a prospect of reinforcements for their fleet, and of part of the inhabitants, who knew nothing of the CHAP. XXVII. 490 APPENDIX L APPENDIX I. ON SOME OF THE CHARGES BROUGHT AGAINST PERICLES. THE character of Pericles has been viewed as diversely in our day as by his contemporaries. His political conduct has been considered, sufficiently for our purpose, in the text. But some of the charges which have been brought against him, and which deeply affect his personal reputation, deserve a somewhat more minute discussion than could properly be bestowed on them in the body of this work. We have first to notice that which concerns his integrity in the disposal of the public money. This charge has become much more formidable, since Boeckh has expressed his deliberate assent to it. We shall presently consider Boeckh's argument on this subject, in order to place it in a light, in which it is possible the learned author himself may not have viewed it. But we must first say a few words on the passage of Plato which we have touched on at the end of chap. xviii. To show how ill Pericles had succeeded in managing his countrymen, Socrates is there made to observe, that, toward the end of his life, they convicted him of peculation, and were near condemning him to death. It would of course be impossible to collect Plato's own opinion as to the foundation of the charge from such an allusion. But we think we are warranted in rejecting the fact itself which he assumes, and in believing that he has misrepresented the nature of the charge on which Pericles was condemned. We do not rely on the silence of Plutarch (Per. 35.) or on the language of Diodorus (XII. 45. μικράς τινας ἀφορμὰς ἐγκλημάτων λαβόντες), or even of Isocrates (De Pace, § 152. οὐκ ἐπὶ τὸν ἴδιον χρηματισμὸν ὥρμησεν, ἀλλὰ τὸν μὲν οἶκον ἐλάττω τὸν αὑτοῦ κατέλιπεν ἢ παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς Tapéλabɛv, K. 7. A.), but would merely ask, whether Thucydides, if he had known that Pericles was convicted of peculation, could not only have put words into his mouth which imply that his integrity was above suspicion (II. 60. xpnμúrwv kρeiσowv), but have spoken of him as a person notoriously most incorruptible (II. 65. xpnμárov Eppavac áowрóraros). Nobody who is acquainted with the ordinary value of Plato's historical allusions, can think that in the Gorgias deserving even of the name of a testimony, in opposition to such authority. But as Pericles had on former occasions been charged with peculation, it was natural enough that Plato should I. treat this as the ground of his last impeachment, the precise nature APPENDIX of which as may be inferred from the silence of Thucydides, Plutarch, and Diodorus-it was probably not very easy to collect. But it may be objected by some readers, that Plato, who, as they have been informed, was himself so warm an admirer of Pericles, as to assign to him the praise of supereminence in what was wise, great, and becoming, would not, upon a light surmise, have stated a fact so injurious to the reputation of this wise, great, and honourable man. The objection would be natural enough; for there are some blunders so gross, that they seem incredible until they are pointed out. Any one who happens to have read the long declamation, in which the rhetorician Aristides labours to vindicate the character of Pericles from Plato's attacks, must be surprised to find Plato called up to vouch for the character of the man whom in the Gorgias he assailed with an almost bitter severity. And even if we had not such ample evidence of Plato's opinion on the subject, no ordinary degree of simplicity is requisite to enable any one to allege the philosopher's ironical language in the Meno (Περικλέα οὕτω μεγαλοπρεπῶς σοφὸν ἄνδρα) as a serious eulogy, and on the moral character of Pericles. That character has been more endangered by the manner in which it has been defended, than by the arguments with which it has been attacked; and Pericles might well have spared the good word of an advocate, who exalts him in order to depress Athens, and permits him even to share the praises of Pisistratus, for the purpose of insinuating that the glory of Athenian art and literature belongs less to the people than to the tyrant and the demagogue, and thus of suggesting an explanation of the wonderful and singular phenomenon, that the intellectual greatness of Athens could subsist and even increase in spite of her freedom. The only ground which Boeckh opposes to the testimony of Thucydides in favour of the integrity of Pericles, is, that the report about his pecuniary embarrassment, from which he was said to have relieved himself by kindling the Peloponnesian war, was too prevalent not to have had some foundation. (St. d. Ath. II. c. 8.) But if this argument is allowed to have any weight, it would lead us to an inference which Boeckh seems not sufficiently to have considered. There was another report equally prevalent, and repeated in a variety of forms, which charged Pericles with indulging a very expensive vice, by the ministry, sometimes of Phidias, sometimes of Pyrilampes, sometimes of Aspasia (Plut. Per. 13. 