The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [290]
15. Was about to sail out, giving great hope to his citizens, and no less alarm to his enemies, upon the sight of so great a force.
16. When the vessels had their complement of men, and Pericles had gone aboard his own galley,
17. It happened that the sun was eclipsed, and it suddenly grew dark, to the affright of all, for the ignorant did not understand the cause.
18. Pericles, therefore, seeing his steersman seized with fear, took his cloak and held it before the man’s face, screening him so that he could not see,
19. And asked him whether he imagined there was any great hurt in this. The steersman answering No,
20. ‘Why,’ said Pericles, ‘and what does that differ from this, only that what has caused that darkness there, is something bigger than a cloak?’
21. This is a story philosophers tell their students. Pericles, however, after putting out to sea, seems not to have done any other exploit befitting such preparations,
22. And when he had laid siege to Epidaurus, which gave him some hope of surrender, miscarried in his design by reason of the plague.
23. For it not only seized upon the Athenians, but upon all others, too, that held any sort of communication with the army.
24. Finding the Athenians ill affected towards him after this, he tried what he could to re-encourage them.
25. But he could not allay their anger, nor persuade them, till they freely passed their votes on him, and resumed their power,
26. Taking away his command and fining him in a sum of money;
27. Which by their account that say least, was fifteen talents, while they who reckon most, name fifty.
28. The name prefixed to the accusation was Cleon, as Idomeneus tells us; Simmias, according to Theophrastus; and Heraclides Ponticus gives it as Lacratidas.
29. After this, public troubles were soon to leave him unmolested; the people discharged their anger against him in this stroke, and lost their stings in the wound.
30. But his domestic concerns were in an unhappy condition, many of his friends and acquaintances having died in the plague time,
31. And those of his family having long since been in disorder and in a kind of mutiny against him.
32. For the eldest of his lawful sons, Xanthippus by name, being naturally prodigal, and marrying a young and expensive wife,
33. Was highly offended at his father’s economy in giving him only a scanty allowance, a little at a time.
34. He therefore borrowed some money in his father’s name, pretending it was by his order.
35. The lender coming afterwards to demand the debt, Pericles was so far from yielding to pay it, that he entered an action against his son.
36. Upon which the young man, Xanthippus, thought himself so ill used and disobliged that he openly reviled his father;
37. Telling first, by way of ridicule, stories about his conversations at home, and the discourses he had with the sophists and scholars that came to his house.
38. As, for instance, how one who was a practiser of the five games of skill,
39. Having with a dart or javelin unawares against his will struck and killed Epitimus the Pharsalian,
40. His father spent a whole day with Protagoras in a serious dispute, whether the javelin, or the man that threw it,
41. Or the masters of the games who appointed these sports, were, according to the strictest and best reason, to be accounted the cause of this mischance.
42. Besides this, Stesimbrotus tells us that it was Xanthippus who spread abroad the infamous story concerning his own wife, Pericles’ daughter-in-law,
43. That Pericles had fallen in love with her; and in general that this difference of the young man’s with his father,
44. And the breach betwixt them, continued never to be healed or made up till his death; for Xanthippus died in the plague.
Chapter 48
1. In the plague Pericles also lost his sister, and the greatest part of his relations and friends,
2. And those who had been most useful and serviceable to him in managing the affairs of state.
3. However, he did not shrink or give in upon these occasions, nor betray or lower his character and the