish distribution of the public moneys among the poorer classes; this device was suggested to him by Damonides, says Plutarch on the authority of Aristotle. We may doubt the motive alleged by Plutarch, but we cannot doubt the fact that Pericles did extend, if not originate, the practice of distributing large sums among the citizens either as gratuities or as payment for services rendered—a practice which afterwards attained most mischievous proportions. According to Plato, it was a common saying that Pericles, by the system of payments which he introduced, had corrupted the Athenians, rendering them idle, cowardly, talkative, and avaricious. It was Pericles who introduced the payment of jurymen, and, as there were six thousand of them told off annually for duty, of whom a great part sat daily, the disbursement from the treasury was great, while the poor and idle were encouraged to live at the public expense. But the payment for attendance on the public assembly or parliament (of which all citizens of mature age were members), though probably suggested by the payment of the jurymen, was not introduced by Pericles, and indeed does not seem to have existed during his lifetime. It was he who instituted the payment of the citizens for military service—a measure but for which the Athenians would probably not have prolonged the Peloponnesian War as they did, and in particular would not have been so ready to embark on the fatal Sicilian expedition.

There was more justification, perhaps, for the practice, originated by Pericles, of supplying the poorer citizens from the public treasury with the price of admission to the theatre. For in an age when the study of the poets formed a chief element of education, and when the great dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were being put on the stage in all their freshness, such a measure might almost be regarded as a state provision for the education of the citizens. It was part of the policy of Pericles at once to educate and delight the people by numerous and splendid festivals, processions, and shows. But the good was mixed with seeds of evil, which took root and spread, till, in the days of Demosthenes, the money which should have been spent in fighting the enemies of Athens was squandered in spectacles and pageants. The Spectacular Fund or _Theorikon_ has been called the cancer of Athens. Vast sums were further spent by Pericles in adorning the city with those buildings, which even in their ruins are the wonder of the world. Amongst these were the Parthenon, or Temple of the Virgin, and the Erechtheum, both on the acropolis, the former completed in 438 B.C., the latter left unfinished at Pericles’s death; the magnificent Propylaea or vestibule to the acropolis, built between 437 and 432; and the Odeum or music-hall, on the south-eastern slope of the acropolis, completed before 444. The musical contests instituted by Pericles, and for which he himself laid down the rules and acted as judge, took place in the Odeum. Many artists and architects were entrusted with the execution of these great works, but under the direction of the mastermind of Phidias, sculptor, architect, painter—the Michelangelo of antiquity.

But Pericles fortified as well as beautified Athens. It had been the policy of Themistocles to make her primarily a naval and commercial power, and to do so he strengthened the marine, and gave to the city as far as possible the advantages of an insular situation by means of fortifications, which rendered both it and its port impregnable on the land side. By thus basing the Athenian state on commerce instead of, like Solon, on agriculture, he at the same time transferred the political predominance to the democratic or progressive party, which is as naturally recruited from a commercial as a conservative or aristocratic party is from an agricultural population. This policy was fully accepted and carried out by Pericles. It was in his time and probably by his advice that the Long Walls were built, which, connecting Athens with Piraeus, converted the capital and its seaport into one vast fortress. Further, in order to train the Athenians in seamanship, he kept a fleet of sixty ships at sea eight months out of every year.

The expenses entailed by these great schemes were chiefly defrayed by the annual tribute, which the confederates of Athens originally furnished for the purpose of waging war against Persia, but which Athens, as head of the league, subsequently applied to her own purposes. If, as seems likely, the transference of the treasury of the league from Delos to Athens, which sealed the conversion of the Athenian headship into an empire, took place between 460 and 454, the step was probably suggested or supported by Pericles, and at all events he managed the fund after its transference. But, though the diversion of the fund from its original purpose probably did not begin with Pericles, yet, once established, he maintained it unwaveringly. The Athenians, he held, fulfilled the trust committed to them by defending their allies against all comers, and the tribute was their wages, which it was their right and privilege to expend in works which by employing labour and stimulating commerce were a present benefit, and by their beauty would be “a joy for ever.” That Athens ruled by force, that her empire was in fact a tyranny, he fully admitted, but he justified that tyranny by the high and glorious ends which it subserved.

