sadors to you, O men of Athens! not entreating nor lime for ants. We know that good writers are often gratified by the commendation of bad ones; and that even when the learned and intelligent have brought the materials to crown their merits, they have looked toward the door at some petulant smirking page, for the thread that was to bind the chaplet. Little do I wish to hear what I am, much less what I am not. Enough for me to feel the consciousness and effect of health and strength: surely it is better than to be told by those who salute me, that I am looking very well. "You may reply that the question turns not upon compliments, but upon censure. Samos, O Athenians, has dared to declare war against the people of Miletus. She envies us our commerce, and, unable to find a plea for assailing us, strikes our friend in our sight, and looks impudently in our faces to see whether we will re-write, never having had the advantage of reading sent it. No, Athenians, we will not resent it, until we have sent embassadors, to ask her why she has taken up arms against the peaceful and unoffending? It were well were it permitted us to abstain. Yes, I feel I am hazarding your favour by recommending delay and procrastination: but I do not apprehend that we are losing much time. We have weapons, we have ships, we have the same soldiers who quelled braver enemies. The vanquished seem again to be filling up the ranks we have thinned. They murmur, they threaten, they conspire, they prepare (and preparation denounces it) hostility. Let them come forth against us. Wealth rises up to our succour in that harbour: Glory stands firm and bids them defiance on those walls. Wait, wait! twenty days only. Ten. Not ten? Little becomes it me, O Athenians! to oppose your wishes or to abate your ardour. Depart, then, heralds! and carry with you war. CXI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE. I have asked Pericles to let me see all his speeches. He declared to me that he has kept no copies, but promised that he would attempt to recover some of them from his friends. I was disappointed and grieved, and told him I was angry with him. He answered thus, taking me by the hand. "So, you really are angry that I have been negligent in the preservation of my speeches, after all my labour in modelling and correcting them. You are anxious that I should be praised as a writer, by writers who direct the public in these matters. Aspasia! I know their value. Understand me correctly and comprehensively. I mean partly the intrinsic worth of their commendations, and partly (as we pay in the price of our utensils) the fashion. I have been accused of squandering away both the public money and my own: nobody shall ever accuse me of paying three obols for the most grandly embossed and most sonorous panegyric. I would excite the pleasure (it were too much to say the admiration) of judicious and thoughtful men; but I would neither soothe nor irritate these busybodies. I have neither honey "Really I know not what my censurers may their lucubrations; all I know is this; if I am not their Pericles, I am at least the Pericles of Aspasia and the Athenians." Pericles enjoyed equally the simplicity of Meton and the slyness of Anaxagoras, and said, "Meton! our friend Anaxagoras is so modest a man, that the least we can do for him is to acknowledge his claims as heir general to Hesiod: see them registered." I have never observed the temper of Pericles either above or below the enjoyment of a joke; he invites and retaliates, but never begins, lest he should appear to take a liberty. There are proud men of so much delicacy that it almost conceals their pride, and perfectly excuses it. Meton never talks, but answers questions with great politeness, although with less clearness and precision than you would expect. I remarked to him, one evening, that mathematicians had great advantages over others in disputation, from the habitude they had acquired of exactness in solving their problems. "We mathematicians," answered he, "lay claim to this precision. I need not mention to you, Aspasia, that of all the people who assemble at your house, I am the only one that ever wants a thought or word. We are exact in our own proper workmanship. Give us time, and we can discover what is false in logic; but I never was acquainted with a mathematician who was ready at correcting in himself a flaw of ratiocination, or who produced the fitting thing in any moderate time. Composition is quite beyond our sphere. I am not envious of others; but I often regret in my self that, while they are delivering their opinions freely and easily, I am arranging mine; and that, in common with all the mathematicians of my acquaintance, I am no prompt debater, no acute logician, no clear expositor, but begin in hesitation and finish in confusion." I assure you, Cleone, I have been obliged to give order and regularity to these few words of the wise contemplative Meton, and to remove from among them many that were superfluous and repeated. When he had paused, I told him I sometimes wished he would exercise his powerful mind in conversation. "I have hardly time," said he, "for study, much less for disputation. Rarely have I known a disputant who, however dexterous, did not either drive by Truth or over her, or who stopped to salute her, unless he had something fine or novel to display. He would stumble over my cubes and spheres, and I should leave my leg in his noose." "And yet Anaxagoras and you agree well together," said I. "Anaxagoras,” replied he, "usually asks me short questions, and helps me himself to explain them. He comes to me when I am alone, and would find no pleasure in showing to others my perplexity. Seldom do I let him go again, until he has given me some help or some incitement in my studies. He suggests many things." "Silence, good Meton!" cried Anaxagoras, "or I may begin to talk of a luminary whose light has not yet reached