Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
course, out of jealousy, forsooth, and envy of his great reputation?
This historian, it seems, having raked up these stories, I know not
whence, has befouled with them a man who, perchance, was not altogether
free from fault or blame, but yet had a noble spirit, and a soul that
was bent on honor; and where such qualities are, there can no such cruel
and brutal passion find harbor or gain admittance. As to Ephialtes, the
truth of the story, as Aristotle has told it, is this: that having made
himself formidable to the oligarchical party, by being an
uncompromising asserter of the people's rights in calling to account and
prosecuting those who any way wronged them, his enemies, lying in wait
for him, by the means of Aristodicus the Tanagraean, privately
dispatched him.
Cimon, while he was admiral, ended his days in the Isle of Cyprus. And
the aristocratical party, seeing that Pericles was already before this
grown to be the greatest and foremost man of all the city, but
nevertheless wishing there should be somebody set up against him, to
blunt and turn the edge of his power, that it might not altogether prove
a monarchy, put forward Thucydides of Alopece, a discreet person, and a
near kinsman of Cimon's, to conduct the opposition against him; who,
indeed, though less skilled in warlike affairs than Cimon was, yet was
better versed in speaking and political business, and keeping close
guard in the city, and engaging with Pericles on the hustings, in a
short time brought the government to an equality of parties. For he
would not suffer those who were called the honest and good (persons of
worth and distinction) to be scattered up and down and mix themselves
and be lost among the populace, as formerly, diminishing and obscuring
their superiority amongst the masses; but taking them apart by
themselves and uniting them in one body, by their combined weight he was
able, as it were upon the balance, to make a counter-poise to the other
party.
For, indeed, there was from the beginning a sort of concealed split, or
seam, as it might be in a piece of iron, marking the different popular
and aristocratical tendencies; but the open rivalry and contention of
these two opponents made the gash deep, and severed the city into the
two parties of the people and the few. And so Pericles, at that time
more than at any other, let loose the reins to the people, and made his
policy subservient to their pleasure, contriving continually to have
some great public show or solemnity, some banquet, or some procession or
other in the town to please them, coaxing his countrymen like children,
with such delights and pleasures as were not, however, unedifying.
Besides that every year he sent out threescore galleys, on board of
which there went numbers of the citizens, who were in pay eight months,
learning at the same time and practicing the art of seamanship.
He sent, moreover, a thousand of them into the Chersonese as planters,
to share the land among them by lot, and five hundred more into the isle
of Naxos, and half that number to Andros, a thousand into Thrace to
dwell among the Bisaltae, and others into Italy, when the city Sybaris,
which now was called Thurii, was to be repeopled. And this he did to
ease and discharge the city of an idle, and, by reason of their
idleness, a busy, meddling crowd of people; and at the same time to meet
the necessities and restore the fortunes of the poor townsmen, and to
intimidate, also, and check their allies from attempting any change, by
posting such garrisons, as it were, in the midst of them.
That which gave most pleasure and ornament to the city of Athens, and
the greatest admiration and even astonishment to all strangers, and that
which now is Greece's only evidence that the power she boasts of and her
ancient wealth are no romance or idle story, was his construction of the
public and sacred buildings. Yet this was that of all his actions in
the government which his enemies most looked askance upon and caviled at
in the popular assemblies, crying out how that the commonwealth of
Athens had lost its reputation and was ill-spoken of abroad for removing
the common treasure of the Greeks from the isle of Delos into their own
custody; and how that their fairest excuse for so doing, namely, that
they took it away for fear the barbarians should seize it, and on
purpose to secure it in a safe place, this Pericles had made
unavailable, and how that "Greece cannot but resent it as an
insufferable affront, and consider herself to be tyrannized over openly,
when she sees the treasure, which was contributed by her upon a
necessity for the war, wantonly lavished out by us upon our city, to
gild her all over, and to adorn and set her forth, as it were some vain
woman, hung round with precious stones and figures and temples, which
cost a world of money."
Pericles, on the other hand, informed the people, that they were in no
way obliged to give any account of those moneys to their allies, so long
as they maintained their defense, and kept off the barbarians from
attacking them; while in the meantime they did not so much as supply
one horse or man or ship, but only found money for the service; "which
money," said he, "is not theirs that give it, but theirs that receive
it, if so be they perform the conditions upon which they receive it."