32.); and it seems clear that the two charges must stand or fall together. The habits of Pericles his ordinary frugality. and strict economy are sufficiently attested to convince us, that unless his private income was drained by this kind of expenditure, APPENDIX he could scarcely have had any temptation to embezzle the public money. We should be curious to know whether Boeckh himself would degrade Pericles to a level with Louis XV. On the other hand our antijacobin historian, instead of attempting to refute this charge, exults in it, as an illustration of the popular licentiousness, which Pericles whose power rested on the patronage which he professed of democracy, was obliged to allow. This to be sure is a mode of begging the question, which must injure the cause of the party defended in the judgment of every impartial and intelligent reader. But we think it not unreasonable to contend that, notwithstanding the rumour on which Boeckh lays so much stress, the integrity of Pericles is as firmly established by the most authentic testimony as any fact in history of like kind can be; and from this fact we would infer, that the other charge was equally unfounded. It seems strange that Boeckh should be at a loss to conceive, how the charge of peculation should become current at Athens, like many other rumours, without any solid ground; and we have endeavoured in the text to point out, how the other scandal might have arisen out of very innocent occasions. We would rather leave the question on this footing, than resort to any vague declamation about the supereminence of Pericles in what was wise, great, and becoming. Yet we may add, that every well attested fact in his life strengthens our intimate conviction of the general purity of his character; and we think that if the two charges are once admitted to be so connected as we suppose them to be, few will hesitate in rejecting both. The assemblies in the house of Aspasia were uncommon enough to attract much attention, and to give rise to calumnious reports; but on the other hand they indicate how much exaggeration has been admitted into the prevailing opinion about the strict seclusion in which the Athenian ladies were kept. Jacobs in an interesting essay on the Greek women (Vermischte Schriften III.) has shown how much this opinion requires to be modified. But our antidemocratical historian has assumed it in its utmost extent, for the purpose of making it the ground of an hypothesis, on the influence of the Athenian constitution on the condition and character of the women. To refute that hypothesis it would be sufficient to observe, that, however close may have been the seclusion of the Athenian women, in the most turbulent state of the democracy, it cannot have been more rigid than that in which the Portuguese ladies, for instance, were kept under the stillness of an absolute monarchy. But from whatever side the fiction is examined, its absurdity is as glaring, as the temerity with which it is advanced as unquestionable matter of history. The subject of this Appendix has drawn from us some polemical remarks which we would willingly have avoided, though some readers may have expected and desired that they should occur more frequently. It may indeed be useful, and need not be disagreeable, to point out mistakes in a history which can claim the praise of candour and simplicity, so justly bestowed on Thucydides by the rhetorician Aristides in the declamation already alluded to (ὑπὲρ τῶν τεττ. II. p. 163. Dindorf. οὐ φιλονεικίας ἕνεκεν οὐδεμιᾶς, οὐδ ̓ εἰς ἀγῶνος χρείαν, οὐδ ̓ εἰς ἓν ὃ προύθετο πάντα ἀναφέρων, ἀλλ ̓ ἐν ἱστορίᾳ καὶ διηγήσει ταληθὲς ἁπλῶς παραδίδους. But where that praise is illustrated by a complete antithesis; where a history is all polemical; where the facts are constantly distorted for the sake of accommodating them to the one end which the writer has proposed to himself; so that the whole is thoroughly ingrained with falsehood; those who are best able to estimate its character, will be most reluctant to descend to an exposure of its particular errors. APPENDIX II. APPENDIX II. ON THE AUTHOR OF THE ORATION AGAINST ALCIBIADES THE question as to the genuineness of this oration is one of considerable interest, not only as affecting the use which may be made of the oration itself, but also because it is connected with some other doubtful points in the history of these times. The discussion was left in a very unsatisfactory state by the arguments of Taylor (Lectiones Lysiacæ, c. vi.) and Ruhnken (Historia Critica Oratorum Græcorum, p. LIII. fol.), who, as appears from Sluiter's Lectiones Andocidea, ed. Schiller, p. 10., has done little more than repeat those of Valckenaer. For though Ruhnken has shown the weakness of Taylor's reasoning in many points, his own is neither perfectly sound, nor conclusive on the whole matter. Taylor contends that the oration belongs not to Andocides, but to Phæax. His main argument is, that it appears from the oration itself, that on the occasion to which it relates three persons were threatened with ostracism; that Phæax is known to have been one of the three, and Nicias and Alcibiades the two others; while the name of Andocides is nowhere mentioned among them; Phæax therefore must have been the author of this oration; and this conclusion is, he conceives, decisively confirmed by Plutarch, who (Alcib. 13.) quotes an oration of Phæax against Alcibiades for a fact (the abuse of the sacred vessels of the state) which is |