A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT PERICLES.

BY MARIA NORRIS,

AUTHOR OF THE "LIFE AND TIMES OF MADAMe de staël,"

Over the abyss of the Past comes floating the music of a few imperishable names-the fortunes, the families, the persons of those who bore them are forgotten things; or are preserved as dim legends only, by the force and excellence of those intellectual qualities which make man a genius, and enable him to set a mark upon his age and time. Under a few distinct heads one might readily class the whole human family, and we call great men those whose clear individuality and strong characteristics point them out as the chiefs of a certain order of mind. We are not here confounding great and good; the man of strong influence must be great, not always is he good."

The Greek civilisation, perhaps, peculiarly tended to foster the free development of personal character; the virtues and the vices of the men who were bred under it have for us a somewhat gigantesque effect; the Greeks were under little restraint, and lived out candidly the promptings of nature. Christianity had not yet appeared to offer a common standard of excellence; the good were good, and the bad, bad, by the force of nature and of circumstance. The opinion of society was multiform; and a man could scarcely live so as to be disapproved by every school of philosophers, so much divided against herself was Philosophy in those heathen times.

discernible upon his cranium. There seem to be some exceptions to this rule-some cases in which a large intellect is heir to all the miseries of despair; but these are uncommon, and generally spring from great impatience, and the little likelihood of an immediate realisation of the golden dreams in which all minds of a certain order seem to indulge. This is the secret of the scepticism of young genius. We allude not to the foppery of infidelity, which is assumed as a fashion; but to that real depressing absence of faith in Heaven, that confusing despair of human society, which has distressed many minds really possessing true religious tendencies. Generally, nevertheless, the pioneers of intellect are on the side of belief; but their belief is not always the world's belief. Socrates was accused of impiety towards the gods, and drank up with his hemlock the more bitter draught of human hatred and intolerance; yet we now consider Socrates as on the threshold of the true religion. In their day, and after their kind, great intellects, like plants in the dark, fulfil the law of their nature by struggling towards the light.

Among the intellectual giants of Greece, Pericles seems to fill a noble place; and the history of his life and of his times is replete with lessons for the student who considers the Past a kind of armoury wherefrom he may select We are, however, perhaps, somewhat unjust weapons to aid him in the battle of the Present; to those keen, piercing intellects which were so scarcely can one over-rate the value of such painfully tasked by the uncertainties that on biographies as those of Pericles, Alexander, and all sides surrounded them; all the greatest Napoleon. The lives of common-place men minds of antiquity, as of modern times, were seem to be a succession of disjointed fragments, of a religious stamp; the great poets, as such men fall now under one influence and sculptors, painters, dramatists are not scoffers and anon under another. Wholeness and completescorners, hating men and defying the gods, but ness belong only to the career of a truly great full of veneration for all that is true and magnifi-man-a man who on all the circumstances of cent, as of contempt for all that is base and mean. We will not say that they all hold precisely the same dogmas, or even, to outward appearance, kneel in the same temple; genius would then supersede the order of Divine Providence, who has arranged the gradual progress of the human race, and allowed one age to veil the idea of Divinity under the names of Zeus, Hermes, and the rest, and gives to another the sublime Revelation in whose future is shut up the future of the entire family of man. A wise man would not crave so much for genius as a separate innate prophetical perception of truth involves; but some instinct, some presentiment of future progress, and some painful sense of present insufficiency, is generally an accompaniment of great talent; and if the phrenologists argue from just premises, they should be able to tell us generally of a great man, that Hope is clearly

his history casts a certain colouring, which reflects his idiosyncrasy as the waters catch the hues of heaven. From the page of history the great men stand out like figures in strong relief; and involuntarily one groups about them, as accessories and subordinates, the persons who were contemporary with them. In all our studies of such men as Pericles, it were well to remember the peculiar disadvantages of the early ages, and to measure the antique heroes not by the standard of our modern times, but by the characters common in their own day.

Pericles was born of a noble Athenian family, about the year B.C. 500; his father Xanthippus had gained a victory over the Persians at Mycale, and his mother Agarista was niece to Clisthenes, who had expelled the Pisistratidæ, and founded a popular government in Athens. Thus descended, it seems fit that Pericles should

Jealousy and envy are peculiarly the vices of a republic; and Pericles being of an aristocratic family, and connected with many persons of note, seems to have been fearful lest a too early interference with public affairs, or a too sudden assumption of authority, might alarm the watchful observation of the Athenians. His first object was to gain their good will, and this he essayed to do by exposing his life in their service.

