The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [291]
4. He was not seen to weep or mourn, or even attend the burial of any of his friends or relations, till at last he lost his only remaining legitimate son.
5. Subdued by this blow, and yet striving still, as far as he could, to maintain the greatness of his mind,
6. When he came to perform the ceremony of putting a garland of flowers on the head of the corpse, he was vanquished by his passion at the sight,
7. So that he burst into exclamations, and shed copious tears, having never done any such thing in his life before.
8. The city having tried other generals for the conduct of war, and politicians for business of state,
9. When they found there was no one who was of weight enough to be trusted with so great a command,
10. Regretted the loss of him, and invited him again to advise them, and to reassume the office of general.
11. He was lying at home in dejection and mourning; but was persuaded by Alcibiades and others of his friends to come abroad and show himself to the people;
12. Who on his appearance made their acknowledgements, and apologised for their treatment of him.
13. So he undertook the public affairs once more; and, being chosen general,
14. Requested that the statute concerning base-born children, which he himself had formerly caused to be made, might be suspended;
15. So that the name and race of his family might not, for want of a lawful heir to succeed, be lost and extinguished.
16. The case of the statute was this: Pericles, when long ago at the height of his power in the state,
17. Having then had lawfully begotten children, proposed a law that those only should be reputed true citizens of Athens who were born of parents who were both Athenians.
18. Sometime later the king of Egypt sent a present of forty thousand bushels of wheat to be shared among the citizens.
19. There followed a great many actions and suits about legitimacy by virtue of that edict; cases which, till that time, had never occurred;
20. And several persons suffered by false accusations.
21. There were little less than five thousand who were convicted and sold for slaves as non-citizens;
22. Those who, passing the test, proved to be true Athenians were found on census to be fourteen thousand and forty persons in number.
23. It looked strange that a law which had been carried so far against so many people should be cancelled again by the same man that made it;
24. Yet the present distress which Pericles laboured under in his family broke through all objections,
25. And prevailed with the Athenians to pity him, as one whose misfortunes had sufficiently punished his former arrogance.
26. His sufferings deserved, they thought, their pity, and even indignation,
27. And his request was such as became a man to ask and men to grant; so they gave him permission to enrol his son in the register of his tribe, giving him his own name.
28. This son afterwards, after having defeated the Peloponnesians at Arginusae, was, with his fellow-generals, put to death by the people.
29. About the time when his son was enrolled, it should seem the plague seized Pericles, not with sharp and violent fits, as it did others that had it, but with a dull and lingering distemper,
30. Attended with various changes and alterations, little by little wasting the strength of his body and undermining the noble faculties of his mind.
31. So that Theophrastus, in his Morals, when discussing whether men’s characters change with their circumstances,
32. And their moral habits, disturbed by the ailings of their bodies, start aside from the rules of virtue, has left it upon record that Pericles, when he was sick,
33. Showed one of his friends that came to visit him an amulet that the women had hung about his neck;
34. As much as to say, that he was very sick indeed when he would admit of such foolery as that was.
Chapter 49
1. When he was now near his end, the best of the citizens and those of his friends who were left alive, sitting about him,
2. Were speaking of the greatness of his merit, and