the earth." And seek ye now the highest good ? Philosophy does not always play fair with us. She often eludes us when she has invited us, and leaves us when she has led us the farthest way from home. Perhaps it is because we have jumped up from our seats at the first lesson she would give us, and the easiest, and the best. There are few words in the precept, Give pleasure: receive it: Avoid giving pain: avoid receiving it. For the duller scholar, who may find it difficult to learn the whole, she cuts each line in the middle, and tells him kindly that it will serve the purpose, if he will but keep it in his memory. CXIII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA. Will you never be serious, even upon the most serious occasions? There are so many Grecian states, on both continents and in the islands, that surely some could always be found both willing and proper to arbitrate on any dissension. If liti gations are decided by arbiters when two men The three men smiled: they have some meaning uncommunicated to me. Perhaps it is a remark of Pericles, in encouragement of Anaxagoras, that, while others pass before us like a half-contend (as they often are) surely it would be an obol tow-link across a dark alley, and dazzle and disappear, his loftier light has not yet come down to the intellects of his fellow-citizens; or perhaps it may really have a reference to some discovery in astronomy. Pericles goes in person to command the expedition against Samos. He promises me it will soon be ready to sail, and tells me to expect him back again within a few months. Artemon is preparing machines of great magnitude for the attack of the city. He teaches me that the Samians are brave and wealthy, and that no city is capable of such a resistance. Certainly never were such preparations. I hope at least that the report of them will detain your enemies at home, and at all events that, before they land, you will leave Miletus and come to me. The war is very popular at Athens: I dare say it is equally so at Samos, equally so at Miletus. Nothing pleases men like renewing their ancient alliance with the brutes, and breaking off the more recent one with their fellow creatures. War is it, O grave heads! that ye easier matter with cities and communities; for they are not liable to the irritation arising from violent words, nor to the hatred that springs up afresh between two men who strive for property, every time they come within sight. I believe the Greeks are the happiest people upon earth, or that ever are likely to exist upon it; and chiefly from their separation into small communities, independent governments, and laws made by the people for the people! But unless they come to the determination that no war whatever shall be undertaken until the causes of quarrel are examined, and the conditions of accommodation are proposed by others, from whom impartiality is most reasonably to be expected, they will exist without enjoying the greatest advantage that the Gods have offered them. Religious men, I foresee, will be sorry to displease the God of battles. Let him have all the kingdoms of the world to himself, but I wish he would resign to the quieter Deities our little Greece. Preparations are going on here for resistance to the Samians, and we hear that Athenian ships are cruizing off their island. In case of necessity, everything is ready for my departure to the sources of the Mæander. I will prove to you that I am not hurried nor frightened; I have leisure to write out what perhaps may be the last verses written in Miletus, unless we are to them, but because those who were born their relieved. LITTLE AGLAE, To her Father, on her Statue being called like her. When she came home the other day CXIV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE. Herodotus, on returning from his victory at the Olympian games, was the guest of Pericles. You saw him afterward; and he might have told you that Pericles was urgent with him to remain at Athens. True, as a stranger, he would have been without influence here in political affairs. It is evident that he desires no such thing, but prefers, as literary men should always do, tranquillity and retirement. These he may enjoy in perfection where he is, and write the truth intrepidly. Pericles has more than once heard from him. Life passes in no part of the world so easily and placidly as among the Grecian colonies in Italy. They rarely quarrel; they have room enough, men enough, wealth enough, and not too much. One petty tyrant has sprung up among them lately, and has imprisoned, exiled, and murdered, the best citizens. Pericles was asked his advice what should be done with him. He answered, "I never interfere in the affairs of others. It appears to me that, where you have nothing but a weazel to hunt, you should not bring many dogs into the field, nor great ones; but in fact the ratcatcher is the best counsellor on these occasions: he neither makes waste nor noise." The tyrant, we hear, is sickening, and many epitaphs are already composed for him; the shortest is, The pigmy despot Mutinas lies here; He was not godless; no; his God was Fear. Herodotus tells us, that throughout the lower Italy poverty is unknown; every town well governed, every field well ploughed, every meadow well irrigated, every vineyard pruned scientifically. The people choose their higher magistrates from the most intelligent, provided they are not needy. The only offices that are salaried are the lower, which all the citizens have an equal chance of attaining; some by lot, some by suffrage. This is the secret why the governments are peaceful and durable. No rich man can become the richer for them; every poor man may, but honestly and carefully. CXV. CLEONE TO ASPASIA. Corinna was honoured in her native place as greatly as abroad. This is the privilege of our sex. Pindar and Eschylus left their country, not because the lower orders were indifferent or