PELOPONNESIAN WAR).
At the same time Pericles was being sorely hampered by his adversaries at home. The orthodox Conservatives and some demo crats who were jealous of his influence, while afraid to beard the great statesman himself, combined to assail his nearest friends. The sculptor Pheidias (q.v.) was prosecuted on two vexatious charges (probably in 433), and before he could disprove the second he died under arrest. Anaxagoras was threatened with a law against atheists, and felt compelled to leave Athens. A scan dalous charge against his mistress Aspasia, which he defeated by his personal intercession before the court, was taken very much to heart by Pericles. His position at home scarcely improved during the war. His policy of abandoning the countryside was unpopular with the land-owning section of the people, who from the walls of Athens could see their own property destroyed by the invaders. At the end of the first year of war (early in 43o) Pericles made a great appeal to the pride of his countrymen in his well-known funeral speech. But in ensuing summer, after a terrible outbreak of plague had ravaged the crowded city, the people became thoroughly demoralized. Pericles led a large squadron to harry the coasts of the Peloponnese, but met with little success. On his return the Athenians sued for peace, though without success, and a speech by Pericles had little effect on their spirits. Late in 43o they deposed him from his magistracy. In addition to this they prosecuted him on a charge of embezzle ment and imposed a fine of 5o talents. A revulsion of feeling soon led to his reinstatement, apparently with extraordinary powers. But the plague, which had carried off two of his sons and a sister, had left its mark also on Pericles himself. In the autumn of 429 he died and was buried near the Academia, where Pausanias (15o A.D.) saw his tomb. A slightly idealized portrait of Pericles as strategus is preserved to us in the British Museum bust, No. 549, which is a good copy of the well-known bronze original by Cresilas.
If we now endeavour to give a general estimate of Pericles' character and achievements, it will be well to consider the many departments of his activity one by one. In his foreign policy his standpoint was at all times purely Athenian. We may clearly distinguish two periods in his administration of foreign affairs. At first, joining to Cimon's anti-Persian ambitions and Themis tocles' schemes of western expansion a new policy of aggression on the mainland, he endeavoured to push forward Athenian power in every direction, and engaged himself alike in Greece proper, in the Levant and in Sicily. After Cimon's death he renounced the war against Persia, and the collapse of had the effect of completing his change of attitude. Henceforward he repressed all schemes of adventure and confined himself to the gradual expansion and consolidation of the empire. It is not quite easy to see why he abandoned this successful policy in order to hasten on a war with Sparta, and neither the Corcyrean alliance nor the Megarian decree seems justified by the facts as known to us, though commercial motives may have played a part which we cannot now gauge. In his adoption of a purely defensive policy at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War he severely tried the temper of the Athenians, but in the main his policy was sound, and the disasters of the war cannot fairly be laid to his charge.
In his attitude towards the members of the Delian League Pericles likewise maintained a purely Athenian point of view, and his appropriation of federal funds for Athenian purposes is difficult to justify. But he could hardly be said seriously to have oppressed the subject cities. Under Pericles Athens also attained her greatest measure of commercial prosperity, and the activity of her traders all over the Levant, the Black sea and the West, is attested not only by literary authority, but also by many Attic coins and vases. Pericles' home policy has been much debated since ancient times. His chief enactments relate to the payment of citizens for State service. These measures have been interpreted as an appeal to the baser instincts of the mob, but this assumption is entirely out of keeping with all we know of Pericles' general atti tude towards the people, over whom Thucydides says he practi cally ruled as a king. We must, then, admit that Pericles sin cerely contemplated the good of his fellow-countrymen, and we may believe that he endeavoured to realize that ideal Athens which Thucydides sketches in the funeral speech—an Athens where free and intelligent obedience is rendered to an equitable code of laws, where merit finds its way to the front, where mili tary efficiency is found along with a free development in other directions and strangles neither commerce nor art. In accord ance with this scheme Pericles sought to educate the whole com munity to political wisdom by giving to all an active share in the government, and to train their aesthetic tastes by making accessible the best drama and music. It was most unfortunate that the Peloponnesian War ruined this project by diverting the large supplies of money which were essential to it.
Pericles also incurred unpopularity because of his rationalism in religious matters; yet Athens in his time was becoming ripe for the new culture, and would have done better to receive it from men of his circle—Anaxagoras, Zeno, Protagoras and Meton —than from the more irresponsible sophists. The influence of Aspasia on Athenian life, though denounced unsparingly by most critics, may indeed have been beneficial, inasmuch as it tended towards the emancipation of the Attic woman from the over strict tutelage in which she was kept. As a patron of art and literature Pericles was a still greater force. He counted Sophocles and probably also Herodotus among his personal friends, and he left a profound impression on the mind of Thucydides. He is largely responsible for the splendour of Attic art in his time, for had he not so fully appreciated and given such free scope to the genius of Pheidias, Callicrates and Ictinus, Athens would hardly have witnessed the raising of the Parthenon and other famous structures.
Of Pericles' personal characteristics we have a peculiarly full and interesting record. He was commonly compared to Olympian Zeus, partly because of his serene and dignified bearing, partly by reason of the eloquence with which he held friend and foe spellbound. The same dignity appeared in the grave beauty of his features, though the abnormal height of his cranium afforded an opportunity for" ridicule of which the comedians made full use.