unite the qualities of warrior and statesman; | displays of his talent; he had, doubtless, too and there is little doubt that from an early age much respect for his audience to rush into their he laboured to fit himself for the service of his presence without consideration; and we may country and for public employ. The faithful believe that he possessed the graceful ease of use made by the ancients of the limited advan- style which effectually conceals the labour of tages they possessed may well teach us a lesson. preparation, and gives to human eloquence its Doubtless the father of Pericles was careful to last charm. give his son the best culture his times afforded, and the youth seems to have added perseverance to talent in availing himself of his opportunities. He attended diligently the instructions of Damon and Anaxagoras of Clazomene. From the former, who excelled in discipline and was well acquainted with the principles of government, we may suppose that Pericles acquired a great part of his political wisdom; from the latter, who was surnamed "The Intelligence," on account of his belief in one overruling creative and sustaining Deity, whom he called by the name which was applied to the philosopher himself, it is reasonable to believe that Pericles acquired sound and just views on moral subjects, and an acquaintance with natural philosophy after the systems of the time. In reference to these accomplishments we may repeat what we have said of the wholeness and completeness of a great man's career; Pericles studied politics and physics, not as subjects of abstract interest and for the mere gratification of a keen intellect, but because they were essential to the successful elaboration of his purposes. He meant to be a statesman, a captain, a person of great public influence, and used every advantage to secure his end, and to adorn the positions he meant to occupy. He studied the operations of the human mind, and strove to connect human actions with causes and motives, not because he had a particular inclination for metaphysics, but because he wished to gain an ascendancy over the Athenians, and thought such study might be helpful to him in compassing this end.

The talent, however, which he cultivated with the greatest care, was eloquence. At this one can scarcely wonder; the Athenians, prone to hear and to learn some 66 new thing," as St. Paul many years after recorded, were fond of novelty in the time of Pericles, and peculiarly under the influence of fine speaking. This art, therefore, Pericles carefully studied, and so well succeeded that the panegyrics of his biographers would seem absurd, did we not recollect how excitable were the fickle, cruel, beautiful Athenian people; how they loved to praise their favourites, and to vilify those who had the misfortune to fall into disgrace.

The great talent of Pericles is shown, perhaps most of all, by the fact that for forty years he maintained an influence over his fellow-citizens. "The goddess of persuasion," they said, "dwelt with all her graces on his lips;" and the poets assert that the thunder of his eloquence agitated all Greece. He never spoke in public, we are told, without first imploring the gods that he might say nothing foreign to his subject, or calculated to give umbrage to the people. Very careful was he to prepare himself for all public

endeavour to obtain a more immediate public A time, however, came, when he might safely influence; the death of Aristides and the banishment of Themistocles had left the Athenian government chiefly in the hands of Cimon, who was much engaged in foreign wars, and who as the supporter and favourite of the nobility might be favourably opposed by a man of genius and eloquence, pledged to the popular side, and able by his talents to sway public opinion as he would. We need not believe that Pericles was in reality a favourer of democracy, in fact the sequel abundantly proves that such was far from being the case; but there has scarcely ever been a man of aspiring and ambitious genius, who has attained sovereign authority by other means than by thus flattering the people in order to gain the rule over them. The liberty of Athens was not an object of Pericles, but a mere steppingstone in his way to power. When he resolved to show himself a statesman, he altered his mode of living, keeping himself in private, and apparently absorbed in the gravity of public business.

During all the time of Pericles' power, it is said, that on only one occasion he was present at a banquet, and that the exception occurred on the marriage of a person closely related to him.* The Athenians, who were very apt to tire of anything familiar, were pleased with this behaviour; and we may well imagine that Pericles had none the less influence because he appeared but seldom in public.

Cimon, the rival of Pericles, had obtained a large ascendancy over the Athenians, not only tributions of money-a means of obtaining conby his military talents, but by his immense dissideration on which our severer morality looks with equal pity and contempt. Pericles, though

a man of no mean fortune, could not outdo or

perhaps equal Cimon in this regard; and to fall in any way inferior, would be obviously only the populace an exaggerated idea of the contrast detrimental to the interests of Pericles, by giving between the two candidates for popularity. Pericles was wiser than to attempt to rival the

A curious parallel may be drawn between this conduct of Pericles, and the behaviour of Napoleon during a corresponding period of his history.

magnificence of Cimon: he attacked his enemy | consequence of a subsequent affront offered by on other ground.

Money, we must conclude, had at this time as much influence in Athens, as in any city of more modern times. Pericles partly obtained his authority by a prudent distribution of the state property; he divided the conquered lands among the citizens, and first attached pensions to every kind of public employ. Up to his time the Athenians had discharged gratuitously most, if not all, of the duties exacted by the state; Pericles opened the public treasury to bestow bounties on those who frequented the courts of justice, and lavished the contents of the treasury in order to support the games and amusements which beguiled the populace, and rendered them indifferent to his gradual acquirement of power, and the successive steps of his ambitious policy.

