Had the enemies of Pericles thought of these things themselves they would have demanded public gratitude and honors as patriots and thoughtful statesmen. But in the affair of Pericles these enemies had sudden attacks of what they declared was world-conscience and a proper regard for the autonomy of other states. No matter that Athens was herself strengthened and that benefits to the members of the League were tremendous. Pericles, they shouted, not only desired to rule Athens in an absolute despotism and dictatorship but wished to extend his lusted empire. He was the worst tyrant ever to afflict Athens. In his ambitions he would destroy his country; he was mad at the very least. His concern for free workers and the rising new middle class was only hypocrisy. He sought votes and public approval, and wished to delude and confuse. He not only was bankrupting the treasury in his absurd and exorbitant plans for the acropolis, but had as his real intention the glorification of himself. He would elevate himself as a god, they shouted, for the blasphemous worship of the people. In these denunciations they were joined by the priests who feared, above all things, the enlightenment of the populace, for that would threaten their own positions. They feared expansion of benign power. Pericles’ own military establishment and naval officers came under the attack of his enemies. Peace would not ensue from alliances and mutual assistance to other city-states, no matter what Pericles said. He wished military and naval force to advance his secret ambitions and make subjects of his allies under his imperial command. His egotism must enrage the gods, who were too patient respecting him. They quoted the ancient proverb to the effect that they whom the gods would destroy they first made mad.
But for all these exhortations—and they were shouted in the Assembly and among the Archons and the Ecclesia and the Nine—the Athenians, in the great majority, were infuriatingly complacent with regard to Pericles. They trusted him. When calls were made for his impeachment and the revocation of his office the people remained calm and could not be incited. “Clods!” said the Archons to each other in rage and hatred, though the King Archon made some satirical epigrams concerning the public avowals of their love for their people and their private remarks. He was particularly ironic among the Archons, for Pericles had decreed that the poorer citizens must benefit through the establishment of the theorikon fund, which enabled them to attend the dramas presented by the Dionysia. “Shall culture and beauty be the total province only of those who can afford these things?” he had demanded. “God has surely intended that all men should be aware of the glory of art, and feast at its altars, according to their capacity to enjoy the feast.”
His aristocratic enemies declared that he was blaspheming the whole meaning of the Dionysia by encouraging the masses to invade, “like wild asses,” the purlieus of sanctity. Others insisted that he was at heart an anarchist and desired to create false and voracious appetites in the mob so that they would be incited to seize what was not lawfully theirs, and, in gratitude, raise him to the throne of a king. Had not Sophocles—no favorite of theirs under normal circumstances—asserted, “There lives no greater fiend than Anarchy. She ruins states, turns houses out of doors.” He had even demanded a remuneration of two obols a day for all jurymen, a cynical procedure for the sake of votes, it was sworn, for was it not a privilege to serve on juries and should jurymen be paid? The honor was enough. “Men cannot eat honor,” Pericles had replied. “When you demand the services of jurymen you have removed them from the fields and the shops, where they make their living, and so have deprived them of a certain sustenance.” So he was called a gross materialist.
The Athenians naturally detested Sparta, who was either their ally or their enemy, depending on politics or self-interest. Sparta’s way of life was hilarious to them, for were the Spartans not only dim of wit but demanded of women the toil they demanded of men, and did they not despise culture though they had pretensions to it? They were hardly more than animals, with their militarism and their interest only in the mechanics of living. Yet when Pericles fought against the militancy and encroachment of “barbarians,” the government had another of its periodic attacks of conscience and affirmed that Pericles was only ambitious and that he wished to direct attention of the people away from domestic problems in engagements and wars abroad. He was not truly protecting Athens and her legitimate interests. He was protecting his own power and the enlargement of it by ruthless naval and military involvements in areas not pertinent to the welfare of Athens. He was implacably murdering the “flower of the youth of Athens.”
In short, no matter what he did he was denounced for it by his enemies. “You cannot appease a tiger when it is determined to devour you,” he said to Aspasia. “All governments are tigers; the people are their prey. If populaces once learned that terrible fact they would sleeplessly watch their governments, their natural adversaries.”
His face daily became tighter and leaner with his anger. Despite his self-control he frequently found himself exasperated, not by the denunciations of his government, but because of their malice and stupidity and determination to ruin him, and above all by their hypocrisy. Once Aspasia said to him, “Al Taliph was the governor of his province, and never did his officials dare to dispute with him or denigrate him or defy him, or defame his name among the people. That had its advantages.”
Pericles laughed grimly at this. “But, his was a despotism under a higher despot. We Athenians have a democracy—of sorts. Better this confusion of malevolent and envious voices than despotism. It is a sign of considerable freedom of speech, and that, above all, is the very soul of liberty. God knows our liberties are daily becoming more restricted. But even the few remaining are rubies above price. Therefore, let my enemies shout. Should they halt their imprecations I should be seriously disturbed and would seek to know in what manner I have suppressed their freedom to criticise, curse and censure. I would then reverse it.”
“But they will not permit you the liberty you grant to them,” said Aspasia.
He shrugged. “Traitors cry for liberty—for themselves. But they will vehemently attack opponents who also desire that same liberty. It is the old story of tyranny.”
Writhing with rage over a populace that did not heed their exhortations against Pericles the government sought another way to destroy or mortally wound him. It had been seeking for years. They newly scrutinized his associates, particularly Anaxagoras and Socrates and Zeno and Pheidias, and, above all, Aspasia. Were they not all impious, heretical and a menace to the order of the State? A hetaira of despicable repute, and barefoot philosophers and challengers of orthodox religion! They were worthy of imprisonment, death or exile. They were inciting the people to rebellions against priests and authority, all capital crimes. The middle class was demanding reductions in taxes and tribute. The workers were demanding a larger voice in government. The very slaves were seething. Athens was in a dangerous position and the government was determined to save her. Their virtue inflamed them to excesses, at which Pericles only laughed. He also ignored them, or publicly jeered at their bureaucrats and humorously addressed the Assembly and said that bureaucrats were the excreta of civilization. Perhaps, he would say, they were sometimes necessary lest a nation become constipated, but one must always remember that they were only feces, with a smelly function.
