A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

1 84 The Age of Pericles
On this
Thucydides
(not the
historian);
Greece, 170 f.
Stesimbrotus,
a
contemporary
writer.
The Periclean
government.
Plut. Per. 9.
Greece, 172-
8; Ancietil
World, 195-i
Pericles in debate. One day Archidamus, the King of
Sparta, asked him whether he or Pericles was the best
wrestler. "When I throw him in wrestling," Thucydides
answered, "he beats me by proving that he never was
down, and by making the spectators believe him."
For all
this Pericles was very cautious about his words, and whenever
he ascended the tribune to speak, used first to pray to
the gods that nothing inappropriate to the present occasion
might fall from his lips. He left no writings, except
the measures which he brought forward, and very few of
his sayings are recorded. One of these was, that he called
^gina "the eyesore of the Peirseus" and that "he saw
war coming upon Athens from Peloponnesus." Stesimbrotus
tells us that when he was pronouncing a public
funeral oration over those who fell in Samos, he said that
they had become immortal, even as the gods: for we do not
see the gods, but we conceive them to be immortal by the
respect which we pay them, and the blessings which we
receive from them; and the same is the case with those
who die for their country.
Thucydides represents the constitution under Pericles
as a democracy in name, but really an aristocracy, because
the government was all in the hands of one leading
citizen. But as many other writers tell us that during his
administration the people received grants of land abroad,
and were indulged with dramatic entertainments, and
payments for their services, in consequence of which they
fell into bad habits, and became extravagant and licentious,
instead of sober, hard-working people as they had been
before, let us consider the history of this change, viewing
it by the light of the facts themselves. First of all, as we
have already said, Pericles had to measure himself with
Cimon, and to transfer the affections of the people from