The rise of Pericles to power, though it cannot be followed step by step, has an obvious and sufficient explanation in his combined wisdom and eloquence. Plato traces his eloquence largely to the influence of Anaxagoras; intercourse with that philosopher, he says, filled the mind of Pericles with lofty speculations and a true conception of the nature of intelligence, and hence his oratory possessed the intellectual grandeur and artistic finish characteristic of the highest eloquence. The range and compass of his rhetoric were wonderful, extending from the most winning persuasion to the most overwhelming denunciation. The comic poets of the day, in general very unfriendly to him, speak with admiration of his oratory: “greatest of Grecian tongues,” says Cratinus; “persuasion sat on his lips, such was his charm,” and “he alone of the orators left his sting in his hearers,” says Eupolis; “he lightened, he thundered,” says Aristophanes. His speeches were prepared with conscientious care; before rising to speak he used to pray that no inappropriate word might fall from his lips. He left no written speeches, but the few sayings of his which have come down to us reveal a passionate imagination such as breathes in the fragments of Sappho. Thus, in speaking of those who had died in war, he said that the youth had perished from the city like the spring from the year. He called the hostile island of Aegina “the eyesore of the Piraeus,” and declared that he saw war “lowering from Peloponnese.” Three of his speeches have been reported by Thucydides, who may have heard them, but, though their substance may be correctly recorded, in passing through the medium of the historian’s dispassionate mind they have been shorn of the orator’s imaginative glow, and in their cold iron logic are hardly to be distinguished from the other speeches in Thucydides. An exception to this is the speech which Thucydides reports as having been delivered by Pericles over the slain in the first year of the Peloponnesian War. This speech stands quite apart from the others; and as well in particular touches (for example, in the saying that “the grave of great men is the world”) as in its whole tenor we catch the ring of a great orator, such as Thucydides with all his genius was not. It is probably a fairly close report of the speech actually delivered by Pericles.

The first public appearance of Pericles of which we have record probably fell about 463. When Cimon, on his return from the expedition to Thasos, was tried on the utterly improbable charge of having been bribed by the Macedonian king to betray the interests of Athens, Pericles was appointed by the people to assist in conducting the prosecution; but, more perhaps from a conviction of the innocence of the accused than, as was said, in compliance with the entreaties of Cimon’s sister Elpinice, he did not press the charge, and Cimon was acquitted. Not long afterwards Pericles struck a blow at the conservative party by attacking the Areopagus, a council composed of life-members who had worthily discharged the duties of archon. The nature of the functions of the Areopagus at this period is but little known; it seems to have had a general supervision over the magistrates, the popular assembly, and the citizens, and to have exercised this supervision in an eminently conservative spirit. It sat also as a court for the trial of certain crimes, especially murder. Pericles appears to have deprived it of nearly all its functions, except its jurisdiction in cases of murder. The poet Aeschylus composed his _Eumenides_ in vindication of the ancient privileges of the Areopagus. Though Pericles was the real author of the attack on the Areopagus, the measure was nominally carried by Ephialtes. It was, indeed, part of Pericles’s policy to keep in the background, and to act as far as possible through agents, reserving himself for great occasions. Ephialtes, a friend of Pericles, and a patriot of inflexible integrity, paid dearly for the distinction; he fell by the hand of an assassin employed by the oligarchical party—an event the more striking from the rarity of political assassinations in Greek history. The popular party seems to have immediately followed up its victory over the Areopagus by procuring the ostracism of Cimon, which strengthened the hands of Pericles by removing his most influential opponent. Pericles took part in the battle of Tanagra and bore himself with desperate bravery. After the battle Cimon was recalled from banishment, and it was Pericles who proposed and carried the decree for his recall.

In 454 Pericles led an Athenian squadron from the port of Pegae on the Corinthian Gulf, landed at Sicyon, and defeated the inhabitants who ventured to oppose him; then, taking with him a body of Achaeans, he crossed to Acarnania, and besieged the town of Oeniadae, but had to return home without capturing it. Not long afterwards he conducted a successful expedition to the Thracian Chersonese, where he not only strengthened the Greek cities by the addition of a thousand Athenian colonists, but also protected them against the incursions of the barbarians by fortifying the isthmus from sea to sea. This was only one of Pericles’s many measures for extending and strengthening the naval empire of Athens. Colonies were established by him at various times in Naxos, Andros, Oreus in Euboea, Brea in Macedonia, and Aegina. They served the double purpose of establishing the Athenian power in distant parts and of relieving the pressure of population at home by providing the poorer citizens with lands. Somewhat different were the famous colonies established under Pericles’s influence at Thurii in Italy, on the site of the ancient Sybaris, and at Amphipolis on the Strymon, for, though planted under the conduct of Athens, they were not exclusively Athenian colonies, other Greeks being allowed, and even invited, to take part in them. This was especially true of Thurii, which was in a manner a national Greek colony, and never stood in a relation of subjection to Athens. On one occasion Pericles sailed at the head of a splendid armament to the Black Sea, where he helped and encouraged the Greek cities and overawed the barbarians. At Sinope he left a force of ships and men, under the gallant Lamachus, to co-operate with the inhabitants against the tyrant Timesileus, and on the expulsion of the tyrant and his party he carried a decree for the despatch of six hundred Athenian colonists to Sinope, to occupy the lands vacated by the exiles. But, with the sober wisdom which characterised him, Pericles never allowed his plans to exceed the bounds of the possible; he was no political dreamer like Alcibiades, to be dazzled with the vision of a universal Athenian empire in Greece, Italy, and Africa, such as floated before the minds of many in that and the following generations. The disastrous expedition which the Athenians sent to Egypt, to support the rebel Inarus against Persia, received no countenance from Pericles.

