Pericles obtained this indulgence from the archons; | knowing him, few can love him. The calculation and in consequence of it he is now represented by of Diopeithes is correct: they who love him are the dramatists as a Jupiter, who lightens and but those few. They however who esteem and thunders, and what not. Before he became a reverence him can only be numbered by him who Jupiter, I believe he was represented as the enemy possesses a register of all the wise and all the of that God, and most of the others; and the virtuous men in Greece." people having no public amusement, no diversion to carry off their ill-humours, listened gloomily to such discourses. Pericles noted it, and turned them into their fold again, and had them piped to; but not before the fly entered the fleece. CLXI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE. Twenty days, O Cleone, twenty days are not elapsed, since Anaxagoras told me that he was about to leave Attica for the Propontis. I urged him to alter his resolution. He affirmed that his presence in the house of Pericles had brought a cloud over it, which would only disappear by his absence. "Of late" said he "I have received so much kindness from the philosophers, that I begin to suspect a change of fortune, by no means in my favour. I must fly while the weather is temperate, as the swallows do." He mixes not with the people, he converses with none of them, and yet he appears to have penetrated into the deepest and darkest recesses of their souls. Pericles has lost their favour; Anaxagoras is banished; Aspasia . . but what is Aspasia? Yours; and therefore you must hear about her. We have all been accused of impiety; Anaxagoras and myself have been brought to trial for the offence. Diopeithes is the name of our accuser. He began with Anaxagoras; and having proved by three witnesses that he in their hearing had declared his opinion, that lightning and thunder were the effect of some combustion and concussion in the clouds, and that they often happened when Jupiter was in perfectly good-humour, not thinking at all about the Athenians, there was instantly such a rage and consternation in the whole assembly, that the judges were called upon from every quarter to condemn him for impiety; sentence, death. Pericles rose. He for the first time in his life was silenced by the clamorous indignation of the people. All parties, all classes, men, women, children, priests, sailors, tavern-keepers, diviners, slave-merchants, threatened, raved, foamed. "Pericles! you yourself will soon be cited before this august tribunal" said Diopeithes. The clamour now began to subside. Curiosity, wonder, apprehension of consequences, divided the assembly; and, when Pericles lifted up his arm, the agitation, the murmurs, and the whispers, ceased. "O men of Athens!" said he calmly "I wish it had pleased the Gods that the vengeance of Diopeithes had taken its first aim against me, whom you have heard so often, known so long, and trusted so implicitly. But Diopeithes hath skulked from his ambush and seized upon the unsuspecting Anaxagoras, in the hope that, few Anaxagoras stepped forward, saying, "You, O Athenians! want defenders, and will want them more: I look for protection to no mortal arm; I look for it to that divine power, the existence of which my accuser tells you I deny." "He shirks the thunder" said one. "He sticks to the blind side of Jupiter" said another. Such were the observations of the pious and malicious, who thought to expiate all their sins by throwing them on his shoulders, and driving him out of the city. He was condemned by a majority of voices. Pericles followed him through the gates, beyond the fury of his persecutors. CLXII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE. Three days after the banishment of Anaxagoras, the threat of Diopeithes was carried into effect; not against the person of Pericles, but against your Aspasia. Diopeithes had himself denounced me, on the same count as Anaxagoras: and Hermippos, whose entire life has been (they tell me) one sluggish stream of gross impurities, impeached me as a corruptress of the public morals. You will imagine, my Cleone, that something loose and lascivious was brought forward in accusation against me. No such thing. Nothing of the kind is considered as having any concern with public morals here in Athens. My crime was, seducing young men from their parents and friends; retaining them in conversation at our house; encouraging them to study the sciences in preference to the machinations of sophists; to leave the declaimers an empty room for the benefit of their voices, and to adhere more closely to logic before they venture upon rhetoric. You will now perceive, that all who have the most interest and the most exercise in the various artifices of deception, were my enemies. I feared lest Pericles should run further into the danger of losing his popularity by undertaking my defence, and resolved to be my own pleader. The hour had been appointed for opening the trial: I told him it was one hour later. When it was nearly at hand, I went out of the house unobserved, and took my place before the assembly of the people. My words were these. "If any of the accusations brought against me were well-founded, they would have been known to Pericles. It would be strange were he indifferent