The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [288]
10. Now he, being a great friend of Pericles, had many enemies because of this, who envied and maligned him;
11. Who brought an accusation against him of stealing gold that was to be used in making the statue.
12. Though the gold was weighed every day and none was found missing, still Phidias was committed to prison, and there died,
13. Some say, of poison, administered by Pericles’ enemies, to raise a slander, or a suspicion at least, as though he had procured it.
14. About the same time, Aspasia was charged that she received into her house freeborn women for the use of Pericles.
15. And Diopithes proposed a decree, that public accusations should be laid against persons who neglected every view of the world but that of science,
16. Directing suspicion, by means of Anaxagoras, against Pericles himself.
17. The people receiving and admitting these accusations and complaints, at length came to enact a decree, at the motion of Dracontides,
18. That Pericles should bring in the accounts of the moneys he had expended, and lodge them with the Prytanes;
19. And that the judges, carrying their suffrage from the Acropolis, should examine and determine the business in the city.
20. This last clause Hagnon took out of the decree, and moved that the causes should be tried before fifteen hundred jurors,
21. Whether they should be styled prosecutions for robbery, or bribery, or any kind of malversation.
22. Pericles pleaded for the release of Aspasia, shedding, as Aeschines says, many tears at the trial, and personally entreating the jurors.
23. But fearing for Anaxagoras, he sent him out of the city. And finding that in Phidias’ case he had lost the confidence of the people,
24. And wishing to avoid impeachment, he kindled the war against Sparta, which hitherto had smouldered quietly, and now blew it up into a flame;
25. Hoping, by that means, to disperse and scatter these complaints and charges;
26. For the city usually threw herself upon him alone, trusting to his sole conduct, when emergencies and great affairs and public dangers arose, by reason of his authority and the sway he bore.
27. These are variously alleged as the reasons which induced Pericles not to allow the people of Athens to yield to the proposals of the Lacedaemonians; but their truth is uncertain.
Chapter 46
1. The Lacedaemonians, for their part, feeling sure that if they could once remove Pericles, they might impose what terms they pleased on the Athenians,
2. Sent them word that they should expel the ‘pollution’ with which Pericles on the mother’s side was tainted, as Thucydides tells us, for her ancestors’ part in expelling the sons of Pisistratus;
3. But the issue proved quite contrary to what they expected; instead of bringing Pericles under suspicion,
4. They raised him into yet greater credit and esteem with the citizens, as a man whom their enemies most hated and feared.
5. In the same way, also, before Archidamus, who was at the head of the Peloponnesians, made his invasion into Attica,
6. Pericles told the Athenians beforehand, that if Archidamus, while he laid waste the rest of the country, should spare his estate, either on the ground of friendship or right of hospitality that was betwixt them,
7. Or on purpose to give his enemies an occasion of traducing him; then he would freely bestow upon the state all his land and the buildings on it for the public use.
8. The Lacedaemonians, therefore, and their allies, with a great army, invaded the Athenian territories under the conduct of King Archidamus, and laying waste the country, marched as far as Acharnae,
9. And there pitched their camp, presuming that the Athenians would never endure that,
10. But would come out and fight them for their country’s and their honour’s sake.
11. But Pericles looked upon it as dangerous to engage in battle, to the risk of the city itself, against sixty thousand Peloponnesians and Boeotians; for that is how many had invaded;