Pericles

And Pericles, too, he is said to have wrought, without his knowing it, upon the shield.

To this, perhaps, Pheidias would reply, being a man not without eloquence, nor of an inarticulate city, and moreover the intimate and companion of Pericles:

the Athenians from Solon and Aristides and Pericles the disciple of Anaxagoras;

and then came forward Pericles, the son of Xanthippus, the first man of the Athenians at that time, and most able both in speaking and acting, and advised them as follows.

But those points shall be explained in another speech at the time of the events.

"I always adhere to the same opinion, Athenians, that we should make no concessions to the Lacedaemonians;

Thus Ilioneus in Virgil calls heaven to witness the injustice of the Africans in driving him and his shipwrecked companions from the hospitable use of the shore, and we are informed by Plutarch in his life of Pericles that all the Grecians approved of the complaint, which the Megarensians made against the Athenians, who had prohibited them from setting foot upon the soil of their territories, or c …

Thus at the suggestion of Pericles, Melesippus, the Lacedaemonian ambassador, was sent out of the territories of Athens;

A thing which Pericles once did under a pledge of making the restitution:

Indeed, there is a story told of Alcibiades, that, when he was less than twenty years old, he had a talk about laws with Pericles, his guardian, the first citizen in the State.

Alcibiades, said Pericles, at your age, I may tell you, we, too, were very clever at this sort of thing.

Ah, Pericles, cried Alcibiades, if only I had known you intimately when you were at your cleverest in these things!

for it was stretched by us and Pericles.

I have expended them, like Pericles, for needful purposes.

when the sun was darkened and sudden shadows fell, and the greatest fear had seized the minds of the Athenians, that famous Pericles, foremost of his state in authority and eloquence and counsel, is said to have taught his fellow citizens what he himself had received from Anaxagoras, whose pupil he had been:

but that Pericles, when now with the highest authority he had for very many years presided over his state in peace and in war, should be assailed in verses, and that these should be acted on the stage, was no more becoming than if our own Plautus or Naevius had wished to revile Publius and Gnaeus Scipio, or Caecilius to revile Marcus Cato .

and that city which Pericles, renowned above all others for his wisdom, his justice, and his moderation, reduced with a fleet of two hundred ships and the expenditure of a thousand talents, Timotheus, without receiving from you or collecting from your allies any money whatsoever, captured after a siege of ten months with a force of eight thousand light-armed troops and thirty triremes, and he paid …

Finally, Pericles, because he was both a good leader of the people and an excellent orator, so adorned the city with temples, monuments, and other objects of beauty, that even today visitors who come to Athens think her worthy of ruling not only the Hellenes, but all the world;

and Pericles studied under two of the sophists, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae and Damon, the latter in his day reputed to be the wisest among the Athenians.

When I listened to Pericles and other skilled orators I thought them eloquent, but I never felt anything like this;

you may couple Nestor, Antenor, or others I might mention, with Pericles;

And so decorous were those public men of old, Pericles, Themistocles, and Aristeides (who was called by a name most unlike that by which Timarchus here is called), that to speak with the arm outside the cloak, as we all do nowadays as a matter of course, was regarded then as an ill-mannered thing, and they carefully refrained from doing it.

Pericles also first made the law-courts paid, as a counter-measure to Cimon's wealth.

After this, when Pericles came forward to lead the people—having first won repute when, as a young man, he prosecuted the audit of Cimon's generalship—the constitution became still more democratic.

So long, then, as Pericles was champion of the people, affairs of the constitution were better;

Hence men like Pericles are deemed prudent, because they possess a faculty of discerning what things are good for themselves and for mankind and that is our conception of an expert in Domestic Economy or Political Science.

And the deed of Pericles or of Euclid is akin to enduring those who persecute us and bearing their wrath gently, and to praying good things for our enemies rather than calling down curses.

Then, when it was already evening and dark, and the man was scarcely going off, Pericles escorted him home by torchlight, so that his own exercise toward philosophy should not be spoiled.

Just now too I turned a little to the right off the road, that I might approach the tomb of Pericles.

For of Aspasia the Milesian, of whom the comic poets too write much, Socrates made use for philosophy, and Pericles for rhetoric.

It is said that Aristeides was banished by your ancestors and lived in Aegina till the people recalled him, and that Miltiades and Pericles, being fined thirty and fifty talents respectively, did not try to harangue the people until they had paid in full.

You will hear first that Pericles, who is thought to have far surpassed all men of his age in intellectual grasp, addressed himself to Anaxagoras of Clazomenae and only after being his pupil acquired this power of judgement.

Indeed I am given to understand—and so perhaps are you—that the orators of past generations, always praised but not always imitated by those who address you, adopted this very standard and principle of statesmanship.

She was married to Xanthippus son of Ariphron, and when she was pregnant she saw in her sleep a vision in which she thought she gave birth to a lion.

My father himself was left an orphan (for his father died in battle at Coronea) and became the ward of Pericles, whom all would acknowledge to have been the most moderate, the most just, and the wisest of the citizens.

And yet Pericles, who was the leader of the people before men of this stamp came into favor, taking over the state when it was less prudent than it had been before it obtained the supremacy, although it was still tolerably well governed, was not bent upon his own enrichment, but left an estate which was smaller than that which he received from his father, while he brought up into the Acropolis eig …

Under this decree I urge you to try the generals, and, by Zeus, if it so please you, Pericles, my kinsman, first of them all;

and Pericles was stationed behind Aristocrates and Erasinides behind Diomedon;

I have come to the platform, men of Athens, partly to accuse Pericles, though he is my kinsman and intimate, and Diomedon, who is my friend, partly to speak in their defence, and partly to advise the measures which seem to me to be best for the state as a whole.

you must try to find out what kind of knowledge it was that gave Pericles the name of being his country’s wisest counsellor;