is unobjectionable. To avoid it by circumlocution, or by any other word less expressive and direct, would be the most contemptible and ludicrous of pedantry: and, were it anywhere reduced to practice in the conversation of ordinary life, it would manifestly designate a coarse-grained unpolishable people. There is nothing in poetry, or indeed in society, so unpleasant as affectation. In poetry it arises from a deficiency of power and a restlessness of pretension; in conversation, from insensibility to the Graces, from an intercourse with bad company, and a misinterpretation of better. CLIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE. afraid of displeasing you by repeating what I have| Writing of war and contention, such an expression heard. This is, that you pronounce in public as well as in private a few words somewhat differently from our custom. You can not be aware how much hostility you may excite against you by such a practice. Remember, we are Athenians; and do not let us believe that we have finer organs, quicker perceptions, or more discrimination, than our neighbours in the city. Every time we pronounce a word differently from another, we show our disapprobation of his manner, and accuse him of rusticity. In all common things we must do as others do. It is more barbarous to undermine the stability of a language than of an edifice that hath stood as long. This is done by the introduction of changes. Write as others do, but only as the best of others: and if one eloquent man, forty or fifty years ago, spoke and wrote differently from the generality of the present, follow him, though alone, rather than the many. But in pronunciation we are not indulged in this latitude of choice; we must pronounce as those do who favour us with their audience. Never hazard a new expression in public: I know not any liberty we can take, even with our nearest friends, more liable to the censure of vanity. Whatever we do we must do from authority or from analogy. A young man, however studious and intelligent, can know, intrinsically and profoundly, but little of the writers who constitute authority. For my part, in this our country, where letters are far more advanced than in any other, I can name no one whatever who has followed up to their origin the derivation of words, or studied with much success their analogy. I do not, I confess, use all the words that others do, but I never use one that others do not. Remember, one great writer may have employed a word which a greater has avoided, or, not having avoided it, may have employed in a somewhat different signification. It would be needless to offer you these remarks, if our language were subject to the capriciousness of courts, the humiliation of sycophants, and the defilement of slaves. Another may suffer but little detriment by the admission of barbarism to its franchises; but ours is attic, and the words, like the citizens we employ, should at once be popular and select. CLII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA. The poetical merits of the unhappy Lesbian are sufficiently well known. Thanks, and more than thanks, if indeed there is anything more on earth, are due for even one scrap from her. But allow me, what is no great delicacy or delight to me, a reprehension, a censure. An admirer can make room for it only when it comes from an admirer. Sappho, in the most celebrated of her Odes, tells us that she sweats profusely. Now surely no female, however low-born and ill-bred, in short however Eolian, could without indecorousness speak of sweating and spitting, or any such things. We never ought to utter, in relation to ourselves, what we should be ashamed of being seen in. You desire to know what portion of history it is the intention of Thucydides to undertake. He began with the earlier settlers of Greece, but he has now resolved to employ this section as merely the portico to his edifice. The Peloponesian war appears to him worthier of the historian than any other. He is of opinion that it must continue for many years and comprehend many important events, for Pericles is resolved to wear out the energy of the Spartans by protracting it. At present it has been carried on but few months, with little advantage to either side, and much distress to both. What our historian has read to us does not contain any part of these transactions, which however he carefully notes down as they occur. We were much amused by a speech he selected for recitation, as one delivered by an orator of the Corinthians to the Ephors of Lacedæmon, urging the justice and necessity of hostilities. Never was the Athenian character painted in such true and lively colours. In composition his characteristic is brevity, yet the first sentence of the volume runs into superfluity. The words, to the best of my recollection, are these: "Thucydides of Athens has composed a his tory of the war between the Peloponesians and Athenians." This is enough; yet he adds, "As conducted by each of the belligerents." Of course it could not be conducted by one only. I observed that in the fourth sentence he went from the third person to the first. By what I could collect, he thinks the Peloponesian war more momentous than the Persian: yet had Xerxes prevailed against us, not a vestige would be existing of liberty or civilisation in the world. If Sparta should, there will be little enough; and a road will be thrown open to the barbarians of the north, Macedonians and others with strange names. We have no