When Cimon died in 449 the aristocratical party sought to counterbalance the power of Pericles by putting forward Thucydides, son of Melesias, as the new head of the party. He seems to have been an honest patriot, but, as the event proved, he was no match for Pericles. The Sacred War in 448 showed once more that Pericles knew how to defend the interests of Athens. The Phocians, under the protection of Athens, had wrested the control of the Delphic oracle from their enemies the Delphians. The latter were friendly to Sparta, and accordingly the Spartans marched into Phocis and restored the oracle to the Delphians. When they had departed, Pericles, at the head of an Athenian force, placed the oracle once more in the hands of the Phocians. As the seat of the great oracle, Delphi was to ancient Greece much what Rome was to mediaeval Europe, and the friendship of the god, or of his priests, was no small political advantage.

When the Athenians despatched a small force under Tolmides to crush a rising in Boeotia, they did so in spite of the warnings of Pericles. These warnings were soon justified by the unfortunate battle of Coronea, which deprived Athens at a blow of the continental dominion she had acquired a few years before by the battle of Oenophyta. The island of Euboea now revolted from Athens, and hardly had Pericles crossed over with an army to reduce it when word came that the Megarians had massacred the Athenian garrison, and, in league with Corinth, Sicyon, and Epidaurus, were up in arms, while a Peloponnesian army under King Plistoanax was on the point of invading Attica. Pericles recrossed in haste to Attica. The Peloponnesians returned home, having advanced no farther than Eleusis and Thria. It was said that Pericles had bribed Cleandridas; certain it is that both Cleandridas and Plistoanax were charged at Sparta with having misconducted the expedition and were found guilty. Having saved Attica, Pericles returned to Euboea, reduced it to subjection, expelled the Histiaeans, and settled the Athenian colony of Oreus on their lands.

The thirty years’ peace, concluded soon afterwards with Sparta, was probably in large measure the work of Pericles. The Athenians had evacuated Boeotia immediately after the battle of Coronea, and by the terms of the peace they now renounced their other continental possessions—Achaia, Troezen, Nisaea, and Pegae. The peace left Pericles at liberty to develop his schemes for promoting the internal welfare of Athens, and for making it the centre of the intellectual and artistic life of Greece. But first he had to settle accounts with his political rival Thucydides; the struggle was soon decided by the ostracism of the latter in 444. Thenceforward to the end of his life Pericles guided the destinies of Athens alone; in the words of the historian Thucydides, the government was in name a democracy, but in fact it was the rule of the first citizen. The unparalleled ascendency which he wielded so long over the fickle people is one of the best proofs of his extraordinary genius. He owed it entirely to his personal character, and he used it for the wisest and purest purposes. He was neither a vulgar demagogue to truckle to the passions and caprices of the mob, nor a vulgar despot to cow it by a hireling soldiery; he was a citizen among citizens, who obeyed him because they trusted him, because they knew that in his hands the honour and interests of Athens were safe. The period during which he ruled Athens was the happiest and greatest in her history, as it was one of the greatest ages of the world. Other ages have had their bright particular stars; the age of Pericles is the Milky Way of great men. In his lifetime there lived and worked at Athens the poets Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Cratinus, Crates, the philosophers Anaxagoras, Zeno, Protagoras, Socrates, the astronomer Meton, the painter Polygnotus, and the sculptors Myron and Phidias. Contemporary with these, though not resident at Athens, were Herodotus, the father of history; Hippocrates, the father of medicine; Pindar, “the Theban eagle”; the sculptor Polyclitus; and the philosophers Empedocles and Democritus, the latter joint author with Leucippus of the atomic theory. When Pericles died, other stars were rising or soon to rise above the horizon—the historians Thucydides and Xenophon, the poets Eupolis and Aristophanes, the orators Lysias and Isocrates, and the gifted but unscrupulous Alcibiades. Plato was born shortly before or after the death of Pericles. Of this brilliant circle Pericles was the centre. His generous and richly-endowed nature responded to all that was beautiful and noble not only in literature and art but in life, and it is with justice that the age of Pericles has received its name from the man in whom, more than in any other, all the various lines of Greek culture met and were harmonised. In this perfect harmony and completeness of nature, and in the classic calm which was the fruit of it, Pericles is the type of the ideal spirit, not of his own age only, but of antiquity.

