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consistently with his profession of abstaining from We have not two factions; aristocracy has kept their concerns. Nevertheless he was at liberty to aloof from Lampsacos. The people find themintroduce a doctrine which, as the day of cultiva-selves so secure and comfortable under the ancient tion advanced, would undermine the pyre and release the victim. The Druids were, and are, and always will be, barbarous. Their order has not existed long, and will soon terminate, the Gauls being not only the most ferocious of mankind, but the most suspicious and acute; they are also the most versatile, the most inconstant, and (what makes sad work with solemnities), on the detection of halt or blemish, men of irrepressible mimicry and unquenchable derision. Those in the vicinity of Massilia are free already from the furies of fanaticism. Intercourse with the Tyrrhenians and Ligurians has humanised them greatly, and the softer voice of Ionia has now persuaded them, that the Gods can take us when they want us, without wicker baskets; and that the harp and dance are as pleasant to them as the cries and agonies of dying men."

Thus ends the epistle of Psyllos; and at least in the end of it I think we shall agree. His comfits will sweeten my pomegranate.

CLXXXII. ASPASIA TO ANAXAGORAS.

Whatever may be the partiality of your Massilian to Pythagoras, it is evident enough that the philosopher of Samos, possessing great acquired intelligence and gifted with extraordinary powers of mind, was an intriguer and an impostor. And truly, O Anaxagoras, it is much to be desired that others now living were exempt from a certain part of such an imputation. Our friend Socrates, I am sorry to say, intimates to his friends in private that he has a kind of Genius always at his ear, who forewarns him in affairs apparently the most indifferent. If we consider it well, we shall be of opinion that there are few things so indifferent as they seem to us; few, the consequence of which may not, visibly or invisibly, act with grave importance on the future. But if a Genius, a superhuman power, were to influence the actions of any man, surely it would be those which must necessarily put in motion the levers and regulators of a commonwealth. We are all under the guidance of a Deity if we will let him act on us; but it is as easy to slip from under his guidance, as it is difficult to escape from the penalties of our error. Already there are some who are jealous of Socrates and his Genius; and who perhaps may try hereafter whether the Genius will help him to elude the laws. For novelties in religion, as you know, are not held guiltless; and a Genius that renders a man wiser or better is indeed an innovator. As they can not catch him, I fear they may lay their hands upon our Socrates.

CLXXXIII. ANAXAGORAS TO PERICLES.

It is easier to answer the questions than the kindnesses of your letter. I will begin then.

laws, that they would no more hazard any innovation, than they would alter their course at sea when they were sailing with a favourable wind. They hardly can be brought to believe that any nation hath abrogated two laws in twenty or thirty years, or hath been obliged by prosperity or adversity to enact so many in so brief a space of time. Miletus was always just to her colonies. She has founded more than sixty; and not a single one has ever had reason to complain of her exactions or restrictions. All the great empires that have existed in the world, Chaldæa, Babylonia, Media, Persia, all these taken together, have not sent out the hundredth part of what has gone forth from the bosom of Miletus. Surely, of political glory this is the highest to rear carefully a numerous family, educate it honestly, protect it bravely, and provide for it plenteously and independently. Her citizens have more reason to be proud of this section in their polity, than some others who are much powerfuller. Would not every mother wish to see her own features in her daughter? her own constitutional strength, her own character, her own prosperity? What inconsistency then, what folly, what madness, for the metropolis to wish otherwise in regard to her colony! Is the right arm stronger by rendering the left weaker? Gain we any vantage-ground against our enemy by standing on the prostrate body of our child?

To whom am I writing? to Pericles? yes, to him; to the man who best knows that the strongest reasons of state proceed from the mouth of justice.

And now let me loose again. Seldom have I written, and never have I spoken, so long at a time on such a subject. Could you ever draw from me even an opinion on these matters, in a city where (excepting myself) you alone preserved in them your calmness, equanimity, and composure? Even Aspasia, who unites the wisdom of the heart to the wisdom of the understanding, and has more in both than anyone else in either, was sometimes in perturbation at politics, and sometimes in grief.

A while since I sent her a dozen or more of such verses as our young people, and others who should know better, are idle enough to compose in the open air. My neighbour, Proxenos the Massilian, has been employed in making a collection from the gardens round about. The greater part, he tells me, are upon love and flowers, dews and suns, stars and moons, evenings and mornings, springs and autumns. He observes that summer is rather out of favour with the poets; and that where winter is mentioned, he has often found the whole composition scored across with a nail, or with a piece of tile, or defaced in some other way as nigh at hand. Proxenos is no poet, and therefore it is the more amusing to hear him discourse on poetry.

