The Historians' History of the World 03

The public works which were undertaken through the advice of Pericles were executed under his inspection; the choice of the artists employed and of the plans adopted, was probably entrusted in a great measure to his judgment; and the large sums expended on them passed through his hands. This was an office which it was scarcely possible to exercise at Athens without either exciting suspicion or giving a handle for calumny. We find that Cratinus in one of his comedies threw out some hints as to the tardiness with which Pericles carried on the third of the Long Walls which he had persuaded the people to begin. “He had been long professing to go on with it, but in fact did not stir a step.” Whether the motives to which this delay was imputed were such as to call his integrity into question, does not appear; but in time his enemies ventured openly to attack him on this ground. Yet the first blow was not aimed directly at himself, but was intended to wound him through the side of a friend. Phidias, whose genius was the ruling principle which animated and controlled every design for the ornament of the city, had been brought, as well by conformity of taste as by the nature of his engagement, into an intimate relation with Pericles. To ruin Phidias was one of the readiest means both of hurting the feelings and of shaking the credit of Pericles. If Phidias could be convicted of a fraud on the public, it would seem an unavoidable inference that Pericles had shared the profit. The ivory statue of the goddess in the Parthenon, which was enriched with massy ornaments of pure gold, appeared to offer a groundwork for a charge which could not easily be refuted. To give it the greater weight, a man named Menon, who had been employed by Phidias in some of the details of the work, was induced to seat himself in the agora with the ensigns of a suppliant, and to implore pardon of the people as the condition of revealing an offence in which he had been an accomplice with Phidias. He accused Phidias of having embezzled a part of the gold which he had received from the treasury. But this charge immediately fell to the ground through a contrivance which Pericles had adopted for a different end. The golden ornaments had been fixed on the statue in such a manner, that they could be taken off without doing it any injury, and thus afforded the means of ascertaining their exact weight. Pericles challenged the accusers of Phidias to use this opportunity of verifying their charge; but they shrank from the application of this decisive test.

Though however they were thus baffled in this part of their attempt, they were not abashed or deterred; for they had discovered another ground, which gave them a surer hold on the public mind. Some keen eye had observed two figures among those with which Phidias had represented the battle between Theseus and the Amazons on the shield of the goddess, in which it detected the portraits of the artist himself, as a bald old man, and that of Pericles in all the comeliness of his graceful person. To the religious feelings of the Athenians this mode of perpetuating the memory of individuals, by connecting their portraits with an object of public worship, appeared to violate the sanctity of the place; and it was probably also viewed as an arrogant intrusion, no less offensive to the majesty of the commonwealth. It seems as if Menon’s evidence was required even to support this charge. Phidias was committed to prison, and died there. The informer, who was a foreigner, was rewarded with certain immunities; and, as one who in the service of the state had provoked a powerful enemy, was placed by a formal decree under the protection of the Ten Generals.

ASPASIA AT THE BAR

This success emboldened the enemies of Pericles to proceed. They had not indeed established any of their accusations; but they had sounded the disposition of the people, and found that it might be inspired with distrust and jealousy of its powerful minister, or that it was not unwilling to see him humbled. They seem now to have concerted a plan for attacking him, both directly and indirectly, in several quarters at once; and they began with a person in whose safety he felt as much concern as in his own, and who could not be ruined without involving him in the like calamity.