unjust equals could not endure to see them rise their superiors. What a war against the Gods is this! It seems as if it were decreed by a public edict, that no one shall receive from them any gift above a certain value; and that, if they do receive it, they shall be permitted to return the Gods no thanks for it in their native city. So then! republics must produce genius, and kings reward it! So then! Hiero and Archelaüs must be elevated to the rank of Cimon and Pericles! O shame! O ignominy! What afflicts me deeply is the intelligence we receive that Herodotus has left Ionia. He was crowned at the Olympian games; he was invited to a public festival in every city he visited throughout the whole extent of Greece; even his own was pleased with him: yet he too has departed; not to Archelaus or to Hiero, but to the retirement and tranquillity of Italy. I do believe, Aspasia, that studious men, who look so quiet, are the most restless men in existence. ORATION OF PERICLES TO THE SOLDIERS Little time is now left us, O Athenians, between the consideration and the accomplishment of our duties. The justice of the cause, when it was first submitted to your decision in the Agora, was acknowledged with acclamations; the success of it you have insured by your irresistible energy. The port of Samos is in our possession, and we have occupied all the eminences round her walls. Patience is now as requisite to us as to the enemy: for, although every city which can be surrounded, can be captured, yet in some, where courage and numbers have been insufficient to drive off the besieger, Nature and Art may have thrown up obstacles to impede his progress. Such is Samos; the strongest fortress in Europe, excepting only Byzantion. But Byzantion fell before our fathers; and unless less indifferent to the sanctitude of treaties, unless she become less deaf to the reclamations of honour, she prefer her fellow-soldiers to her common enemy, freedom to aristocracy, friends to strangers, Greeks to Asiatics, she shall abase her Thracian fierceness before us. However, we will neither spurn the suppliant nor punish the repentant : our arms we will turn for ever, as we turn them now, against the malicious rival, the alienated relative, the apostate confederate, and the proud oppressor. Where a sense of dignity is faint and feeble, and where reason hath lain unexercised and inert, many nations have occasionally been happy and even flourishing under kings: but oligarchy hath ever been a curse to all, from its commencement to its close. To remove it eternally from the vicinity of Miletus, and from the well-disposed of that very city by which hostilities are denounced against her, is at once our interest and our duty. For oligarchs in every part of the world are necessarily our enemies, since we have always shown our fixed determination to aid and support with all our strength the defenders of civility and freedom. It is not in our power (for against our institutions and consciences we Athenians can do nothing), it is not in our power, I repeat it, to sit idly by, while those who were our fellow-combatants against the Persian, and who suffered from his aggression even more than we did, are assailed by degenerate Ionians, whose usurpation rests on Persia. We have enemies wherever there is injustice done to Greeks; and we will abolish that injustice, and we will quell those enemies. Wherever there are equal laws we have friends; and those friends we will succour, and those laws we will maintain. On which side do the considerate and religious look forward to the countenance of the Gods? Often have they deferred indeed their righteous judgments, but never have they deserted the long-suffering and the brave. Upon the ground where we were standing when you last heard my appeal to you, were not Xerxes and his myriads encamped? What drove them from it? The wisdom, force, and fortitude, breathed into your hearts by the immortal Gods. Preserve them with equal constancy; and your return, I promise you, shall not have been more glorious from Salamis than from Samos. CXVI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE. I must always send you poetry when I find it, whether in a greater quantity or a smaller not indeed all I happen to find; for certainly the mostpart even of careful collections is mere trash. If there is a word too much in sense or sentiment, it is no poem; just as, if there is a syllable in a verse too much, it is no metre. I speak only of these shorter; not of those which are long enough to stretch ourselves on and sleep in. But there are poetical cooks so skilful in dividing the tendons of their cub-fed animals, that they contrive to fill a capacious dish with a few couples of the most meagre and tottering. From Athens you shall have nothing that is not attic. I wish I could always give you the names of the authors. Look at that fountain! Gods around Come, come: why should not we draw near? Say, have not Gods been happy too? The following were composed on a picture in which Cupid is represented tearing a rose-bud. Ah Cupid! Cupid! let alone That bud above the rest : The Graces wear it in their zone, Thy mother on her breast. Does it not grieve thee to destroy So beautiful a flower? If thou must do it, cruel boy, Far distant be the hour! If the sweet bloom (so tinged with fire From thy own torch) must die, Let it, O generous Love! expire The next is, A Faun to Eriopis, a Woodnymph, who had permitted a kiss, and was sorry for it. Tell me, Eriopis, why Lies in shade that languid eye? Hast thou caught the hunter's shout Of thy Faun, my little maid! CXVII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA Samos has fallen. Pericles will have given you this information long before my letter can reach you, and perhaps the joy of the light-hearted Athenians will be over ere then. So soon dies away the satisfaction of great exploits, even of such as have swept a generation from