So far Proxenos. I do not remember what were those verses I sent to Aspasia ; there may be more good sense in these,

INSCRIPTION ON A PLINTH IN THE GARDEN OF MNESTHEUS
AT LAMPSACOS.

"I am sated with flowers," said he. "The of retirement in the little isle of Tenos. He lisMuses ought to keep out of the market: if they tened to my entreaty with his usual attention and must come into it, let them not come as green- interest, and soon began to expatiate on the grocers. See, what a large proportion in my col- charms, on the benefits, on the necessity, of relection is upon flowers and foliage, with here and tirement. Without a question I fancied I had there a solitary turtle-dove, and a nightingale persuaded him to compliance, when, with an air deplorably belimed. A few pious men indeed of sadness so attempered with sweetness as it have written in reverence of the tutelary God, and never was in any other man, he said to me, Ashave done all they could to repress the licentious- pasia! you can create in me as many wishes as ness of the young and thoughtless. The best spring up in the bosom of a child; and it is inscription I have found among them is in the partly by planting the slips of your own in mine, garden of Mnestheus; and this perhaps is worth and partly by the warmth of your eloquence. preservation rather for its grave admonition and What then must be my sense of duty to my religious sentiment than its poetry." country, if, after all these representations, and after all my fatigues and injuries, my determination is fixed to remain some time longer in the city. Hereafter we may visit Tenos: hereafter I may drink of the limpid brook, before the house, whose cold water has reddened this hand when you were little. We will build our navies on it: we will follow them along the bank, and applaud them as they clash. Even I foresee a perfidy in Aspasia she will pretend to run as fast as she can, and yet let Pericles outrun her. No, no; that kiss shall not obviate such duplicity. Have I no reason for the suspicion, when you often have let me get the better of you in argument? Another and easier life may await us there, when this political one is uncoiled from us. But our child must associate with the children of the Athenians: he must love his father's friends; he must overcome and pardon his father's adversaries. We ought never to buy happiness with our children's fortunes but happiness is not the commodity; it is desertion, it is evasion, it is sloth. However, there is at last a time when we may hang up our armour, and claim the stipend of retirement and repose. Meanwhile let us fix our eyes on Tenos."

Youngsters! who write false names, and slink behind
The honest garden-god to hide yourselves,
Take heed unto your ways! the worshipful
Requires from all upright straightforwardness.
Away, away then subterfuge with him!

I would not chide severely; nor would he,
Unless ye thwart him; for alike we know
Ye are not childisher than elder folk,
Who piously (in doing ill) believe

That every God sees every man .. but one.

CLXXXIV. ASPASIA TO ANAXAGORAS.

The style of your Psyllos is, I presume, Massilian. He walks heavily through high-stemmed leafy flowers. Does he not deserve now this little piece of imitation?

Forbear to call it mockery; for mockery is always rude and inhumane.

Our friend Socrates has taken a wife. In every danger he has been thought singularly brave; and, if she is what she is represented, the action proves it. He retains his custom of sitting in the porticoes, and beckoning to passers, and conversing on loveliness, and commending equanimity, and driving the schoolmen mad. Yet among the Epithalamions, the cleverest is one which celebrates him for the quality most remote from his character. Thales and Pherecydes and Pythagoras, and some few more, would really have made Philosophy domestic. Our epithalamiast, intending nothing satirical, tells Socrates (whom neither celibacy nor marriage have detained at home, and who never could resist an opportunity of wrangling, while a sophist or a straw was before him) that he first brought Philosophy from heaven into private houses! I hope he will find her in his own as often as he wants her: but if he is resolved to bring her down into ours, such as we have seen her lately, the city will be all in a bustle with the double-bolting of doors.

Let the archons look to it.

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Whether, O Cleone, we regard the moral or the material world, there is a silent serenity in the highest elevation. Pericles appears the greater when seen on his solitary eminence against the sky. Power has rendered him only more gracious and compliant, more calm and taciturn.

CLXXXVI. ANAXAGORAS TO ASPASIA.

Pericles tells me that you are less tranquil than you were formerly, and that he apprehends you are affected not a little by the calumnies of your enemies.

If it is true that there can be no calumny without malice, it is equally so that there can be no malice without some desirable quality to excite it. Make up your mind, Aspasia, to pay the double rate of rank and genius. It is much to be the wife of Pericles; it is more to be Aspasia. Names that lie upon the ground are not easily set on fire by the torch of Envy, but those quickly catch it which are raised up by fame, or wave to the breeze of prosperity. Everyone that passes is ready to give them a shake and a rip; for there are few either so busy or so idle as not to lend a hand at undoing.

