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lence was about to follow affront, struck him with | sophy then stand aside; and behold in her place his dagger to the heart. the defender of his country and the saviour of his friend.

"I could not then calm thy anger with an embrace my too unhappy friend!" while the blood gurgled through the words, sobbed forth Melanthos.

CCVIII. ALCIBIADES TO PERICLES.

You commanded me, O Pericles, that I should write to you, whenever I found an opportunity on land. Phormio cast anchor before Naupactos: we command the Gulf of Crissa and check the movements of the Corinthians. The business of blockading is little to my mind. Writing is almost as insufferable: it is the only thing I do not willingly undertake when my friends desire it. Beside, I have nothing in the world to write about. We have done little but sink a few vessels and burn a few villages. It is really a hard matter to find a table to write upon, so quick and so complete is the devastation. I fancied war had something in it more animating and splendid. The people of the Peloponese are brave, however. They sometimes ask for their children (if very young) but never for their lives. Why can not we think them as little worth taking as they of giving?

I am heartily tired of this warfare; and Phormio has told me, in plain words, he is heartily tired of me. Upon this, I requested his permission to join without delay our army before Potidæa. I expected not only an uncivil refusal, but a sharp rebuke.

"The Gods have begun to favour us!" cried Phormio. "This offer is better than the luckiest omen. Alcibiades thou art the whitest of white birds; and thy flight, whichever wind it float upon, is worth a victory."

I would have been angry; but laughter sprang uppermost; so, throwing my arms round old Phormio's neck, I almost pulled him down with it.

"How now, stripling!" cried he, as willing to be angry as I was, "all this buffoonery before the commander of the fleet!"

CCIX. ALCIBIADES TO PERICLES.

The morning after my arrival, the Potidæans burst forth with incredible bravery from their gates, overthrowing all opposition. Now was my time. The heavy-armed in general, being old soldiers, were somewhat slower; and many of the enemy were assailing me when they came up: nor indeed was it then in sufficient force. I was wounded and overthrown, and, at the beginning, stunned: but presently I fancied I heard the sound of a brisk sword on armour over me, and felt something heavy fall on my legs. I was drawn forcibly from under the last of my antagonists. Socrates raised me up, and defended me from the weapons of not a few, unwilling to retire and irresolute to renew the engagement.

I write now, because I am so wounded I can do nothing else.

CCX. PERICLES TO ALCIBIADES.

You are courageous, my Alcibiades, to a degree which I hardly ever observed in another. This alone induces me to doubt whether you will become, so soon as we both of us wished it, an accomplished and perfect soldier. To rush against the enemy before your comrades, is not indeed quite so unseemly as to lag behind; yet it may be even more detrimental in an officer. With old troops, who know their duty, it is always so: with younger alone, who want encouragement, it may not be. Socrates deserved the first honours in the action: his modesty and his affection transferred them to the imprudent and the vanquished, whom he rescued from the shame of rashness and the wretchedness of captivity. With all my fondness for you, I could not have given you my vote; and, had I commanded against Potidæa, I must have reproved you in presence of the army.

Never, O Alcibiades, inflict on me the misery of passing so severe a sentence. I praised you before others did; I condemn you after them. Your high spirit deserved its reward; your temerity its rebuke. I, who have been the careful guardian of your fortune, am the more anxious one of your safety and of your fame. In my former letter I gave unobstructed way to the more pleasurable emotions: and, in everyone that I shall have occasion to write to you hereafter, I am confident of the same enjoyment. Reply to me as your friend, your comrade, the partaker of your pains and pleasures, and at most the director of your studies. But here, my Alcibiades, we must be grave and serious: I must, for once, not guide, but dictate: no answer is here admissible, excepting the answer of a soldier to his general.

Hardly could it have been expected that "the whitest of white birds" should have been so speedily on the wing. The day had not closed when Phormio told me, that, knowing my fickleness, he had given orders for my voyage back. Every voyage is prosperous that brings me within sight of an enemy worth seeing. Brave fellows these Potidæans! They never lose their appetite, even in the greatest want of air and exercise. You, who hear everything, must know that they eat one another rather than surrender. I have been but three days in the camp, where, to my delight, I found the brave and kindly Socrates. Do you disapprove of my renewing my intimacy with her judge Philosophy in the midst of battles? Let Philo- Kallisteia.

CCXI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

You know that to Niconöe was awarded by Priapos the prize of beauty in the In return for this favourable decision,

she dedicated to him a golden ewer and a fawnskin. Under his image a poet, who perhaps was her admirer, and who was grateful to the arbiter, wrote this epigram.