great reason to fear it; although the policy of Thebes, on whom much depends, is ungenerous and unwise. He said moreover that "transactions of an earlier time are known imperfectly, and were of small importance either in the wars or anything else." Yet without these wars, or some other of these transactions, our Miletus and Athens, our Pericles and Thucydides, would not be; so much does one thing depend upon another. I am little disposed to overvalue the potency and importance of the eastern monarchies; but surely there is enough to excite our curiosity, and interest our inquiries, in the fall of Chaldæa, the rise of Babylon, and the mysteries of Egypt. . not indeed her mysteries in theology, which are impostures there as elsewhere, but the mysteries in arts and sciences, which will outlive the Gods. Barbarians do not hold steadily before us any moral or political lesson; but they serve as graven images, protuberantly eminent and gorgeously uncouth, to support the lamp placed on them by History and Philosophy. If we knew only what they said and did, we should turn away with horror and disgust: but we pound their mummies to colour our narratives; and we make them as useful in history as beasts are in fable. Thucydides shows evidently, by his preliminary observations, that he considers the Trojan war unimportant. Yet, according to Homer, the Grecian troops amounted to above a hundred thousand. In reality, so large a force hath never been assembled in any naval expedition, nor even one half. How was it provisioned at Aulis? how, on the shores of the Troad? And all these soldiers, with chariots and horses, were embarked for Troy a few years after the first ship of war left the shores of Greece! yes, a very few years indeed; for the Argo had among her crew the brothers of Helen, who can not well be supposed to have been five years older than herself. It is of rare occurrence, even in the climate of Sparta, that a mother bears children after so long an interval; and we have no reason to believe that such a time had elapsed between the brothers and their sister. Suppose the twins to have been twenty-two years old (for they had become celebrated for horsemanship and boxing) and Helen seventeen, you will find little space left between the expeditions. But away with calculation. We make a bad bargain when we change poetry for truth in the affairs of ancient times, and by no means a good one in any. Remarkable men of remote ages are collected together out of different countries within the same period, and perform simultaneously the same action. On an accumulation of obscure deeds arises a wild spirit of poetry; and images and names burst forth and spread themselves, which carry with them something like enchantment, far beyond the infancy of nations. What was vague imagination settles at last and is received for history. It is difficult to effect and idle to attempt the separation: it is like breaking off a beautiful crystallisation from the vault of some intricate and twilight cavern, out of mere curiosity to see where the accretion terminates and the rock begins. VOL. II. CLIV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE. We have lost another poet, and have none left beside the comic. Euripides is gone to the court of Archelaüs. A few years ago he gained the prize against all competitors. He was hailed by the people as a deliverer, for subverting the ascendancy and dominion which Sophocles had acquired over them. The Athenians do not like to trust any man with power for life. Sophocles is now an old man, sixty years of age at the least, and he had then been absolute in the theatre for above a quarter of a century. What enthusiasm! what acclamations! for overthrowing the despot who had so often made them weep and beat their breasts. He came to visit us on the day of his defeat: Euripides was with us at the time. "Euripides," said he, "we are here alone, excepting our friends Aspasia and Pericles. I must embrace you, now it can not seem an act of ostentation." He did so, and most cordially. "I should be glad to have conquered you," continued he; "it would have been very glorious." I never saw Pericles more moved. These are the actions that shake his whole frame, and make his eyes glisten. Euripides was less affected. He writes tenderly, but is not tender. There are hearts that call for imagination: there are others that create it. I must abstain from all reflections that fall too darkly on the departed. We may see him no more perhaps I am sorry for it. He did not come often to visit us, nor indeed is there anything in his conversation to delight or interest me. He has not the fine manners of Sophocles; nor the open unreserved air, which Pericles tells me he admired so much in the soldierly and somewhat proud Eschylus; grave and taciturn, I hear, like himself, unless when something pleased him; and then giving way to ebullitions and bursts of rapture, and filling everyone with it round about. The movers and masters of our souls have surely a right to throw out their limbs as carelessly as they please, on the world that belongs to them, and before the ereatures they have animated. It is only such insects as petty autocrats that feel oppressed by it, and would sting them for it. Pericles is made of the same clay. He can not quite overcome his stateliness, but he bends the more gracefully for bending slowly. When I think of Euripides, I think how short a time it is since he was hailed as a deliverer, and how odious he