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You, Pericles, and myself, have a world of our | in the assemblies of the people, and among the own, into which no Athenian can enter without consultations to regulate (as far as might be) the our permission. Study, philosophise, write poetry. These things I know are difficult when there is a noise in the brain; but begin, and the noise ceases. The mind, slow in its ascent at first, accelerates every moment, and is soon above the hearing of frogs and the sight of brambles.

CLXXXVII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

A pestilence has broken out in the city, so virulent in its character, so rapid in its progress, so intractable to medicine, that Pericles, in despite of my remonstrances and prayers, insisted on my departure. He told me that, if I delayed it a single day, his influence might be insufficient to obtain me a reception in any town, or any hamlet, throughout the whole of Greece. He has promised to write to me daily, but he declared he could not assure me that his letters would come regularly, although he purposes to send them secretly by the shepherds, fumigated and dipped in oil before they depart from Athens. He has several farms in Thessaly under Mount Ossa, near Sicurion. Here I am, a few stadions from the walls. Never did I breathe so pure an air, so refreshing in the midst of summer. And the lips of my

little Pericles are ruddier and softer and sweeter than before. Nothing is wanting, but that he were less like me, and more like his father. He would have all my thoughts to himself, were Pericles not absent.

CLXXXVIII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.

Aspasia ! I will not allow either the little Pericles, or the great one, or both together, to possess all your thoughts. Nay, your letter itself contradicts you. Cleone and the plague must intercept and divide them occasionally.

Pestilences are maladies that rage with more violence than others, but, like all violent things, soon pass away. The worst effects of them are the seditions, and other sad irregularities, that always burst forth when the banner of Death is unfurled in a populous city. But it is mostly the intemperate that are swept away.

Alas! I must not dissemble the magnitude of the danger; for I know your resolution, I might say rashness. What I have written is true; but I am most afraid that you will not fear enough. Keep up your courage where you are; do not exert it anywhere else.

CLXXXIX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

Cleone! Cleone! if you could but see Athens, you would find it a ditch to throw all your dogmas into. The pestilence has not only seized the intemperate, but, like that which Chryses imprecated on the Greeks before Troy, smitten nobler heads after the viler. Pericles himself has not escaped it. He refused to abstain from appearing

burial and burning of the dead. His temperance and courage, the most efficacious preservatives against contagion, failed at length in the effect. The fever seized him, and although he has risen from his bed free from all symptoms of the distemper, his strength is impaired, and many years (he tells me) seem to have crowded into a few days.

CXC. ANAXAGORAS TO ASPASIA.

Behold, O Aspasia! I send you verses. They certainly are less valuable than some in your collection, but, to make up the difference, I inclose a cockle-shell.

Beauty! thou art a wanderer on the earth,
And hast no temple in the fairest isle
Or city over-sea, where Wealth and Mirth
And all the Graces, all the Muses, smile.
Yet these have always nurst thee, with such fond,
Such lasting love, that they have followed up
Thy steps thro' every land, and placed beyond
The reach of thirsty Time thy nectar-cup.

Thou art a wanderer, Beauty! like the rays
That now upon the platan, now upon
The sleepy lake, glance quick or idly gaze,

And now are manifold and now are none.

I have call'd, panting, after thee, and thou
Hast turn'd and look'd and said some pretty word,
Parting the hair, perhaps, upon my brow,

And telling me none ever was preferr'd.

In more than one bright form hast thou appear'd,
In more than one sweet dialect hast spoken:
Beauty! thy spells the heart within me heard,
Griev'd that they bound it, grieves that they are

broken.

All the verbiage which you will find below I found rudely scrawled on a stone-table, in the garden of my next neighbour Parmenio. I perIceive it to be of little worth by this; it has found an imitator, or rather a correspondent: yet, as he writes angrily, it may not be much amiss. These are scratched under the preceding.

I have some merit too, old man!
And show me greater if you can.

I always took what Beauty gave,

Nor, when she snatch'd it back, look'd grave.
Us modest youths it most beseems
To drink from out the running streams:
Love on their banks delights to dwell
The bucket of the household well
He never tugs at, thinking fit
Only to quench his torch in it.
Shameless old fellow! do you boast
Of conquests upon every coast?
I, O ye Gods! should be content
(Yea, after all the sighs I've spent,
The sighs, and, what is yet more hard,
The minas, talents, gone in nard!)
With only one: I would confine
Meekly this homesick heart of mine
"Twixt Lampsacos and Hammon's shrine.

