The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [277]
33. He was assassinated by Aristodicus the Tanagraean on behalf of his enemies.
Chapter 33
1. Cimon, while he was admiral, died in Cyprus. And the aristocratical party, seeing that Pericles was already the greatest and foremost man in the city,
2. But nevertheless wishing to set somebody up against him to blunt the edge of his power to prevent it turning into a monarchy,
3. Put forward Thucydides of Alopece, a discreet person and a near kinsman of Cimon’s, to conduct the opposition against him;
4. Who, indeed, though less skilled in warlike affairs than Cimon,
5. Was better versed in speaking and political business, and keeping close guard in the city.
6. By engaging with Pericles on the hustings, in a short time he brought the government to an equality of parties.
7. For he would not allow those who were called the ‘honest and good’ (that is, persons of worth and distinction) to be scattered among the populace,
8. As formerly, diminishing and obscuring their superiority amongst the masses;
9. But taking them apart by themselves and uniting them in one body, by their combined weight he was able to make a counterpoise to the other party.
10. For, indeed, there was from the beginning a concealed split between the different popular and aristocratical tendencies;
11. But the open rivalry and contention of these two opponents made the gash deep,
12. And severed the city into the two parties of ‘the people’ and ‘the few’.
13. And so Pericles, at that time, more than at any other, gave the reins to the people, and made his policy serve their interest,
14. Contriving continually to have some great public show or solemnity, some banquet, or some procession or other in the town to please them,
15. Coaxing his countrymen like children with such delights and pleasures as were not, however, unedifying.
16. Besides that, every year he sent out sixty galleys, on board which there were numbers of citizens, who were paid for eight months to learn and practise the art of seamanship.
17. He sent a thousand citizens into the Chersonese as planters, to share the land among them by lot,
18. And five hundred more into the isle of Naxos, and half that number to Andros,
19. A thousand into Thrace to dwell among the Bisaltae, and others into Italy, when the city Sybaris, which now was called Thurii, was to be repeopled.
20. And this he did to ease and discharge the city of an idle, and, by reason of their idleness, a meddling crowd of people;
21. And at the same time to meet the necessities and restore the fortunes of the poor townsmen,
22. And to intimidate, also, and check their allies from attempting any change, by posting such garrisons, as it were, in the midst of them.
Chapter 34
1. What gave most pleasure and ornament to Athens, and the greatest admiration and even astonishment to all strangers,
2. And that which now is Greece’s only evidence that the power she boasts of and her ancient wealth are no romance or idle story,
3. Was Pericles’ construction of the great public buildings.
4. Yet these were the actions in government that his enemies most looked askance at, and cavilled at in the popular assemblies,
5. Crying out that the commonwealth of Athens had lost its reputation and was denigrated abroad for removing the common treasure of the Greeks from the isle of Delos into their own custody;
6. And though their excuse for doing so was to protect it from capture by the barbarians, Pericles had now spent it;
7. And they complained that ‘Greece cannot but resent it as an insufferable affront, and consider herself to be tyrannised over openly,
8. ‘When she sees the treasure, which was contributed by her upon a necessity for the war, wantonly lavished out by us upon our city,
9. ‘To gild her all over, and to adorn and set her forth, as it were some vain woman, hung round with precious stones and statues, which cost a world of money.