is become for breaking in upon our affections at an unseasonable hour, and for carrying our hearts into captivity. All the writers of the day were resolved to humble him, and ran about from magistrate to magistrate, to raise money enough for the magnificent representation of his rival. . I have forgotten the man's name. Pericles never thwarts the passions and prejudices of the citizens. In his adolescence he visited the humble habitation of the venerable Eschylus : throughout life he has been the friend of Sophocles: EE he has comforted Euripides in his defeats, telling | Leucimna, and had spared after the victory their him that by degrees he would teach the people to be better judges: he rejoiced with him on his first victory, reminding him of his prophecy, and remarking that they two, of all the Athenians, had shown the most patience and had been the best rewarded for it. We hope he may return. CLV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE, The two pieces I am about to transcribe are of styles very different. I find them among the collections of Pericles, but am ignorant of the authors. Far from the harp's and from the singer's noise, I know a wing that flaps o'er girls and boys CUPID AND LIGEIA. Cupid had played some wicked trick one day On sharp Ligeia; and I heard her say, "You little rogue! you ought to be unsext." He was as spiteful tho' not quite so vext, And said (but held half-shut the folding-doors) "Ah then my beard will never grow like yours!" Corinthian captives: they had laid waste the territory of Leucas and they had burnt the arsenal of Cyllene. Meanwhile the Corinthians sent ambassadors to every power in the Peloponese, and enlisted mariners for their service upon every coast. If valour and skill and constancy could have availed the Corcyræans, they would have continued to abstain, as they had ever done, from all alliances. They only sought ours when destruction was imminent; knowing that, in policy and humanity, we never could allow the extinction of one Grecian state, nor consequently the aggrandisement and preponderance of another; and least so when the insolence of Corinth had threatened our naval ascendancy (by which all Greece was saved), and the rivalry of Lacedæmon our equality on land. By our treaty with the Lacedæmonians it is provided that, if any community be not in alliance with one of the parties, it may confederate with either, at its discretion; and this compact it was agreed should be binding not only on the principals but likewise on the subordinates. In such a predicament stands Corcyra. It might behove us to chastise the inhumanity of a nation which, like Corinth, would devour her own offspring; but it certainly is most just and most expedient, when, instead of reasoning or CLVI. FIRST SPEECH OF PERICLES TO THE ATHENIANS. conferring with us on the propriety of our inter On the Declarations of Corinth and Lacedæmon. The Regency at Lacedæmon has resolved to make an irruption into Attica, if we attempt anything adverse to Potidea, hearing that on the declaration of hostilities by Corinth, we ordered the Potideans, whose infidelity we had detected, to demolish the wall facing Pallene. In reliance on their treason, Perdiccas and the Corinthians had entered into confederacy, and were exciting the defection of our Thracian auxiliaries. Perdiccas prevailed with the Chalcidians to dismantle all their towns upon the seaside, and to congregate in Olynthos. We made a truce, and afterward a treaty, with Perdiccas: he evacuates the territory he had invaded; we strictly beleaguer the revolted Potidæa. The ephors of Lacedæmon now summon to appear before them not only their allies, but whosoever has any complaint to prefer against the Athenians. Hereupon the Megaræans come forward, and protest that they have been prohibited from our markets, contrary to treaty; and what is worse, that we exclude them from the possession of Potidæa, so convenient for extending their power and authority into Thrace. They appear, in their long oration, to have forgotten nothing, unless that they had murdered our citizens and ambassadors. By what right, O Athenians, is Lacedæmon our judge? Corinth may impell her into war against us; but Corinth can never place her on the judgment-seat of Greece; nor shall their united voices make us answer to the citation. We will declare, not to her but to all, our reasons and our rights. The Corcyræans had erected a trophy at ference, she runs at once to Sparta, conspiring with her to our degradation, and, if possible, to our ruin. Satisfactorily to demonstrate our justice and moderation, I advise that we stipulate with Corcyra for mutual defence, never for aggression, and admitting no article which, even by a forced intepretation, may contravene our treaty with Lacedæmon. CLVII. SECOND SPEECH OF PERICLES. The jealousy that Sparta hath ever entertained against us, was declared most flagrantly, when Leotychides, who commanded the Grecian forces at Mycale, drew away with him all the confederates of the Peloponese. We continued to assail the barbarians until we drove them from Sestos, their last hold upon the Hellespont. It was then, and then only, that the Athenians brought back again from miserable refuge their wives and children, and began to rebuild their habitations, and walls for their defence. Did the Spartans view this constancy and perseverance with admiration and with pity, as the patriotic, the generous, the humane, would do? Did they send ambassadors to