CXCI. ASPASIA TO ANAXAGORAS.

It is really odd enough that no temple or altar

was ever dedicated to Beauty. Vengeance and struggles. Moroseness is the evening of turbuother such personages, whom we, Anaxagoras, lence. Every man after a while begins to think venture occasionally to call allegorical, have altars enow, and more than enow of worshippers. Whatever, in your satirical mood, you may think about the cockle-shell, I shall always value it, as much nearly as the verses, and I have ordered it to be made into a clasp for them. Taunt me then as often as you please: it will be like girls pelting with roses : if there is any harm done, it is only to the fingers of the pelter.

CXCII. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.

Now the fever is raging, and we are separated, my comfort and delight is in our little Pericles. The letters you send me come less frequently, but I know you write whenever your duties will allow you, and whenever men are found courageous enough to take charge of them. Although you preserved with little care the speeches you delivered formerly, yet you promised me a copy of the latter, and as many of the earlier as you could collect among your friends. Let me have them as soon as possible. Whatever bears the traces of your hand, is precious to me: how greatly more precious what is imprest with your genius, what you have meditated and spoken! I shall see your calm thoughtful face while I am reading, and will be cautious not to read aloud lest I lose the illusion of your voice.

CXCIII. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.

Aspasia! do you know what you have asked of me? Would you accept it, if you thought it might make you love me less? Must your affections be thus loosened from me, that the separation, which the pestilence may render an eternal one, may be somewhat mitigated? I send you the papers. The value will be small to you, and indeed would be small to others, were it possible that they could fall into any hands but yours. Remember the situation in which my birth and breeding and bent of mind have placed me: remember the powerful rivals I have had to contend with, their celebrity, their popularity, their genius, and their perseverance. You know how often I have regretted the necessity of obtaining the banishment of Cimon, a man more similar to myself than any other. I doubt whether he had quite the same management of his thoughts and words, but he was adorned with every grace, every virtue, and invested by Nature with every high function of the soul. We happened to be placed by our fellow-citizens at the head of two adverse factions. Son of the greatest man in our annals, he was courted and promoted by the aristocracy: I, of a family no less distinguished, was opposed to him by the body of the people. You must have observed, Aspasia, that although one of the populace may in turbulent times be the possessor of great power, it rarely has happened that he retained it long, or without many sanguinary

himself as capable of governing as one (whoever he may be) taken from his own rank. Amid all the claims and pretensions of the ignorant and discontented, the eyes of a few begin to be turned complacently toward the more courteous demeanour of some well-born citizen, who presently has an opportunity of conciliating many more, by affability, liberality, eloquence, commiseration, diffidence, and disinterestedness. Part of these must be real, part may not be. Shortly afterward he gains nearly all the rest of the citizens by deserting his order for theirs: his own party will not be left behind, but adheres to him bravely, to prove they are not ashamed of their choice, and to avoid the imputation of inconsistency.

Aspasia! I have done with these cares, with these reflections. Little of life is remaining, but my happiness will be coetaneous with it, and my renown will survive it: for there is no example of any who has governed a state so long, without a single act of revenge or malice, of cruelty or severity. In the thirty-seven years of my administration I have caused no citizen to put on mourning. On this rock, O Aspasia ! stand my Propylæa and my Parthenon.

CXCIV. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.

Gratitude to the immortal Gods overpowers every other impulse of my breast. You are safe.

Pericles! O my Pericles! come into this purer air! live life over again in the smiles of your child, in the devotion of your Aspasia ! Why did you fear for me the plague within the city, the Spartans round it? why did you exact the vow at parting, that nothing but your command should recall me again to Athens? Why did I ever make it? Cruel! to refuse me the full enjoyment of your recovered health! crueller to keep me in ignorance of its decline! The happiest of pillows is not that which Love first presses; it is that which Death has frowned on and past over.

CXCV. ANAXAGORAS TO ASPASIA.

Have you never observed, O most observant Aspasia, that there are many things which we can say in writing, and which we can not so well deliver in speech, even to our nearest friend? During all the time of my residence with you and Pericles, intimate as was our familiarity from the commencement, never once did either of you express a wish to hear the reason why I left my countrymen for strangers. The dislike I always had to relate my concerns, and to present my features for inspection, withheld me from the narrative and delicacy withheld you from inquiry.