In every adventurer who elevates himself to public pre-eminence there is a jealousy of influence and power which has any other source than himself; this jealousy Pericles felt for the senate of the Areopagus: it is said he had been refused admittance to their body, and that his determination to weaken their power was partly prompted by a desire to revenge himself upon them for their disrespect. However that may be, he succeeded in undermining their influence, in which the nobility placed their chief hope; and after this, there were few things of which he need despair. When Cimon returned to Athens, he was grieved to find the authority of the Areopagus little more than a shadow of what it had formerly been, and his own popularity considerably on the decline. Pericles undoubtedly obtained part of his influence by the delicate flattery wherewith his addresses were impregnated; whatever vanity, or even just pride in themselves, the Athenians before his time possessed, must have been wonderfully inflated by the pre-eminence which Pericles assigned to them over the other peoples of Greece.

the Lacedæmonians to some Athenians under the command of Cimon, that distinguished man was banished; yet Pericles was some years after compelled, on account of the necessities of Athens, to recall his great rival. But the death of Cimon left the field to Pericles. In order, however, to prevent the assumption of monarchical authority, Thucydides, a connexion of Cimon, was opposed to the fortunate ruler.

His object in obtaining power was doubtless the gratification of a temper disposed for authority; his ambition compassed the greatest heights, and was jealous of rivalry; but we may safely assert that he used his great authority to promote, what he considered to be, the interests of his country. During his rule, the chief of those lovely works which make Athens the classic city of architects and sculptors, were executed. It is true that he confiscated the money of all Greece, in order to defray the extravagant expenses involved in his splendid buildings; but such an offence was not calculated to awaken the lasting anger of the Athenians, who reaped the benefit of the injustice.

One must be gratified to know, that there were citizens who declaimed against this use of money which the allies had subscribed for the purpose of supporting the charges of the war, and cannot but own that Pericles acted for Athens to the detriment of Greece. The way in which he extricated himself from the difficulty in which this opposition involved him is interesting, and proves how an appearance of generosity will shame people into toleration of a thing they have before condemned. Pericles, no doubt well guessing the end, offered one day to defray himself the charges of the public edifices, provided the inscriptions on such buildings should state at whose expense the city was adorned. The Athenians were thus made conA curious instance of the effect aimed at by scious that the chief object of Pericles was the Pericles' administration occurred not very long splendour of their city, and unanimously cried after the return of Cimon. Sparta, the only that the treasury was quite at his service. So worthy rival of Athens, was almost ruined by a powerful was the effect of an artful appearance fearful earthquake; and the rebellion of the of generosity! But if the employment of the Helots (who looked on this as a proper season allies' money had before been unjust, no magto regain their liberty), seemed to promise to nanimity on the part of Pericles could alter that complete what the ravages of the earthquake fact; nor did the Athenians stay to remember had begun. In their extremity the Lacedæ- that they thus assumed the right of disposing of monians sent to Athens for assistance; but the funds which no more belonged to them excluappeal was opposed by Ephialtes, the friend of sively than to Pericles, and the asserted misapPericles, on the selfish ground that it was inad-plication of which had been the original ground visable for Athens to help her rival. Cimon, who had been before accused of a preference for the Spartans (in the Athenian judgment no mean charge), was generously offended by this illiberal policy. He urged the necessity of assistance, and succeeded in obtaining a considerable number of troops, with whom he marched to the help of the unfortunate Lacedæmonians. It is natural to suppose, in spite of Cimon's success, that Pericles, who made every other interest subordinate to that of Athens, would be the prime favourite of the people. In

of dispute. Pericles thus shifted the responsibility, and induced them to sanction the course they had formerly condemned.

Many men aim at political power in order to aggrandize their families and increase their estates, but this was by no means the object of Pericles; his paternal inheritance, we are told, was prudently managed, under his direction, by a faithful slave, whom he had taught to manage his affairs in order to leave himself leisure for the public business; but he amassed no riches by his administration, and died not any richer

for his public place. His wife and family were discontented with the great economy which ruled over his household; the former, we are told, was frequently upbraiding him because he would not assume the luxury and expense proper to a man who held such a distinguished place in the republic; but Pericles was immovable. His great moderation in living may have sprung from a real dislike to pomp and show, or from a desire to avoid provoking the jealousy of the Athenians; most probably the latter was the ruling motive, for that he loved magnificence, his public works seem abundantly to testify. That his domestic circumstances, with such a wife, were not happy, we can scarcely wonder; and if he separated from her, we cannot entirely blame him on that account. We must recollect that we are apt to judge the actions of Pericles by the Christian standard, a standard inconceivably higher than that of the heathen world.

involving a possible improvement in the culture and condition of the feminine part of human nature; and women may feel that Socrates and Pericles, if not juster, were kinder, than the little authorities of modern times, and may well be emulated to a loftier idea of what their sex ought to be, and can be, by remembering that two of the greatest men of antiquity were not ashamed to learn of a woman.

