The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [281]
12. ‘Their treaties and alliances, power, empire, peace and war, their wealth and their success for ever more.’
Chapter 38
1. Nor was all this the luck of some happy occasion; nor was it the mere bloom and grace of a policy that flourished for a season;
2. But having for forty years maintained the first place among statesmen such as Ephialtes and Leocrates and Myronides and Cimon and Tolmides and Thucydides;
3. And then after the defeat and banishment of Thucydides, for no less than fifteen years more,
4. In the exercise of one continuous unintermitted command in the office, to which he was annually re-elected, of General, he preserved his integrity unspotted;
5. Though otherwise he was not altogether idle or careless in looking after his pecuniary advantage;
6. His paternal estate, which of right belonged to him, he so ordered that it might neither through negligence be wasted or lessened,
7. Nor yet, being so full of business as he was, cost him any great trouble or time with taking care of it;
8. And put it into such a way of management as he thought to be the most easy for himself, and the most exact.
9. All his yearly products and profits he sold together in a lump, and supplied his household needs afterwards by buying everything that he or his family wanted out of the market.
10. Upon which account, his children, when they grew to age, were not well pleased with his management,
11. And the women that lived with him were treated with little cost, and complained of his way of housekeeping,
12. Where everything was ordered and set down from day to day, and reduced to the greatest exactness;
13. Since there was not there, as is usual in a great family and a plentiful estate, anything to spare;
14. But all that went out or came in, all disbursements and all receipts, proceeded as it were by number and measure.
15. His manager in all this was a single servant, Evangelus by name,
16. A man either naturally gifted or instructed by Pericles so as to excel everyone in this art of domestic economy.
17. All this, in truth, was very little in harmony with Anaxagoras’ wisdom;
18. If, indeed, it be true that he, by a generous impulse and greatness of heart,
19. Voluntarily quitted his house, and left his land to lie fallow and to be grazed by sheep like a common.
20. But the life of a contemplative philosopher and that of an active statesman are not the same thing;
21. For the one merely employs, upon great and good objects of thought, an intelligence that requires no aid of instruments nor supply of any external materials;
22. Whereas the other, who tempers and applies his virtue to human uses, may have occasion for affluence,
23. Not as a matter of necessity, but as a noble thing; which was Pericles’ case, who relieved numerous poor citizens.
24. However, there is a story that Anaxagoras himself, while Pericles was taken up with public affairs,
25. Lay neglected, and that now being grown old, he wrapped himself up with a resolution to die by starving himself.
26. When Pericles heard this he was horror-struck, and instantly ran to Anaxagoras,
27. And used all the arguments and entreaties he could to him, lamenting not so much Anaxagoras’ condition as his own,
28. Should he lose such a counsellor as he had found him to be;
29. And that, upon this, Anaxagoras unfolded his robe, and showing his underfed ribs, made answer:
30. ‘Pericles,’ said he, ‘even those who have occasion for a lamp supply it with oil.’
Chapter 39
1. The Lacedaemonians beginning to show themselves troubled at the growth of the Athenian power,
2. Pericles, on the other hand, to elevate the people’s sentiments further, and to raise them to the thought of great actions,
3. Proposed a decree, to summon all the Greeks, whether of Europe or Asia, every city, little as well as great,
4. To send their deputies to Athens to a general assembly, or convention,
5. There to consult and advise concerning repairs to the cities which the barbarians had burnt