Come, I will live over with you now that portion of my life which I did not live with you before. I would not escape for refuge into crowds:

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I would not repair my fortune by hammering on | truth from them, if truth it be, and told them the anvil in the Agora: I would not (pardon my only what I thought it was their interest, and application of our proverb at Clazomenai) make my purse of swine's ears. Such is the occupation of those who intend to profit by a public auditory.

Often had I been solicited by the worthier of the citizens to appear in public, and to take a part, if not in the administration of affairs, at least in the debates. It ill suited my temper and turn of mind. Ours, like most free cities, was divided into two factions, the aristocratical and democratical. While others were making their way forward to the head of them, I sat quietly at home, and, to relax my mind occasionally from its sustained and fixed position for loftier and purer speculations, meditated on the advantages and disadvantages of each government. No small quantity had I written at last of remarks and aphorisms: behold a specimen: In most cities the majority is composed of the ignorant, the idle, and the profligate. In most cities, after a time, there are enough of bad citizens to subvert good laws. Immoral life in one leader of the people is more pernicious than a whole streetful of impurities in the lower quarters of the community, seeing that streams, foul or fair, can not flow upward.'

Be sure, Aspasia, I never promulgated such perilous doctrines. To prove that I was erroneous in the two first positions, the citizens would have poisoned or stoned me, and their orators would clearly show my unfitness to give advice, in my attempting to demonstrate no more important or novel a truth than that water can not run up a mountain. Such is the employment, such the ingenuity and sincerity of eloquence.

would surely be their intention, to perform. They rewarded me by suffering me to depart in peace, unanswered and unnoticed. We might imagine that advice, like manure, is only good and applicable when it has lain a long while by. He reasons ill who reasons with a bad reasoner . . he walks on chaff, and tires himself without progress and without impression. I never expostulate with the self-sufficient; but on this occasion I desired a friend of theirs to inquire of them whether they thought a conflagration in Clazomenai would only warm their baths and cook their dinners. Had I been willing to abuse my faculties, it would have been an easy matter for me to have swept them from their places, and to have assumed the highest; for the rapacious has no hold upon the people, and vulgar manners in the candidate for office are no recommendation even to vulgar men. Here ended my life in my own country.

CXCVI. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.

It has been wisely said that Virtue hath only to be seen to be beloved: but unwisely, that Vice hath only to be seen to be hated. Certain it is that the more habituated we are to the contemplation of a pure and placid life, the more do we delight in it. I wish it were equally so that every glance at Vice loosens a feather from her plumage, and that on a nearer approach and more stedfast observation she grows hideous. Proofs to the contrary come before us every day.

Eupolis and Mnesilochos and Callias and Cratinos, like most other authors, are indifferent to any result from their writings but popularity and emolument. And we are informed here at Miletus that several of your philosophers are now employing a language, on the powers and provinces of love, far more seductive to the passions of their youthful auditors than the most indecent of theatrical ribaldry. For surely there is little seductive in

I was inclined to the democracy, because I knew that all government ought to be chiefly for the advantage of the many; but when I considered long and attentively its operations and effects, I began to doubt whether the people are more likely to know their interests than the aristocracy are to promote them. Immovable a boisterous jocularity, that seizes and holds down property is the only sure pledge for political equity, and the holders are not at all times ready to offer it. Merchants are the worst of adventurers and gamesters, because their native land is not their country. They are the sucklings of an alien, and love her best who gives them' nutriment. Their preponderance in a state will invariably be its subversion.

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I intended to speak of myself, but you see can not keep to my theme; it soon tires me soon escapes me. The scanty streamlet has run but a little way, and is lost among the sands. A few words more, however. Before I left my country, I offered some brief observations on important matters, then in discussion, to persons in authority. Do I much over-estimate my solidity of intellect, my range of comprehension, or my clearness of discernment, in believing that all these qualities in me, however imperfect, are somewhat more than equivalent to theirs? I concealed this

the hand from the painfully blushing forehead, and forces the eyes to see what they would shun. Ionian manners, I am afraid, are as licentious as the Athenian: but ours are become so by our intercourse with the Persians, the Athenian by theirs with the Philosophers. It is only of late that such poisonous perfumery has had this influence on the brain; it is only since the departure of the sedate unostentatious Anaxagoras, that syllogists have snapped their fingers at experiment. Against such men the arrows of ridicule are well directed: but these arrows fall harmlessly from flowing robes; and indeed the purple dye is everywhere a panacea.

CXCVII. ANAXAGORAS TO PERICLES.

Thanks, O Pericles, for your provident care of me! Povident do I say? no, anything but that; | kind, generous, profuse; but if you really saw the extent of my wants, you would only send me

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