And that it was good reason, that, now the city was sufficiently
provided and stored with all things necessary for the war, they should
convert the overplus of its wealth to such undertakings, as would
hereafter, when completed, give them eternal honor, and, for the
present, while in process, freely supply all the inhabitants with
plenty. With their variety of workmanship and of occasions for service,
which summon all arts and trades and require all hands to be employed
about them, they do actually put the whole city, in a manner, into
state-pay; while at the same time she is both beautified and maintained
by herself. For as those who are of age and strength for war are
provided for and maintained in the armaments abroad by their pay out of
the public stock, so, it being his desire and design that the
undisciplined mechanic multitude that stayed at home should not go
without their share of public salaries, and yet should not have them
given them for sitting still and doing nothing, to that end he thought
fit to bring in among them, with the approbation of the people, these
vast projects of buildings and designs of works, that would be of some
continuance before they were finished, and would give employment to
numerous arts, so that the part of the people that stayed at home might,
no less than those that were at sea or in garrisons or on expeditions,
have a fair and just occasion of receiving the benefit and having their
share of the public moneys.
The materials were stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony cypress-wood; and
the arts or trades that wrought and fashioned them were smiths and
carpenters, molders, founders and braziers, stone-cutters, dyers,
goldsmiths, ivory-workers, painters, embroiderers, turners; those again
that conveyed them to the town for use, merchants and mariners and ship-
masters by sea, and by land, cartwrights, cattle-breeders, waggoners,
rope-makers, flax-workers, shoe-makers and leather-dressers, roadmakers,
miners. And every trade in the same nature, as a captain in an army has
his particular company of soldiers under him, had its own hired company
of journeymen and laborers belonging to it banded together as in array,
to be as it were the instrument and body for the performance of the
service. Thus, to say all in a word, the occasions and services of
these public works distributed plenty through every age and condition.
As then grew the works up, no less stately in size than exquisite in
form, the workmen striving to outvie the material and the design with
the beauty of their workmanship, yet the most wonderful thing of all was
the rapidity of their execution. Undertakings, any one of which singly
might have required, they thought, for their completion, several
successions and ages of men, were every one of them accomplished in the
height and prime of one man's political service. Although they say,
too, that Zeuxis once, having heard Agatharchus the painter boast of
dispatching his work with speed and ease, replied, "I take a long time."
For ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting
solidity or exactness of beauty; the expenditure of time allowed to a
man's pains beforehand for the production of a thing is repaid by way of
interest with a vital force for its preservation when once produced.
For which reason Pericles's works are especially admired, as having been
made quickly, to last long. For every particular piece of his work was
immediately, even at that time, for its beauty and elegance, antique;
and yet in its vigor and freshness looks to this day as if it were just
executed. There is a sort of bloom of newness upon those works of his,
preserving them from the touch of time, as if they had some perennial
spirit and undying vitality mingled in the composition of them.
Phidias had the oversight of all the works, and was surveyor-general,
though upon the various portions other great masters and workmen were
employed. For Callicrates and Ictinus built the Parthenon; the chapel
at Eleusis, where the mysteries were celebrated, was begun by Coroebus,
who erected the pillars that stand upon the floor or pavement, and
joined them to the architraves; and after his death Metagenes of Xypete
added the frieze and the upper line of columns; Xenocles of Cholargus
roofed or arched the lantern on the top of the temple of Castor and
Pollux; and the long wall, which Socrates says he himself heard Pericles
propose to the people, was undertaken by Callicrates. This work
Cratinus ridicules, as long in finishing, --
'Tis long since Pericles, if words would do it,
Talk'd up the wall; yet adds not one mite to it.
The Odeum, or music-room, which in its interior was full of seats and
ranges of pillars, and outside had its roof made to slope and descend
from one single point at the top, was constructed, we are told, in
imitation of the king of Persia's Pavilion; this likewise by Pericles's
order; which Cratinus again, in his comedy called The Thracian Women,
made an occasion of raillery, --
So, we see here,
Jupiter Long-pate Pericles appear,
Since ostracism time, he's laid aside his head,
And wears the new Odeum in its stead.
Pericles, also, eager for distinction, then first obtained the decree
for a contest in musical skill to be held yearly at the Panathenaea, and
he himself, being chosen judge, arranged the order and method in which
the competitors should sing and play on the flute and on the harp. And
both at that time, and at other times also, they sat in this music-room
to see and hear all such trials of skill.
The propylaea, or entrances to the Acropolis, were finished in five
years' time, Mnesicles being the principal architect. A strange
accident happened in the course of building, which showed that the
goddess was not averse to the work, but was aiding and cooperating to
bring it to perfection. One of the artificers, the quickest and the
handiest workman among them all, with a slip of his foot fell down from
a great height, and lay in a miserable condition, the physicians having
no hopes of his recovery. When Pericles was in distress about this,
Minerva appeared to him at night in a dream, and ordered a course of
treatment, which he applied, and in a short time and with great ease
cured the man. And upon this occasion it was that he set up a brass
statue of Minerva, surnamed Health, in the citadel near the altar, which
they say was there before. But it was Phidias who wrought the goddess's