to any offence of mine against the laws, especially such as you accuse me of, unless he is, as the accusation would imply, insensible to honour, propriety, and decency. Is this his character? He never has had an enemy bold and false enough to say it: I wonder at this; yet he never has." The people, who had been silent, now began to favour me, when Diopeithes asked me, whether I could deny my conversations with Anaxagoras, and my adherence to his tenets. Love of truth, pity for Anaxagoras, and pride (it may be) in the strength of mind he had given me, and in the rejection of unworthy notions on the Gods, urged me to say, "I deny no conversation I ever had with him, no tenet I ever received, no duty I ever learnt from him. He taught me veneration for the Gods; and I pray them to render me grateful for it." Pericles at this moment stood at my side. Indignation that he should have followed Anaxagoras out of the gates, and should have embraced him affectionately at parting, turned many furious faces, furious cries, and furious gestures against him. He looked round disdainfully, and said aloud, "Respect the laws and the unfortunate, you who revere the Gods! "It was not the condemned man I followed out of the city it was age, which would have sunk under blows; it was rectitude, which feared not death; it was friendship, which if I can not make you esteem, I will not implore you to pardon. "At last, O Athenians! my enemies and yours have persuaded you to assemble in this place, and to witness the humiliation and affliction of one who never failed to succour the unfortunate, and who has been the solace of my existence many years. Am I, of all in Athens, the man who should mistake crimes for virtues: the man pointed out from among the rest as the most insensible to his dignity? How widely then have you erred in calling me to your counsels! how long, how wilfully, how pertinaciously! Is it not easier to believe that two or three are mistaken now, than that you all, together with your fathers and best friends, whose natal days and days of departure from us, you still keep holy, have been always so?" Hermippos and Diopeithes, seeing that many were moved, interrupted him furiously. "O Pericles!" cried Hermippos, "we are aware that this woman of Ionia, this Milesian, this Aspasia, entertains the same opinions as yourself." "Highly criminal!" answered Pericles, with a smile; "I hope no other Athenian is cursed with a wife liable to so grievous an accusation." "Answer that' first, O sacrilegious man!" exclaimed Diopeithes. "Athenians!" said Pericles, "many of you here present were with me in the expedition. Do assure Diopeithes that it was not my mantle which darkened the sea and sun, that to your certain knowledge both sun and sea were dark before I took it off. So that the Gods, if they were angry at all, were angry earlier in the day. And not only did the sun shine out again, bright and serene as ever, but the winds were favourable, the voyage prosperous, the expedition successful. "It appears to me that the Gods are the most angry when they permit the malicious and the false to prevail over the generous and simplehearted; when they permit the best affections to be violated, and the worst to rise up in disorder to our ruin. Nor do I believe that they are very well pleased at hearing their actions and motives called in question; or at winks and intimations that they want discernment to find out offenders, and power and justice to punish them." "In spite of philosophers" cried Diopeithes we still have our Gods in Athens." "And our men too" replied he "or these before me must only be the shadows of those who, but lately under my command, won eternal renown in Samos." Tears rose into his eyes: they were for me; but he said in a low voice, audible however in the silence that had succeeded to a loud and almost universal acclamation, "At least for our lost comrades a few tears are not forbidden us.” The people struck their breasts: the judges unanimously acquitted me, surrounded Pericles, and followed us home with enthusiastical congratulations. CLXIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE. Never did our house receive so my visitors as on my acquittal. Not only our friends and acquaintances, but every one who had fought under Pericles, came forward to offer his felicitations and his services. I was forgotten.. the danger, the insult, seemed his. When they had all retired to dinner, he too left me with my music and I did not see him again until late the next morning. It was evident he had slept but little. He came up to me, and pressing my hand, said, 'Aspasia ! I have gained a great victory; the greatest, the most glorious, and the only one not subject to a reverse." I thought his words related to his defence of me: I was mistaken. "Scoffer!" cried Diopeithes; "dare you deny that in the summer of this very year, when you were sailing to lay waste the coasts of the Peloponese, you attempted to pervert the religion of the sailors? The sun was suddenly bedimmed: darkness came over the sea, as far even as unto our city! the pilot fell upon his face and prayed: and did not you, O Pericles! raise him up with one hand, and, throwing your mantle over his "It was yesterday, for the first time" said he eyes with the other, ask whether he found any-"that I knew the extent of