Niconöe is inclined to deck

Thy ruddy shoulder and thick neck
With her own fawn-skin, Lampsacene!
Beside, she brings a golden ewer
To cool thy hands in, very sure

Among what herbage they have been.
Ah! thou hast wicked leering eyes,
And any maiden were unwise

Who should invest thee face to face;
Therefore she does it from behind,
And blesses thee, so just and kind

In giving her the prize for grace.

Here are some others, I believe by Erinna herself, but I find inscribed on them Address to Erinna.

Ay, shun the dance and shun the grape,
Erinna! thou shalt not escape.
Idle the musing maid who thinks
To lie unseen by sharp-eyed lynx
Where Bacchus, god of joy and truth,

Hunts with him, hunts for bashful youth.
So take the thyrsus if you please,
And come and join the Monades.

CCXII. ANAXAGORAS TO ASPASIA.

We are now so near winter that there may not be, after the vessel which is about to sail, any more of them bound for Athens, all the remainder of the year. And who knows what another may bring or take away?

I remain in health, but feeble. Life slips from me softly and imperceptibly. I am unwilling to tire myself by blowing a fire which must soon go out, whether I blow it or not. Had I any species of curiosity to send you, were it pebble, sea-weed, or new book, I would send it; not (for it is idle to talk so) as a memorial of me. If the friend is likely to be forgotten, can we believe that any thing he has about him will repose a longer time on the memory?

failed me.

Thus far had I written, when my strength Stesicles and Apollodoros have told me I must prepare for a voyage. The passage is neither so broad nor so stormy as the Hellespont.

I was resolved not to go until I had looked in my garden for some anemonies, which I recollected to have seen blossoming the other day. It occurred to me that usually they appear in spring: so does poetry. I will present to you a little of both; for the first time. They are of equal value; and are worth about as much as the pebble, or the sea-weed, or the new book.

Where are the blooms of many dyes
That used in every path to rise?

Whither are gone the lighter hours?
What leave they? I can only send
My wisest, loveliest, latest friend

These weather-worn and formless flowers.

Think me happy that I am away from Athens; I, who always lose my composure in the presence of crime or calamity. If anyone should note to

you my singularities, remembering me a year hence, as I trust you and Pericles will do, add to them, but not aloud, a singularity of felicity, "He neither lived nor died with the multitude.” There are however some Clazomenians who know that Anaxagoras was of Clazomenai.

CCXIII. ALCIBIADES TO PERICLES.

Pericles! I did wrong and rashly. The praises of the Athenians are to me as the hum of insects : they linger in my ear, but are senseless and unexciting. I swear to you I will do better; but I must see you before I go.

Aspasia, whose letter you have sent me since, is even more severe than you have been; and she has neither right nor reason. She is the only woman upon earth that ever railed at rashness, the only one that could distinguish it from fortitude. But every man must be rash once: it saves him from as much inconvenience and mischief as being oftener rash would incur.

Do not consider this nonsense as vindication or reply; and let it not stand in the way of your pardon.

CCXIV. ASPASIA TO ALCIBIADES.

Are you not ashamed, young man, to leave the aged behind you, with all their wounds, merely to show how dexterous you are become in the management of your sword? Unworthy Alcibiades ! Never expect that the Athenians, whatever be their levity and inconsiderateness, will award to you the honour of superiority in valour. Socrates well deserved it; not for saving a life which on the next occasion will be thrown away, but for giving to every one capable of profiting by it, an example of steadiness and constancy. Pericles, I hope, will not allow you to disembark, until you have acquired the rudiments of discipline, in the only art in which you ever seemed likely to excell. Have you forgotten too that the pestilence is raging in the city? O rash Alcibiades! the sight of Pericles himself, to you at least, could hardly have been worth so desperate a hazard. But Pericles will reprove you, confident boy! Let me hear no more of you until I have heard that he has granted you his forgiveness.

CCXV. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.

Censure not too severely, O my Pericles, your inconsiderate cousin! In these days, when so many of your adherents are fallen, some by the fever, some by war, we must be parsimonious in the treasury of friendship, at all times far from inexhaustible.