before us, have changed the fortunes of a thousand more, and indeed have shaken the last link in the remotest. We hear, but perhaps the estimate is exaggerated, that the walls of Miletus, of Ephesus, of Priene, are in comparison to Samos as the fences of a farm-yard are to them. Certain it is that the vanquished fleet was more formidable than the united navies of Corinth and of Carthage, which are rated as next in force to the Athenian. By this conquest we are delivered from imminent danger; yet, I am ashamed to say it, our citizens are ungrateful already. It is by the exertions of the Athenians that they are not slaves; and they reason as basely as if they were. They pretend to say that it was jealousy of Samos, and the sudden and vast increase of her maritime power, but by no means any affection for Miletus, which induced them to take up arms! Athens had just reason for hostility; why should she urge, in preference, unjust ones? Alas! if equity is supported by violence, little can be the wonder if power be preceded by falsehood. Such a reflec tion may be womanish; but are not all peculiarly so which are quiet, compassionate, and consistent! The manly mind, in its continual course of impediments and cataracts, receives and gives few true images; our stagnant life in this respect has greatly the advantage. Xanthus, the friend (you remember) of poor Xeniades, fought as a volunteer in the Athenian army, and was entrusted with the despatches to our government. "Xanthus!" said the general, "your country men will hereafter read your name, although it is not written here; for we conquerors of Samos are no little jealous one of another. Go and congratulate the Milesians: they will understand us both." I asked him many questions. He replied with much simplicity, "I was always too much in it to know anything about it. The principal thing I remember is, that Pericles (I was told) smiled at me for a moment in the heat of battle, and went on to another detachment." CXVIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE. The wind, I understand, has delayed my last letter in harbour, and continues adverse. Every day we receive some fresh vessel from Samos, and some new intelligence. True is it, we discover, that the prevailing party had been supported at once by the Peloponnesians and the Persians. The chastisement of the delinquents is represented as much too mild. "They would have made us slaves, let us make them so." Such, with scourges and tortures, were the denunciations of the people and the soldiery; and more vehemently in Samos than in Miletus. The leaders of the oligarchy (now supprest for ever) were two men of low extraction, Lysimachus and Elpenor. We daily hear some story, well known in Samos only, of these incendiaries. Lysimachus was enriched by the collocation of his wife with an old dotard, worn out by gluttony and disordered in intellect. By his last testament, made when he had lost his senses, he bequeathed her fifty talents. The heirs refused to pay them; and Lysimachus would have pleaded her cause before the people, had they not driven him away with shouts and stones. Nevertheless, he was thought a worthy champion of the faction, and the rather as his hatred of his fellow-citizens and former companions must be sincere and inextinguishable. Elpenor is far advanced in age. His elder son was wounded by accident, and died within the walls. Avarice and parsimony had always been his characteristics, under the veil however of morality and religion. The speech he made at the funeral is thus reported, "It hath been, O men of Samos! the decree of the immortal Gods, whose names be ever blessed! .. "Hold hard there! Can not you see that there are no more sparks in the pyre? . . the wine smells sadly throw no more on them. . take it home to the cellar. "To remove from my aged eyes, from my frail embraces, the delight of my life, the staff of my declining years, all spent in the service of my beloved country. It is true I have another son, rising out of his adolescence. . here beside me. "O my child! Molismogis! Molismogis! on such a melancholy occasion dost thou, alas! tie indissolubly and wastefully that beautiful piece of packthread? Thy poor bereaved mother may want it; and it will fail her in the hour of need." VOL. II. "Fraud!" cried Elpenor, "fraud, even at the tomb! before the dead, and before the Gods of the dead! From whom did you make the purchase?" "From Gylippides son of Agoracles." "Tell Gylippides son of Agoracles," calmly said Elpenor, "that in my love of equity, in my duty to the state, in my piety to the Gods, in my pure desire to preserve the tranquillity of his conscience, I cite him before the tribunal unless he refund an obol." Then aloud, "It was not in this manner, O Athenians! that our forefathers reverenced the dead." He gave way under his grief, and was carried back with little commiseration. Elpenor is among the richest men in Greece, unless the conquerors have curtailed his treasures. It is but reasonable that everything such men possess should compensate the people for years of rapine, disunion, and turbulence; for the evil laws they enacted, and for the better they misadministered and perverted. CXIX. CLEONE TO ASPASIA. Worse verses, it may be, than any of those which you lately sent to me, affect me more. There is no giddiness in looking down the precipices of youth: it is the rapidity and heat of its course that brings the giddiness. When we are near its termination a chilly thrill comes over us, whether we look before or behind. Yet there is something like enchantment in the very sound of the word youth, and the calmest heart, at every season of life, beats in double time to it. Never expect a compensation for what you send me, whether prose or poetry: but expect a pleasure, because it has given me one. Now here are the worse verses for the better, the Milesian for the Attic. We mind not how the sun in the mid-sky D D |