Bright and gifted as she undoubtedly was, it is not surprising that Aspasia attracted the love of Pericles, or that she succeeded to the place of his unreasonable and discarded wife. It may be that Pericles wished, when he first separated from his wife, to marry Aspasia; but we must recollect that the marriage law of Greece allowed no second marriage while children of the first wife survived; indeed, the Greek legislation in such regards was much severer than our own.

Passing by this part of the question as one with which it is impossible for an unlearned woman at any rate to deal fairly, one cannot but love to imagine, though only dimly, what must have been the commune of such souls as Pericles, Socrates, and Aspasia. Pericles has been blamed, because, when Aspasia was accused of impiety, he defended her so eloquently, that he was himself affected to tears: but to us those tears are by no means the mark of an ignoble spirit. It was no common beauty he defended, but a richly cultivated woman, threatened with punishment for holding doctrines which he too believed, and which, perhaps, she had partly imbibed from his conver

Aspasia, a native of Miletus, a woman celebrated for personal and mental accomplishments, rather than beauty, had established herself in Athens as a teacher of eloquence: she had the credit of contributing to form some of the finest of the Greek orators; Socrates was proud to be her pupil, and Pericles sought her instructions. Aspasia was accused of impiety towards the gods, and has been represented as a woman of worthless character. The charge of impiety was at that time brought against all who asserted the existence of one superior creative Mind; and Aspasia shared it with Socrates, Anaxagoras, and all whose superior enlightenment and dis-sations. cernment helped them to throw discredit on the doctrine of the plurality of gods.

This accusation was no small thing for a woman to sustain in the days of Pericles; no doubt the orthodox Athenian matrons were filled with disgust for Aspasia, whose neglect of the worship due to the gods would provoke unpopularity.

He must be a stoic indeed, who could show himself indifferent in such a cause. It was not the courtesan Aspasia-as historians are prone to call her-for whom Pericles wept; but a genius, a woman threatened with persecution. His connexion with her, of whatever nature it might be, was fruitful in trouble to him. It is even asserted that one of his wars was begun on account of an insult offered to her. She must, however, have been a woman of rare powers and temper, to have and hold ascendancy over such a man as Pericles.

The old age of Pericles is mournful to contemplate. All his legitimate children died; the son Xanthippus, whose prodigal expenditure occasioned him so much vexation, included.

If the Athenian women also were much like their sex in these days, we may readily believe that there were some who were jealous of her superior talents; and from jealousy to scandal is a very short step, for such. There was, too, an appearance of truth, afforded by the fact that the house of Aspasia was frequented by the philosophers and wits of the age, rather than by persons of repute among her own sex, We do not intend by any How life-like these household pictures seem, means to advance that Aspasia did not deserve that were drawn so long ago! The Areopagus the charges brought against her, because we is a faint vision; the eloquence of Pericles a dim have no means of judging whether she was in-tradition: but life-like and natural seem the nocent or guilty; but we claim the allowance grumblings of the orator's wife-her discontent that some doubt hangs over the subject. She appears to us, if innocent, a lovely example of the generally unhappy fate of gifted women. She seems to have reached the highest point which female development in her age permitted, and it is a fair question how far we have herein outstripped the ancients. It is rather the fashion, in certain circles, to sneer at every idea

* The example of De Fleury, who was similarly honest, may be here recalled.

at his small expenditure, her envy because her house, perhaps, is not so splendid as Aspasia's, her jealousy because Pericles spends so much of his time abroad. Did she believe that he went to Aspasia's only to study oratory? Was she sorry when the lovely stranger was arraigned for impiety towards the gods? We imagine not.

Xanthippus, the son, is the very mould of a fast young Athenian; and his extravagant young wife must be true to the life. All these broad features of human nature are common to every

broken by misfortune. That this steady principle was wholly within reach of any heathen we will not say; but there were some who made noble advances towards it, some whose lives so far Lon-transcended the systems of morals current in their day, that we are almost ashamed to think what are our lives, remembering the superior light and information which all-bountiful Heaven has given these later ages.

HOW ALICE HUNTINGFIELD WAS LOST AND WON.

BY MRS. WHITE.