It seems to have been shortly after the ostracism of Thucydides that Pericles conceived the plan of summoning a general congress of all the Greek states to be held at Athens. Its objects were the restoration of the temples which the Persians had destroyed, the fulfilment of the vows made during the war, and the establishment of a general peace and the security of the sea. Invitations were sent to the Greeks of Asia, the islands from Lesbos to Rhodes, the Hellespont, Thrace, Byzantium, Boeotia, Phocis, Peloponnese, Locris, Acarnania, Ambrada, and Thessaly. The aim of Pericles seems to have been to draw the bonds of union closer between the Greeks and to form a national federation. The beneficent project was defeated by the short-sighted opposition of the Spartans. But if in this scheme Pericles rose above the petty jealousies of Greek politics, another of his measures proves that he shared the Greek prejudices as to birth. At an early period of his career he enacted, or perhaps only revived, a law confining the rights of Athenian citizenship to persons both of whose parents were Athenian citizens. In the year 444, on the occasion of a scrutiny of the list of citizens, nearly five thousand persons claiming to be citizens were proved to be aliens under this law, and were ruthlessly sold into slavery.

The period of the thirty years’ peace was not one of uninterrupted tranquillity for Athens. In 440 a war broke out between the island of Samos (a leading member of the Athenian confederacy) and Miletus. Athens sided with Miletus; Pericles sailed to Samos with an Athenian squadron, and established a democracy in place of the previous oligarchy. After his departure, however, some of the exiled oligarchs, in league with Pissuthnes, satrap of Sardes, collected troops and, crossing over to Samos, overpowered the popular party and revolted from Athens. In this revolt they were joined by Byzantium. The situation was critical; the example set by Samos and Byzantium might be followed by the other confederates. Pericles discerned the danger and met it promptly. He led a squadron of sixty ships against Samos; and, after detaching some vessels to summon reinforcements from Chios and Lesbos, and others to look out for the Phoenician fleet which the Persians were expected to send to the help of Samos, he gave battle with forty-four ships to the Samian fleet of seventy sail and defeated it. Having received reinforcements of sixty-five ships, he landed in Samos and laid siege to the capital. But when he sailed with sixty ships to meet the Phoenician vessels which were reported to be near, the Samians sallied out with their vessels, defeated the besiegers, and remained masters of the sea for fourteen days. On his return, however, they were again blockaded and were compelled to surrender, nine months after the outbreak of the war.

Though Pericles enjoyed the confidence of the people as a whole, his policy and opinions could not fail to rouse the dislike and suspicions of many, and in the last years of his life his enemies combined to assail him. Two points in particular were singled out for attack, his administration of the public moneys and his religious opinions. With regard to the former, there must always be a certain number of persons who will not believe that others can resist and despise a temptation which to themselves would be irresistible; with regard to the latter, the suspicion that Pericles held heretical views on the national religion was doubtless well grounded. At first, however, his enemies did not venture to impeach himself, but struck at him in the persons of his friends. In 432 Phidias was accused of having appropriated some of the gold destined for the adornment of the statue of Athena in the Parthenon. But by the prudent advice of Pericles the golden ornaments had been so attached that they could be taken off and weighed, and when Pericles challenged the accusers to have recourse to this test the accusation fell to the ground. More dangerous, for more true, was the charge against Phidias of having introduced portraits of himself and Pericles into the battle of the Amazons, depicted on the shield of the goddess: the sculptor appeared as a bald old man lifting a stone, while Pericles was represented as fighting an Amazon, his face partly concealed by his raised spear. To the pious Athenians this seemed a desecration of the temple, and accordingly Phidias was clapped into gaol. Whether he died there or at Elis is uncertain.