#Plutarch #ParallelLives #Pericles 21/

So, then, the man is to be admired not only for his reasonableness and the gentleness which he maintained in the midst of many responsibilities and great enmities, but also for his loftiness of spirit, seeing that he regarded it as the noblest of all his titles to honour that he had never gratified his envy or his passion in the exercise of his vast power, nor treated any one of his foes as a foe incurable.

[Section 39]

#Plutarch #ParallelLives #Pericles 20/

As Pericles was near his end, the best of the citizens and those of his friends who survived were sitting around him holding discourse of his excellence and power, how great they had been, and estimating all his achievements and the number of his trophies, — there were nine of these which he had set up as the city's victorious general.

Speaking out among them, Pericles said he was amazed at their praising and commemorating that in him which was due as much to fortune as to himself, and which had fallen to the lot of many generals besides, instead of mentioning his fairest and greatest title to their admiration; "for," said he, "no living Athenian ever put on mourning because of me."

[Section 38]

#Plutarch #ParallelLives #Pericles 19/

Pericles lost his sister also at that time, and of his relatives and friends the largest part, and those who were most serviceable to him in his administration of the city.

He did not, however, give up, nor yet abandon his loftiness and grandeur of spirit because of his calamities, nay, he was not even seen to weep, either at the funeral rites, or at the grave of any of his connections, until indeed he lost the very last remaining one of his own legitimate sons, Paralus.

Even though he was bowed down at this stroke, he nevertheless tried to persevere in his habit and maintain his spiritual greatness, but as he laid a wreath upon the dead, he was vanquished by his anguish at the sight, so that he broke out into wailing, and shed a multitude of tears, although he had never done any such thing in all his life before.

[Section 36]

#Plutarch #ParallelLives #Pericles 18/

So Pericles tried to calm down those who were eager to fight, and who were in distress at what the enemy was doing, by saying that trees, though cut and lopped, grew quickly, but if men were destroyed it was not easy to get them again.

Like the helmsman of a ship, who, when a stormy wind swoops down upon it in the open sea, makes all fast, takes in sail, and exercises his skill, disregarding the tears and entreaties of the sea-sick and timorous passengers, so he shut the city up tight, put all parts of it under safe garrison, and exercised his own judgement, little heeding the brawlers and malcontents.

[Section 33]

#Plutarch #ParallelLives #Pericles 17/

Pericles did not accede to the vain impulses of the citizens, nor was he swept along with the tide when they were eager, from a sense of their great power and good fortune, to lay hands again upon Egypt and molest the realms of the King which lay along the sea.

Many also were possessed already with that inordinate and inauspicious passion for Sicily which was afterwards kindled into flame by such orators as Alcibiades. And some there were who actually dreamed of Tuscany and Carthage, and that not without a measure of hope, in view of the magnitude of their present supremacy and the full-flowing tide of success in their undertakings.

But Pericles was ever trying to restrain this extravagance of the citizens, to lop off their expansive meddlesomeness, and to divert the greatest part of their forces to the guarding and securing of what they had already won.

[Sections 20/21]

@karlauerbach Ooo. And Pericles, a play I love.

Everyone who likes Shakespeare plays should save a few which they haven’t seen or read to see them live if possible and to follow them as a play and be surprised by the changes and turns.

Not everyone likes #Shakespeare of course, but if you do, and you like live theatre, it’s worth saving some to experience “for a first time” as a play.

“To sing a song that old was sung…”

#Plutarch #ParallelLives #Pericles 16/

In his capacity as general, Pericles was famous above all things for his saving caution; he neither undertook of his own accord a battle involving much uncertainty or peril, nor did he envy and imitate those who took great risks, enjoyed brilliant good-fortune, and so were admired as great generals; and he was for ever saying to his fellow-citizens that, so far as lay in his power, they would remain alive forever and be immortals.