congratulate your fathers on their valour, their endurance, their prosperous return, their ultimate security? Ambassadors they sent indeed, but insisting that our walls should never rise again from their ruins. A proposal so unjust and arrogant we treated with scorn and indignation, when our numbers were diminished and our wealth exhausted: shall we bend to their decisions | and obey their orders now? If their power of injuring us were in proportion to their malice, their valour to their pride, or their judgment to their ferocity, then were they most formidable indeed: but turn we to the examination of facts. Having occasion to reduce to obedience a few revolted Helotes in the city of Ithome, to whom did they apply? to the Athenians; for they them selves were utterly ignorant how to attack or even to approach a fortress. Even then they showed their jealousy, rewarding our promptitude to assist them by the ignominious dismissal of our troops. What was the consequence? a ten years siege. And these, O Athenians! are the men who now threaten the Acropolis and Piræus ! I can compare the Lacedæmonians to nothing more fitly than to the heads of spears without the shafts. There would be abundantly the power of doing mischief, were there only the means and method of directing it. Where these are wanting, we have no better cause for apprehension than at the sparks of fire under our horse's hoof, lest they produce a conflagration; which indeed they might do, if by their nature they were durable and directable. Let us see what powerful aid our enemies are expecting; what confederates they are stirring up against us. The Megaræans, who left their alliance for ours; the Megaræans, whom we defended against the Corinthians, and whose walls we constructed at our own expense from Megara to Nisæa. Is it on the constancy or on the gratitude of this people that Lacedæmon in her wisdom so confidently relies? No sooner had we landed in Eubæa, than intelligence was brought us that the Peloponesians were about to make an incursion into Attica, and that the Athenian garrison was murdered by the Megaraans, who already had formed a junction with the Corinthians, Sicyonians, and Epidaurians. We sailed homeward, and discomfited the Peloponesians; returned, and reduced Eubaa. A truce for thirty years was granted to Lacedæmon, restoring to her Nisæa, Calchis, Pegai, and Troezene. Five years afterward a war broke out between the Samians and Miletus. Justice and our treaties obliged us to rescue that faithful and unfortunate city from the two-fold calamity that impended over her. Many of the Samians were as earnest in imploring our assistance as the Milesians were: for, whatever might be the event of the war, they were sure of being reduced to subjection; if conquered, by a wronged and exasperated enemy; if conquerors, by the king. A rapacious and insolent oligarchy saw no other means of retaining its usurped authority, than by extending it with rigour; and were conscious that it must fall from under them unless the sceptre propped it. Honest men will never seek such aid, and free men will never endure such. There may be nations monarchal and aristocratical, where the public good is little thought of, and often impeded by restless steps toward personal or family aggrandisement. But there is no man, even among these, so barbarous and inhu man, as to be indifferent to the approbation of some one in his city beloved above all the rest, from whom the happy rush forward for admiration, the less fortunate are gratified with a tear : life, they would tell us, is well lost for either. We Athenians have loftier views, and, I will not say purer, but the same and more ardent aspirations. In the late brief war, the greater part of you here present have won immortal glory; and let us not believe that those who fell from your ranks in battle are yet insensible to the admiration and the gratitude of their countrymen. No one among us, whatever services he may have rendered to Athens, has received such praises, such benedictions, such imperishable rewards, as they have. Happy men! they are beyond the reach of calumny and reverses. There is only one sad reflection resting with them: they can serve their country no more. How high was the value of their lives! they knew it, and bartered them for renown. We, in this war unjustly waged against us, shall be exposed to fewer dangers, but more privations. In the endurance of these, our manliness will be put severely to the proof, and virtues which have not been called forth in fifty years, virtues which our enemies seem to have forgotten that we possess, must again come into action, as if under the eyes of a Themistocles and an Aristides. We have all done much; but we have all done less than we can do, ought to do, and will do. Archidamos, king of Sparta, now about to march against us, is bound to me by the laws of hospitality. Should he, whether in remembrance of these, or in the design of rendering me suspected, abstain from inflicting on my possessions the violence he is about to inflict on the rest of Attica, let it be understood that henceforth I have no private property in this land, but, in the presence of the Gods, make a free donation of it to the commonwealth. Let all withdraw their cattle, corn, and other effects, from the country, and hold Athens as one great citadel, from which the Deity who presides over her hath forbidden us to descend. CLVIII. ORATION OF PERICLES, On the approach of the Lacedæmonians to