Pericles

For it does not of necessity follow that, if the work delights you with its grace, the one who wrought it is worthy of your esteem. Wherefore the spectator is not advantaged by those things at sight of which no ardor for imitation arises in the breast, nor any uplift of the soul arousing zealous impulses to do the like. But virtuous action straightway so disposes a man that he no sooner admires the works of virtue than he strives to emulate those who wrought them.

The good things of Fortune we love to possess and enjoy; those of Virtue we love to perform. The former we are willing should be ours at the hands of others; the latter we wish that others rather should have at our hands. The Good creates a stir of activity towards itself, and implants at once in the spectator an active impulse; it does not form his character by ideal representation alone, but through the investigation of its work it furnishes him with a dominant purpose.

For such reasons I have decided to persevere in my writing of Lives, and so have composed this tenth book, containing the life of Pericles, and that of Fabius Maximus, who waged such lengthy war with Hannibal. The men were alike in their virtues, and more especially in their gentleness and rectitude, and by their ability to endure the follies of their peoples and of their colleagues in office, they proved of the greatest service to their countries. But whether I aim correctly at the proper mark must be decided from what I have written.

Pericles was of the tribe Acamantis, of the deme Cholargus, and of the foremost family and lineage on both sides. His father, Xanthippus, who conquered the generals of the King at Mycale,[*](479 B.C.) married Agariste, granddaughter[*](His niece, rather.) of that Cleisthenes who, in such noble fashion, expelled the Peisistratidae and destroyed their tyranny, instituted laws, and established a constitution best tempered for the promotion of harmony and safety.

She, in her dreams, once fancied that she had given birth to a lion, and a few days thereafter bore Pericles.[*](Cf. Hdt. 6.131 ) His personal appearance was unimpeachable, except that his head was rather long and out of due proportion. For this reason the images of him, almost all of them, wear helmets, because the artists, as it would seem, were not willing to reproach him with deformity. The comic poets of Attica used to call him Schinocephalus, or Squill-head (the squill is sometimes called schinus)

So the comic poet Cratinus, in his Cheirons, says:

Faction and Saturn, that ancient of days, were united in wedlock; their offspring was of all tyrants the greatest, and lo! he is called by the gods the head-compeller.

Come, Zeus! of guests and heads the Lord!

And Telecleides speaks of him as sitting on the acropolis in the greatest perplexity, now heavy of head, and now alone, from the eleven-couched chamber of his head, causing vast uproar to arise.[*](Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 2220.) And Eupolis, in his Demes, having inquiries made about each one of the demagogues as they come up from Hades, says, when Pericles is called out last:—

1. The very head of those below hast thou now brought.