my power. I could thing dreadful in it! And when he answered in have demolished the houses of my adversaries; I is piety, 'It is not that,' did not you reply, could have exiled them from the city; I could "The other darkness is no otherwise different have been their master: I am more; I am my own. than in its greater extent, and produced by somewhat larger than my mantle?'" "Proceed to interrogate" said Pericles. "Great injuries create great power; no feeble virtues are necessary to its rejection. In polity" continued he "the humble may rise, but not the fallen. States live but once. Had I no Aspasia, | no children, I am ignorant what support I could have found against the impulses of ambition. Many who seize upon kingly power, are the more desirous of possessing it because they have sons to succeed them. Imprudent men! they expose those sons to infinite dangers, and create no new advantages for them. If they provided for their security, they would abdicate their power, when about to be taken away by death from those over whom they exercised it. If they provided for their glory, they would not subject them to the reproach, always merited, of possessing less activity and sagacity than their father. Do they care about their wisdom or their virtue? they will not cast them among idlers and sycophants, nor abandon them on a solitary island, where many sing and none discourse. What life is wretcheder? what state more abject?" "Yours, my dear Pericles!" said I "is far happier, but by no means enviable." "True!" answered he: "I am subject to threats, curses, denunciations, ostracism, and hemlock: but I glory in the glory of the state, and I know that I can maintain it." CLXIV. ASPASIA TO PERICLES. I would not disturb you, my beloved Pericles! but let not anything else! Why are you so busy now the danger is over? why do so many come to you, with countenances so earnest when they enter, and so different from composed when they go away? You never break your resolutions, otherwise I should fear they might lead you above the place of fellow citizen. Then farewell happiness, farewell manliness, security, sincerity, affection, honour! O Pericles! descend from the car of Victory on the course itself. In abandoning power and station, what do you abandon but inquietude and ingratitude? CLXV. PERICLES TO ASPASIA. We never alight from a carriage while it is going down a hill, but always at the top or at the bottom. There is less danger in being shaken out than there is in leaping out. Were I at this juncture to abdicate my authority, I should appear to the people to confess a fault, I was listening with attention, when he said to and to myself to commit one. me with an air of playfulness, "Am I not a boaster? am I not proud of my command? am I not over-fond of it, when I am resolved not to transmit it hereditarily to another?" "Rightly judged! dear Pericles!" said I: "you always act judiciously and kindly." "Political men, like goats," continued he, "usually thrive best among inequalities. I have chosen the meadow; and not on the whole imprudently. My life has been employed in making it more pleasurable, more even, more productive. The shepherds have often quarrelled with me; and but now the sheep too, in their wisdom, turned their heads against me." I must defend those who would have defended me. Rely on my firmness in all things; on Pericles, one, immutable. CLXVI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE. Alcibiades will one time or other bring us all into peril by his recklessness and precipitation. When he heard I was arraigned and Pericles threatened, he ran from house to house among the officers of the army, embraced them, knelt before them, adjured them to save their general from ignominy, his wife from insult, the city from mourning, and themselves from inactivity. We went into the air, and saw Alcibiades walk- He swore that if they would not, he would: that ing in the garden. He, not observing us, strode two thousand of the same age, or rather older, along rapidly, striking with his cane every tree would join him and obey him, and that he would in the alley. When we came up nearer, he was throw judges, accusers, applauders, listeners, over repeating, the Piræus. Not a soldier did he pass without "The fanatical knaves! I would knock the a kiss, without a pressure of the hand, without heads off all their Mercuries. “Noisy demagogues! I would lead them into the midst of the enemy. . I would drag them on by the ears.. not fifty should return. They in their audacity, impeach Aspasia! they bring tears into the eyes of Pericles! I will bring more into theirs, by holy Jupiter!" He started at our approach. My husband laid his hands upon the youth's shoulder, and said to him, a promise; not a girl in Athens that was not his sister, not a matron that was not his mother. Within an hour, in every part of the city there were cries, "The Lacedæmonians have none of these rogues among them." "No accusers there: no judges there." "Archidamos is wise; Pericles is wiser: shall the one be a king, the other a culprit?" "Shall his war-horse" cried a soldier "carry panniers?” "Fore-foot and hind-foot say I" cried another, "against these market-place swine, these blackmuzzled asses!" "Out upon them! what have they won for us?" cried another. "And what have we not won for them?" roared