[Section 18]

#SavingLives #Caution #SunTzu #TheArtOfWar

#Plutarch #ParallelLives #Pericles 15/

And this was not the fruit of a golden moment, nor the culminating popularity of an administration that bloomed but for a season; nay rather he stood first for forty years among such men as Ephialtes, Leocrates, Myronides, Cimon, Tolmides, and Thucydides, and after the deposition of Thucydides and his ostracism, for no less than fifteen of these years did he secure an imperial sway that was continuous and unbroken, by means of his annual tenure of the office of general.

During all these years he kept himself untainted by corruption.

[Section 16]

#Plutarch #ParallelLives #Pericles 14/

For whereas all sorts of distempers, as was to be expected, were rife in a rabble which possessed such a vast empire, he alone was so endowed by nature that he could manage each one of these cases suitably, and more than anything else he used the people's hopes and fears, like rudders, so to speak, giving timely check to their arrogance, and allaying and comforting their despair.

The reason for his success was not his power as a speaker merely, but the reputation of his life and the confidence reposed in him as one who was manifestly proven to be utterly disinterested and superior to bribes.

[Section 15]

#Plutarch #ParallelLives #Pericles 13/

To such degree, it seems, is truth hedged about with difficulty and hard to capture by research, since those who come after the events in question find that lapse of time is an obstacle to their proper perception of them; while the research of their contemporaries into men's deeds and lives, partly through envious hatred and partly through fawning flattery, defiles and distorts the truth.

[Section 13]

#Plutarch #ParallelLives #Pericles 12/

For this reason are the works of Pericles all the more to be wondered at; they were created in a short time for all time.

Each one of them, in its beauty, was even then and at once antique; but in the freshness of its vigour it is, even to the present day, recent and newly wrought.

Such is the bloom of perpetual newness, as it were, upon these works of his, which makes them ever to look untouched by time, as though the unfaltering breath of an ageless spirit has been infused into them.

#Classicism #TheGoldenAge #Art

#TheBloomOfPerpetualNewness

#atimewheneverythingcomesnaturallytous

[Section 13]

#Plutarch #ParallelLives #Pericles 11/

And it is true that deftness and speed in working do not impart to the work an abiding weight of influence nor an exactness of beauty; whereas the time which is put out to loan in laboriously creating, pays a large and generous interest in the preservation of the creation.

[Section 13]

#Plutarch #ParallelLives #Pericles 10/

And yet they say that once on a time when Agatharchus the painter was boasting loudly of the speed and ease with which he made his figures, Zeuxis heard him, and said, "Mine take, and last, a long time."

[Section 13]

#Plutarch #ParallelLives #Pericles 9/

So then the works arose, no less towering in their grandeur than inimitable in the grace of their outlines, since the workmen eagerly strove to surpass themselves in the beauty of their handicraft. And yet the most wonder­ful thing about them was the speed with which they rose. Each one of them, men thought, would require many successive generations to complete it, but all of them were fully completed in the heyday of a single administration.

[Section 13]

#Plutarch #ParallelLives #Pericles 8/

Now there had been from the beginning a sort of seam hidden beneath the surface of affairs, as in a piece of iron, which faintly indicated a divergence between the popular and the aristocratic programme; but the emulous ambition of these two men cut a deep gash in the state, and caused one section of it to be called the "Demos," or the People, and the other the "Oligoi," or the Few.

[Section 11]

#Plutarch #ParallelLives #Pericles 5/

In his funeral oration over those who had fallen in the Samian War, he declared that they had become immortal, like the gods.

"The gods themselves," he said, "we cannot see, but from the honours which they receive, and the blessings which they bestow, we conclude that they are immortal." So it was, he said, with those who had given their lives for their country.

[Section 8]

#Plutarch #ParallelLives #Pericles 4/

The truth is that even Pericles, with all his gifts, was cautious in his discourse, so that whenever he came forward to speak he prayed the gods that there might not escape him unawares a single word which was unsuited to the matter under discussion. In writing he left nothing behind him except the decrees which he proposed, and only a few in all of his memorable sayings are preserved.

[Section 8]