A hundred men of more wisdom and more virtue than Alcibiades would prevail much less with the multitude, should anything sinister befall you. May the Gods avert it! but I always fear something; and, what certainly is more foolish, I fancy my presence could avert from you any

calamity. I wish I were persuaded that the Im- will perceive, in the broadest Dorian, on the extramortals hear us: I would then so perpetually pray ordinary death of Eschylus. Probably the un for you as hardly to give myself time to read your happy poet was murdered by some enemy or some letters; and you should quarrel with the short- robber. He was found with his skull fractured, ness of mine. But reason, which strengthens our and, may-be, with a tortoise near him. But who religion, weakens our devotion. Happy are those in the world can believe that an eagle dropped it who have retained throughout life their infantine from above? that the quickest in sight of all anisimplicity, which nurses a tractable idol in an un-mals mistook a bald head for a rock? And did suspicious bosom, is assured it knows and heeds the voice addressing it, and shuts it up again with a throb of joy, and keeps it warm. For this, the mind must be nurtured to the last with the same milky food as in childhood; the Gods must have their tangible images, and must laugh to us out of ivy and flowers.

Thinking of you, I had forgotten that I began to write in favour of Alcibiades. Lest, by taxing him with impetuosity and imprudence, you should alienate his fickle mind, I myself have written to him with quite enough severity: at least I think so you shall judge for yourself. When you have perused it, let it go to him instantly; for here we are uncertain at what point the troops will land from Potidea. I shall be grieved if anything happens to him. He has more life in him than is enough to animate a city; yet the point of an arrow may extinguish it in an instant. With however long experience before us, we yet might wonder that what is so animated should ever cease at all. You men often talk of glorious death, of death met bravely for your country: I too have been warmed by the bright idea in oratory and poetry: but ah! my dear Pericles! I would rather read it on an ancient tomb than on a recent one.

CCXVI. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.

I had already warned Alcibiades of his imprudence and irregularity; but your letter will ensure his correction. The reply he sent me is worthy of a man formed for command. We must watch over him he will do great good or great evil. Those who are most capable of both, always end miserably; for, although they may have done many things well, yet the first or second that they do badly is their ruin. They know not whom to choose as their follower up the scaling-ladder, nor when to loosen their grasp of the pinnacle. Intractable as you may think Alcibiades, there is not a youth in Athens so easily led away by a weaker judgment than his own. He wishes to excell in everything, and succeeds: but this wish brings him into contact with too many; and he can not at present push them off far enough from him to see plainly and distinctly what they are. He will soon stand above them and know them better.

I must leave off: the dying call me forth. Blessings on my Aspasia and her little Athenian!

ever man walk in the fields of Sicily with his head uncovered? If he did, his death might easily be accounted for, without a tortoise or eagle: a sunbeam is stronger and surer. Whenever I find a book containing this gross absurdity, I instantly throw it aside, as the effusion of an idle and silly writer, and am well assured it must be incapable of instructing or interesting me.

The petulant author of the verses you will find below, is evidently a disappointed poet. Hiero and Theron could never treat Eschylus with neglect or with indifference. Little as may be our regard and our respect for royalty, we hardly can suppose any king, who knows Greek, so barbarous and stupid as to fancy in himself a nobility more exalted than in Eschylus, or gifted by the Gods with a higher office, than stewardship to the greatest of men among whom he himself is the richest.

Bard of Eleusis! art thou dead
So strangely! can it be
An eagle dropt upon thy head
A tortoise? no, not he.

They who devised the fable, marr'd
The moral of their song:
They meant the eagle by the bard

But placed the creature wrong.
Quickest in courts those ever move
Whom nature made most slow:
Tortoise wears plumes and springs above
While eagle moults below.

I have room enough for another short piece, which carries with it somewhat more than the dialect for a testimonial of its atticism. They who are ill-trained in the course of poetry, puff and blow, as the trainers express it, at short distances: they who are trained better, move with little difficulty and no appearance of exertion. Strength does not lie in varicose veins. This is, however, a subject which requires grace only. You like to drink water; but you like to drink it from a silver cup.

TO LOVE.

Where is my heart, perfidious boy?
Give it, O give it, back again!

I ask no more for hours of joy;
Lift but thy hand and burst my chain.
LOVE'S REPLY.
Fond man! the heart we rashly gave
She values not, yet won't restore :
She passes on from slave to slave;
Go, go; thy heart is thine no more.

CCXVII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

The verses I shall presently write out for you,

CCXVIII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.