Athens. Long ago, and lately, and in every age intervening, O Athenians! have you experienced the jealousy and insolence of Lacedæmon. She listens now to the complaints of Corinth, because the people of Corcyra will endure no longer her vexations, and because their navy, in which the greater part of the mariners have fought and conquered by the side of ours, seek refuge in the Pireus. A little while ago she dared to insist that we should admit the ships of Megara to our harbour, her merchandise to our markets, when Megara had broken her faith with us, and gone over to the Spartans. Even this indignity we might perhaps have endured. We told the Lacedæmonians that we would admit the Megaræans to that privilege, if the ports of Sparta would ad mit us and our allies: although we and our allies | Impelled by the breath of Xerxes, the locusts of were never in such relationship with her, and therefore could never have fallen off from her. She disdained to listen to a proposal so reasonable, to a concession so little to be expected from us. Resolved to prove to her that generosity, and not fear, dictated it, we chastised the perfidious Megara. Asia consumed your harvests; your habitations crumbled away as they swarmed along: the temples of the Gods lay prostrate; the Gods them selves bowed and fell: the men of Athens rose higher than ever. They had turned their faces in grief from the scene of devastation and impiety; but they listened to a provident valour, and the myriads of insects that had plagued them were consumed. There is affront in exhortation. I have spoken. CLIX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE. On the shore overlooking the fountain of Arethusa there is a statue of Eschylus. An Athenian who went to visit it, crowned it with bay and ivy, and wrote these verses at the base. Stranger! Athenian hands adorn A bard thou knowest well. You remember the story of a barbarous king, TO LYSIS. A curse upon the king of old Who would have kidnapp'd all the Muses! Whether to barter them for gold Or keep them for his proper uses. The king of the Lacedæmonians, Archidamos, a wiser and honester man than any of his people, is forced to obey the passions he would control; and an army of sixty thousand men is marching under his command to ravage Attica. The braver will rather burn their harvests than transfer to a sanguinary and insatiable enemy the means of inflicting evil on their relatives and friends. Few, I trust, are base enough, sacrilegious enough, to treat as guests, those whom you before men and Gods denounce as enemies. We will receive within our walls the firm and faithful. And now let the orators who have blamed our expenditure in the fortification of the city, tell us again that it was improvident. They would be flying in dismay had not those bulwarks been raised effectually. Did it require any sagacity to foresee that Athens would be the envy of every state around? Was there any man so ignorant as not to know that he who has lost all his enemies will soon lose all his energy? and that men are no more men when they cease to act, than rivers are rivers when they cease to run? The forces of our assailants must be broken against our walls. Our fleets are our farms henceforward, until the Spartans find that, if they can subsist on little, they can not so well subsist on stones and ashes. Their forces are vast; but vast forces have never much hurt us. Marathon and Platea were scarcely wide enough for our trophies; a victorious army, an unvanquished fleet, Miltiades himself, retired unsuccessful from the rock of Paros. Do not call me sly and perfidious, if, after Shall we tremble then before a tumultuous multi-tickling you with this feather, I have not only tude, ignorant how cities are defended or assailed? Shall we prevent them from coming to their discomfiture and destruction? Firmly do I believe that the Protectress of our city leads them against it to avenge her cause. They may ravage the lands; they can not cultivate, they can not hold them. Mischief they will do, and great; much of our time, much of our patience, much of our perseverance, and something of our courage, are required. At present I do not number this event among our happiest. We must owe our glory partly to ourselves and partly to our enemies. They offer us the means of greatness; let us accept their offer. Brief danger is the price of long security. The countryman, from the mists of the morning, not only foretells the brightness of the day, but discerns in them sources of fertility; and he remembers in his supplications to the immortal Gods to thank them alike for both blessings. It is thus, O men of Athens, that you have constantly looked up at calamities. Never have they depressed you always have they chastened your After an interval of nearly three years, Comedy hearts, always have they exalted your courage. may re-appear on the stage. It is reported that Lysis aware he meant them ill, permitted a wicked thought to enter my head, but A fragrance of the wine Is there; may these be mine! What said I? empty kisses? none are empty. That graceful feast from every grief exempt ye! And now I have written them fairly out, I am afraid of sending them: for I remember that if ever I uttered such a word as kiss, you wondered at me. Really and truly it was as far from wonder as any thing could be, and so it will be now; but it was very near a slight displeasure, which now it must not be. CLX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE. |