The Historians' History of the World 03

“Such is the city on behalf of which these warriors have nobly died in battle, vindicating her just title to unimpaired rights—and on behalf of which all of us here left behind must willingly toil. It is for this reason that I have spoken at length concerning the city, at once to draw from it the lesson that the conflict is not for equal motives between us and enemies who possess nothing of the like excellence—and to demonstrate by proofs the truth of my encomium pronounced upon her.”

Pericles pursues at considerable additional length the same tenor of mixed exhortation to the living and eulogy of the dead; with many special and emphatic observations addressed to the relatives of the latter, who were assembled around and doubtless very near him. But the extract which we have already made is so long, that no further addition would be admissible: yet it was impossible to pass over lightly the picture of the Athenian commonwealth in its glory, as delivered by the ablest citizen of the age. The effect of the democratical constitution, with its diffused and equal citizenship, in calling forth not merely strong attachment, but painful self sacrifice, on the part of all Athenians—is nowhere more forcibly insisted upon than in the words above cited of Pericles, as well as in others afterwards. “Contemplating as you do daily before you the actual power of the state, and becoming passionately attached to it, when you conceive its full greatness, reflect that it was all acquired by men daring, acquainted with their duty, and full of an honourable sense of shame in their actions”—such is the association which he presents between the greatness of the state as an object of common passion, and the courage, intelligence, and mutual esteem, of individual citizens, as its creating and preserving causes; poor as well as rich being alike interested in the partnership.

But the claims of patriotism, though put forward as essentially and deservedly paramount, are by no means understood to reign exclusively, or to absorb the whole of the democratical activity. Subject to these, and to those laws and sanctions which protect both the public and individuals against wrong, it is the pride of Athens to exhibit a rich and varied fund of human impulse—an unrestrained play of fancy and diversity of private pursuit coupled with a reciprocity of cheerful indulgence between one individual and another—and an absence even of those “black looks” which so much embitter life, even if they never pass into enmity of fact. This portion of the speech of Pericles deserves particular attention, because it serves to correct an assertion, often far too indiscriminately made, respecting antiquity as contrasted with modern societies—an assertion that the ancient societies sacrificed the individual to the state, and that only in modern times has individual agency been left free to the proper extent. This is preeminently true of Sparta—it is also true in a great degree of the ideal societies depicted by Plato and Aristotle: but it is pointedly untrue of the Athenian democracy, nor can we with any confidence predicate it of the major part of the Grecian cities.