The Athenians, my dear Aspasia, are reported

at the bottom of my letter, are composed, as you to be a religious people; yet I have often wondered

at their freedom and boldness, in depriving the at least the warmth of my affection. I am inImmortal Gods of their power on some occasions, duced to believe, O Cleone, that the Deity you and on others in accosting them with familiarity venerate so profoundly and solemnly, is far from and disrespect. It would have been satisfactory unforgiving. In the verses I now send you, there to me if you had related what befell the unhappy man who presumed to call perfidious and boy one of the most powerful. Certainly we are inspired by our holy religion to believe that Love is youthful: but Anacreon is the only poet who represents him as a child. There is an absurdity in making him appear younger than we ourselves are when we begin to be under the influence of the passion. But the graver fault is in calling him (what I tremble to write) perfidious! You will relieve my mind of some anxiety by assuring me that nothing sinister has befallen so captious and irreverential a votary. If his fault is recent, and if he is yet living, it would be wise and considerate in him to implore the blessed mother of this almighty deity, that she may be pleased to avert his anger, should he not have forgotten the offence. I say it, because the most experienced and the most pious are of opinion that he is oftener oblivious. Was not he both wiser and more pious who wrote a poem in a very different spirit, and, whether more or less attic, fuller of thought, consistency, and reflection. If you have forgotten it, let me bring it back again, and fix it as firmly as may be in your memory:

appears to be a proof of it; for the writer seems to have treated him not only as a child, but a child much addicted to mischief; yet never was man treated in return with more benignity. I should tremble at the manner in which the Fates are mentioned, if matters were left at their arbitration. But we know the contrary: we know positively that they can spin only what is on their distaffs, and not a thread can be turned to a new pattern.

Ah! what a blessed privilege it is

To stand upon this insulated rock
On the north side of youth! I see below

Many at labour, many at a game

Than labour more laborious, wanting breath
And crying help! What now! what vexes them?
Only a laughing maid and winged boy,
Obstinate boy indeed, who will not shoot
His other arrow, having shot the first.

Where is the harm in this? yet they meanwhile
Make all the air about them pant with sobs,
And with one name weary poor Echo down.

Aspasia! I too have suffered; and Love knows it: yet I dare not even tell him that he knows it. To remind him would be indelicate; to complain would be irreligious. And what could all his power do for me now? But this, believe me, is not the reason why I endure in silence, and bend in submission to the arbitrement of the Gods. Surely, too surely, whoever has breathed has sighed. When we have lost, O Aspasia, those we love, whether by impassable distance or any other dispensation of the Gods, youth is less happy than age, and age than death.

CCXIX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.

Youth, like the aloe, blossoms but once, and its flower springs from the midst of thorns: but see with what strength and to what height the aloeflower rises over them: be not surpassed by it.

On love, on grief, on every human thing,
Time sprinkles Lethe's water with his wing.

If I continue to reason, or to moralize, or to versify, you will begin to doubt my sincerity, or

I would be grave, Cleone! I would indeed but really there is no harm in laughing at children and old women, Gods or not. We know they have a good deal to do in the affairs of this world, however: and it is unwise to laugh at those who are as capable of extinguishing our laughter as of exciting it.

"What art thou doing with those shears?"
I shouted in an urchin's ears,

Who notched them and who made them grate,
While three old women near him sate,
And scowl'd at every scratch they heard,
But never said a single word.

In a dark corner thus all three
Sate with an elbow on the knee,
And three blue fingers held their tips

Imprest on three still bluer lips.

Although the froward boy I chid

Did not (boys will not) what was bid,

His countenance was not malign

39

As that was of the elder trine.
"Look at those frightful ones!" he said,
And each one shook her thin-hair'd head.
"Nay, never fear the angry crones
Said he; and each replied with groans.
"They are all vicious; for they knew
That what I did I did for you,
Contemplating the fairest maid
That ever with my bow has play'd.

Crones! by my help your shears have got

A set of teeth, which you have not.
Come! come! Death's bridemaids! snip as fast
As snip ye may, her years shall last
In spite of you, her beauty bloom
On this side and beyond the tomb:
I swear by Styx."

"And I by thee,"
Cried I," that what thou sayst shall be."