the next. "What was all the stir about?" asked one more quiet. "They dared to accuse our General of denying their dues to the Gods. Liars! he gives every man his due." A laugh arose. "No laughing here! I uphold it, we soldiers can take as good care of the Gods as they can. Who believes they ever were in danger? Pericles might have cracked them by the dozen: he has left them all standing; not a head missing. Save him, comrades, from the cowards, the poisoners." On all sides of the city the soldiers ran to their officers, and then toward the house of Pericles. It was with difficulty he could dissuade them from their resolution to confer upon him the same authority and station as Archidamos holds among the Spartans. "We shall then meet the enemy upon equal terms," said they; "ay, more than equal; affability for moroseness, liberality for parsimony." The greater part of the citizens would have followed; the turbulent for change, the peaceable for tranquillity. My husband has allayed the tempest: his ambition is higher. Nothing can be taken from the name of Pericles, and what is added to it must be of baser metal. youth, I ought to regret my vanity. I had not enough of it for a robe, but I had enough for a vest; enough to keep me warm and comfortable. Not a remnant have I now. Why be ashamed of our worthy party? Did I espouse it for its virtues? Was it ever in high repute for its fidelity? What is it to me whether a couple or two of housed pards bite one another's tails off or not, excepting that they lie down the quieter for it afterward? They have still heads and necks to be led along by. We have only to walk up to them firmly, to look at them steadily, speak to them boldly, lay the hand upon them confidently as their masters, and grasp them with a tenacity that neither relaxes nor hurts. He who does this, and there are some who can do it, may go forth and catch other beasts with them, and feast all his friends in the city. CLXX. ASPASIA TO PERICLES. There is irritation in your irony, O Pericles! your spirit is not at rest. Unworthily, for the first time since I knew you, have you thought and spoken! Thought! no, Pericles! passion is not thought. Contumely has produced this bitterness; it left you with the words. CLXVII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE. The poet Hermippos will be remembered for the malignity of his accusation against me, when all the poetry he has ever written, even the worst of it, is forgotten. At what a price would many men purchase the silence of futurity! Hermippos will procure it reasonably, excepting two memorable words, Prosecutor of Aspasia. Such people show me only the more clearly to the world, by throwing their torches at me. Pallas hath whispered in my ear, both dreaming and awake, that distant times shall recognise me, never perhaps alone, but sometimes by the side of Pericles, aud sometimes on the bosom of Cleone. CLXVIII. ASPASIA TO PERICLES. What but the late outrages, or rather, what but the ascendancy you have obtained in consequence, could have brought the aristocratical party to offer you their services, in helping to keep down the ferocity of the populace? It might indeed be well to unite them, were it possible; but not being possible, I would rather place the more confidence in the less ignorant and turbulent. CLXIX. PERICLES TO ASPASIA. Aspasia! as you are cautious not to look ear nestly at a handsome man, but rather turn your eyes another way, so must I do in regard to Aristocracy. It is not proper that I should discover any charms in her. Among the losses I sustained by the flight of CLXXI. PERICLES TO ASPASIA. Aspasia! you have looked into my heart, and purified it. Your indignities sometimes rise up before me; and it is only when I am prompted to do wrong by others, that I recover all my firmness. Athens has a right to my solicitude and devotion. I will forget no favour she has ever shown me, and remember no enmity. CLXXII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE. Peace is at all times a blessing; and war, even the most prosperous, a curse. In war extremely few of men's desires are gratified, and those the most hateful; in peace many, and those the kindliest. Were it possible to limit the duration of hostilities, the most adverse nations, in the enjoy ment of a long security, would find time enough for the cultivation of the social affections, and for the interchange of hospitality and other friendly offices. As some bodily diseases, if they can only be deferred for a certain time, terminate altogether, so might the worst of social diseases, war. I do not much wonder that no statesman ever upheld this truth: but I do greatly that it is to be found among the tenets of no philosopher. We women, who are liable to the worst outrages, and are framed by nature to the greatest susceptibility of fears, usually love war the most, until it enters our houses. We are delighted at the sound and at the spectacle from afar; and no music is more pleasing to our ears than that which is the prelude to the cries of agony and death. The Spartans are now ravaging all the country round about us. Will they never let me visit their celebrated city? Must I never fancy I am a by the attempt. Age is coming on. This will Helen while I am bathing in the Eurotas or the not loosen his tenacity of power. . it