The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [275]
17. Pericles continually deepened the colours of rhetoric with the dye of natural science.
18. For having added to his natural genius a great height of knowledge by the study of philosophy, he showed himself far superior to all others.
19. Upon which account, they say, Pericles had his nickname of ‘Olympian’ given him;
20. Though some are of the opinion he was named this from the public buildings with which he adorned the city;
21. And others again, from his great power in public affairs, whether of war or peace.
22. However, the comedies staged at the time, which, both in good earnest and in merriment, let fly many hard words at him,
23. Plainly show that he got that appellation especially from his speaking;
24. They speak of his ‘thundering and lightning’ when he harangued the people,
25. And of his wielding a dreadful thunderbolt in his tongue.
Chapter 31
1. A saying also of Thucydides, son of Melesias, is on record, spoken by him by way of pleasantry upon Pericles’ dexterity.
2. Thucydides was one of the noble and distinguished citizens, and had been his greatest opponent;
3. And when Archidamus, the king of the Lacedaemonians, asked him whether he or Pericles was the better wrestler, he answered:
4. ‘When I have thrown him and given him a fair fall, he gets the better of me by insisting that he had no fall, and makes the bystanders, in spite of their own eyes, believe him.’
5. The truth is, however, that Pericles was so careful about what he said and how he spoke, that whenever he went up to the hustings,
6. He took time to prepare beforehand so that no word might slip from him unawares that was unsuitable to the matter or occasion.
7. Pericles has left nothing in writing behind him, except some decrees; and very few of his sayings are recorded.
8. One is, that when his fellow-general Sophocles, going with him on board ship, praised the beauty of a youth they met on the way,
9. Perciles said, ‘Sophocles, a general ought not only to have clean hands but also clean eyes.’
10. And Stesimbrotus tells us that, in his encomium on those who fell in battle at Samos, he said they would always be remembered,
11. ‘Because we do not see them themselves, but only by the honours we pay them, and by the benefits they do us;
12. ‘Such attributes belong to those who die in the service of their country.’
13. Since Thucydides describes the rule of Pericles as an aristocratical government that went by the name of democracy, but was, indeed, the supremacy of a single great man,
14. While many others say, on the contrary, that by him the common people were first encouraged and led on to such evils as appropriations of subject territory, allowances for attending theatres, payments for performing public duties,
15. And by these bad habits were, under the influence of his public measures, changed from a sober, thrifty people, that maintained themselves by their own labours,
16. To lovers of expense, intemperance and licence, let us examine the cause of this change by looking at the facts.
17. At the first, as has been said, when Pericles opposed Cimon’s great authority, he indeed courted the people.
18. Finding himself come short of Cimon in wealth, by which the latter was enabled to caress the poor,
19. Inviting every day some needy citizens to supper, giving clothes to aged people, and pulling down the hedges round his property so that anyone could freely gather what fruit they pleased,
20. Pericles, thus outdone in popular arts, took the advice of one Damonides of Oea and made a distribution of the public moneys;
21. And in a short time having bought the people over, what with moneys allowed for shows and for service on juries, and what with other forms of pay and largesse,
22. He made use of them against the council of Areopagus of which he himself was not a member, as having never been chosen archon, lawgiver, king or captain.
23. For from ancient times these offices were conferred