The Historians' History of the World 03

The fourteen years between the Thirty Years’ Truce and the breaking out of the Peloponnesian War, are a period of full maritime empire on the part of Athens—partially indeed resisted, but never with success. They are a period of peace with all cities extraneous to her own empire; and of splendid decorations to the city itself, emanating from the genius of Phidias and others, in sculpture as well as in architecture. Since the death of Cimon, Pericles had become, gradually but entirely, the first citizen in the commonwealth. His qualities told for more, the longer they were known, and even the disastrous reverses which preceded the Thirty Years’ Truce had not overthrown him, since he had protested against that expedition of Tolmides into Bœotia out of which they first arose. But if the personal influence of Pericles had increased, the party opposed to him seems also to have become stronger than before; and to have acquired a leader in many respects more effective than Cimon—Thucydides, son of Melesias.

The new chief was a relative of Cimon, but of a character and talents more analogous to those of Pericles: a statesman and orator rather than a general, though competent to both functions if occasion demanded, as every leading man in those days was required to be. Under Thucydides, the political and parliamentary opposition against Pericles assumed a constant character and organisation such as Cimon, with his exclusively military aptitudes, had never been able to establish. The aristocratical party in the commonwealth—the “honourable and respectable” citizens, as we find them styled, adopting their own nomenclature—now imposed upon themselves the obligation of undeviating regularity in their attendance on the public assembly, sitting together in a particular section, so as to be conspicuously parted from the demos. In this manner, their applause and dissent, their mutual encouragement to each other, their distribution of parts to different speakers, was made more conducive to the party purposes than it had been before when these distinguished persons were intermingled with the mass of citizens. Thucydides himself was eminent as a speaker, inferior only to Pericles—perhaps hardly inferior even to him.

Such an opposition made to Pericles, in all the full license which a democratical constitution permitted, must have been both efficient and embarrassing. But the pointed severance of the aristocratical chiefs, which Thucydides, son of Melesias, introduced, contributed probably at once to rally the democratical majority round Pericles, and to exasperate the bitterness of party conflict. As far as we can make out the grounds of the opposition, it turned partly upon the pacific policy of Pericles towards the Persians, partly upon his expenditure for home ornament. Thucydides contended that Athens was disgraced in the eyes of the Greeks by having drawn the confederate treasure from Delos to her own Acropolis, under pretence of greater security—and then employing it, not in prosecuting war against the Persians, but in beautifying Athens by new temples and costly statues. To this Pericles replied that Athens had undertaken the obligation, in consideration of the tribute-money, to protect her allies and keep off from them every foreign enemy,—that she had accomplished this object completely at the present, and retained a reserve sufficient to guarantee the like security for the future,—that under such circumstances she owed no account to her allies of the expenditure of the surplus, but was at liberty to employ it for purposes useful and honourable to the city. In this point of view it was an object of great public importance to render Athens imposing in the eyes both of the allies and of Hellas generally, by improved fortifications,—by accumulated embellishment, sculptural and architectural,—and by religious festivals, frequent, splendid, musical, and poetical.

Such was the answer made by Pericles in defence of his policy against the opposition headed by Thucydides. And considering the ground of the debate on both sides, the answer was perfectly satisfactory. For when we look at the very large sum which Pericles continually kept in reserve in the treasury, no one could reasonably complain that his expenditure for ornamental purposes was carried so far as to encroach upon the exigencies of defence. What Thucydides and his partisans appear to have urged, was that this common fund should still continue to be spent in aggressive warfare against the Persian king, in Egypt and elsewhere—conformably to the projects pursued by Cimon during his life. But Pericles was right in contending that such outlay would have been simply wasteful; of no use either to Athens or her allies, though risking all the chances of distant defeat, such as had been experienced a few years before in Egypt.