CCXX. ALCIBIADES TO PERICLES.

Pray why did you tell Phanomachos to station some confidential one near me, who should be an eternal check on me? There is little chance that I should do anything extravagant, unless the Potidæans invite me to dinner and I accept the invitation. I will not allow any man to defend me before I stand in need of defence, and before I have deserved to save my life by proving it worth something. I should quarrel with Socrates himself, much more with another, presuming to take what belongs to me, of danger or of glory. It is not kind in you, nor open, nor prudent. Would you wish anyone to say "Pericles takes care of his own relatives!" This ought only

to be said of the vilest men in the worst governments; and of you until now it never could be. You have given no such orders in regard to Xanthippos. He may be as rash and violent as he pleases. Even here he dares to call me Neaniskos and Kouridion and Ta paidika.* By Castor! if he were not the son of Pericles, his being my cousin should not save from a stroke of the sabre that fierce disdainful visage. I promise you it shall soon be seen which of us is the braver and the better man. I would not say this to you unless that you might let him know my sentiments. I have no words, written or spoken, for the contumelious my complaints are for the ear of those only who are kind to me.

CCXXI. PERICLES TO ALCIBIADES.

Do not think, my Alcibiades, that I recommended you to the guardianship of Phanomachos, in order that he should exercise over you a troublesome vigilance of controul, or indulge toward you an unmilitary partiality. But I am more intimate with him than I am with Xenophon or Aristoclides or Hestiodoros;+ and having sons, he knows that restraints are often necessary on the impatience of military ardour.

Your letter is a proof that I judged rightly. My praises of your valour are lost amid those of the army and of the city; but the delight it has given me is, I am confident, one among the thoughts that have assuaged your wounds. On your return, the citizens will express their sense of your conduct.

Endeavour to prove, now that you are acknowledged to be the first in bravery, that you are more discreet than Xanthippos. Many in every army are so nearly on an equality in courage, that any attempt of theirs to show a superiority is ineffectual. Unbecoming language can neither prove nor disprove it, but must detract from its worth and merit. Discretion, on the contrary, is the sure sign of that presence of mind without which valour strikes untimely and impotently. Judgment alone makes courage available, and conciliates power with genius. Consider that you never will have attained the scope of your ambition, until you lead and govern those men against whom your passions now exasperate you: and, unless you do conciliate them, you never can induce them to acknowledge your superiority, much less submit to your governance. It is best the germs of power should spring forth early, that they may have time enough for gaining strength: therefore I write to you, no longer as a youth in pupilage, but as a candidate for the highest offices of the commonwealth.

Try whether your forbearance may not produce a better effect on Xanthippos than my remonstrances. I write to you rather than to him, be

*This expression was usually reproachful; not always;

as we see in Plato.

These three were appointed to commands with Pha

nomachos.

cause I rely more firmly on your affection. Be worthy of such a secret, O Alcibiades! and think how highly I must esteem your prudence and manliness, when I delegate to you, who are the younger, the power of correcting in him the faults which I have been unable to eradicate or suppress. Go, and, in the spirit with which I send it, give my love to Xanthippos. He may neglect it, he may despise it, he may cast it away, but I will gather it all up again for him: you must help me.

CCXXII. ALCIBIADES TO PERICLES.

Pericles, I was much edified by your letter; but, pardon me, when I came to the close of it I thought you rather mad.

"What!" said I "beard this panther!"

However, when I had considered a little more and a little better on it, I went to him and delivered your love. He stared at me, and then desired to see the direction. "Ay," said he, "I remember the handwriting. He oftener writes to me than I to him. I suppose he has less to do and less to think of."

The few other words he added are hardly worth the trouble of repetition: in fact, they were not very filial. Dear Pericles! I would love him, were it only out of perversity. But, beside all other rights over me, you have made me more disposed than ever to obey you, in making me more contented with myself, as you have by this commission. I may do something yet, if we can but fumigate or pray away the plague. Of two thousand four hundred soldiers, who landed but forty days before me from the Bosphorus, under the command of Agnon son of Nikias, one thousand and fifty are already dead. I shall have nobody to persuade or manage, or even to fight with, if we go on so.

CCXXIII. ALCIBIADES TO PERICLES.

Potidea has surrendered. The dead of the city are scarcely more shadows than the living, and yet how bravely they fought to the last! I should have been sorry for them a few months ago; but I have now learnt what it is to be a soldier. We must rise superior to pain, and then take another flight, farther afield, and rise superior to pity. Beside, the Potidæans were traitors; and next, they were against us; and furthermore, they were so wicked as to eat one another rather than submit. This shows their malice. Now we have done nothing half so bad toward them; and I assure you, if others are disposed to such cruelty, I will take no part in it: for who would ever kiss me afterward?

CCXXIV. PERICLES TO ALCIBIADES.

The remembrance of past days that were happy, increases the gloominess of those that are not, and intercepts the benefits of those that would be.

In the midst of the plague this reflection

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