usually has Tiasa? I am curious to see their Skeias,* and to quite the contrary effect. . but it will induce him compare it with our Hecatompedon. It would to give up more of his time to the studies he has interest me the more, because in this edifice the always delighted in, which however were insuflyre of our countryman Timotheus is suspended. ficient for the full activity of his mind. Mine is It was forfeited, you know, for his having added a sluggard: I have surrendered it entirely to phifour strings. Woe betide those improvident crea-losophy, and it has made little or no progress: it tures who add anything to our delights! But has dwelt pleased with hardly anything it has emsurely poor Timotheus must have fallen among braced, and has often run back again from fond the poets. prepossessions to startling doubts: it could not help it. CLXXIII. ASPASIA TO PERICLES. When the war is over, as surely it must be in another year, let us sail among the islands of the Ægæan, and be young as ever. O that it were permitted us to pass together the remainder of our lives in privacy and retirement! This is never to be hoped for in Athens. I inherit from my mother a small yet beautiful house in Tenos: I remember it well. Water, clear and cold, ran before the vestibule: a sycamore shaded the whole building. I think Tenos must be nearer to Athens than to Miletus. Could we not go now for a few days? How temperate was the air, how serene the sky, how beautiful the country! the people how quiet, how gentle, how kind-hearted! Is there any station so happy as an uncontested place in a small community, where manners are simple, where wants are few, where respect is the tribute of probity, and love is the guerdon of beneficence. O Pericles! let us go; we can return at any time. CLXXIV. ANAXAGORAS TO ASPASIA. The gratitude and love I owe to Pericles induces me to write the very day I have landed at Lampsacos. You are prudent, Aspasia! and your prudence is of the best quality; instinctive delicacy. But I am older than you, or than Pericles, although than Pericles by only six years; and, having no other pretext to counsel you, will rest upon this. Do not press him to abstain from public business: for, supposing he is by nature no obstinate man, yet the long possession of authority has accustomed him to grasp the tighter what is touched; as shell-fish contract the claws at an atom. The simile is not an elegant one, but I offer it as the most apposite. He might believe that you fear for him, and that you wish him to fear this alone would make him pertinacious. Let everything take its season with him. Perhaps it is necessary that he should control the multitude: if it is, he will know it; even you could not stir him, and would only molest him But as we sometimes find one thing while we are looking for another, so, if truth escaped me, happiness and contentment fell in my way, and have accompanied me even to Lampsacos. Be cautious, O Aspasia ! of discoursing on philosophy. Is it not in philosophy as in love? the more we have of it, and the less we talk about it, the better. Never touch upon religion with anybody. The irreligious are incurable and insensible; the religious are morbid and irritable: the former would scorn, the latter would strangle you. It appears to me to be not only a dangerous, but, what is worse, an indelicate thing, to place ourselves where we are likely to see fevers and phrenzies, writhings and distortions, debilities and deformities. Religion at Athens is like a fountain near Dodona, which extinguishes a lighted torch, and which gives a flame of its own to an unlighted one held down to it. Keep yours in your chamber; and let the people run about with theirs; but remember, it is rather apt to catch the skirts. Believe me, I am happy: I am not deprived of my friends. Imagination is little less strong in our later years than in our earlier. True, it alights on fewer objects, but it rests longer on them, and sees them better. cles first, and then you, and then Meton, occupy my thoughts. I am with you still; I study with you, just as before, although nobody talks aloud in the schoolroom. Peri This is the pleasantest part of life. Oblivion throws her light coverlet over our infancy; and, soon after we are out of the cradle we forget how soundly we had been slumbering, and how delightful were our dreams. Toil and pleasure contend for us almost the instant we rise from it: and weariness follows whichever has carried us away. We stop awhile, look around us, wonder to find we have completed the circle of existence, fold our arms, and fall asleep again. CLXXV. ANAXAGORAS TO ASPASIA. Proxenos, a native of Massilia, is lately come over to visit his relations and correspondents. The Phocæans, you know, were the founders of Lampsacos, long before they were driven by the * "It was of a circular form, with a roof like an um- invasion of Cyrus into Italy and Gaul. Like the brella, and erected about 760 years B. C." St. John's generality of mercantile men, Proxenos is little Ancient Greece. The most learned, the most compre-attached to any system of philosophy, but appears hensive, and the most judicious work ever written about the manners, the institutions, and the localities of to hold in some esteem the name and institutions that country. of Pythagoras. Formerly we have conversed |