His friend Jason said to him, “But who will do the recordkeeping and the paperwork, for there must be order, as you know, in government.”
Pericles said, “I do not dispute that, but bureaucrats have a way of proliferating, to increase their powers and importance. But when they become more onerous than government itself that is the time to decimate them and restore to them the truth that they are only menials and do not rule us, for all their busy pens and their endless rivers of interpretations.”
In retaliation—which he usually despised—he ordered officials to reduce their bureaucrats by one-third at once. “Athens,” he said, “cannot afford this waste of money and the removal of workers from private employment, where they are needed.” He assumed a countenance
of virtue, in mimicry and mockery of his enemies. “Above all,” he said, “let us save money. Are you not demanding this, yourselves?”
Only one part of the populace listened to the government, and that was the market rabble who hated Pericles for daring to call them less than slaves and exhorting them to work. Among them was the class of professional criminals, incendiaries, murderers and thieves. They were also for hire by government, which was an old story. Governments had, through history, used them to intimidate citizens who showed signs of indignation, just as they had always used bureaucrats.
What Daedalus lacked in personal power he made up in vituperations against Pericles, whom he now hated with a frenzied hatred. His fellow Archons began to be wearied by him, though they agreed with him and hated Pericles hardly less than he did. But while he merely frothed they consulted how best to depose Pericles and obtain his exile as an overweening and dictatorial Head of State. He was not invulnerable, so far. They dared not, as yet, pass resolutions against him and consult openly with the others of the government how to bring about his fall. They could only insidiously discuss with the many others the situation of his extravagance and his outrageous contempt for the weighty and heavy pendulum of government and its confusions and vacillations. “It is true that he is Head of State,” they would say, “but that does not make him a god, not in our form of democratic government! Nor does it give him the power of a despot. He is answerable to us,” and they added as an afterthought, “and to the people who elected us.” He sought to be king, with absolute powers and had not Solon, himself, warned of ambitious men?
Daedalus urged his daughter, Dejanira, to marry again, for she had many mercenary suitors who were also of noble if impoverished families. But she shuddered away from him, weeping, and declared that she loved only Pericles and still considered herself his wife, and that if he would permit her she would creep like a dog to his feet. Daedalus loved his daughter; therefore he was scandalized at this abjectness, and ashamed. So, he upbraided her, only to be answered by loud sobbing and a wringing of her hands. Once she even said to him, “Callias deserved his fate; I do not pity him, though I love him as my son. He received only a measure of justice. Another man would have been executed for that act.” Daedalus did not see the certain nobility of Dejanira’s words—for she had lost a measure of her obtuseness. He was only aghast and accused her of being an unnatural mother.
She believed herself blameless for the dissolution of her marriage, for had not Pericles on their wedding night declared his passion for her and had he not embraced her with desire? What had she done to deserve banishment from his house? But still she said to her father, “I despise such as Aspasia, but he had forced me from his bed long before he saw her. She is only a hetaira, and Pericles is of an illustrious house. I do not believe he loves her, for how could such an abandoned woman be respected by such as my husband? No, she is a passing fancy; there will be others.”
Daedalus, beside himself, shouted at her, “Do you not hear the gossip that she is with his child?”
Dejanira closed her eyes suddenly with grief and anguish. Daedalus went on: “He is not only not ashamed that he has lacerated the sensibilities of decent men. He flaunts her condition to all who will listen.
Yes, I know that the hetairai often bear children to their lovers, though it is loathsome in the eyes of the virtuous. But at least their lovers do not boast of the vileness as does Pericles.”
Dejanira opened her tearful eyes. “It is not in Pericles’ nature to boast, my father.”
“Hah! And how do you know this thing? Pericles was perhaps speaking the truth when he said to me that you were stupid.”
Seeing her suffering, and seeing her shrinking, he felt some compunction. But the next moment he was again incensed that Pericles had made his daughter suffer such despair. When Xanthippus and Paralus next visited his house he said to them, “Are you not ashamed that your father has begotten an illegitimate child by his hetaira, his whore? Have you considered what this will do to your name, his lawful offspring?”
“What will it do?” asked Xanthippus, a bland expression on his lively face. Paralus nudged him in his side, for he saw the brilliant mischief in his brother’s eyes and he was innately more compassionate than the irrepressible Xanthippus. But Xanthippus said, “We honor Aspasia, for she is not only the most beautiful woman in Athens, but is kind and loves us. She adores our father, and gives him laughter and consolations. Her situation is quite common and there are few outcries against it.”
“You do not care for the humiliations of your mother?”
Paralus said with his father’s own gravity, “My mother is no longer the wife of my father. What he does does not injure her in the esteem of others, for she has no part in any of his affairs.”
Daedalus seized on this with hope. “You do not, then, approve of your father?”
Paralus had more respect for his grandfather than did the youthful satyr, Xanthippus. So he replied, “I did not say that. Forgive me. I meant that what my father does, or my mother, is not the concern of either. They are not one.”
Xanthippus struck an orator’s attitude and quoted from Homer: “‘There is nothing stronger and nobler than when man and wife are of one heart and mind in a house. A grief to their foes, and to their friends great joy. But their own hearts know it best.’” He grinned at Daedalus. “That best describes my father and our beloved Aspasia.”
Paralus did not like this baiting of the aged Daedalus who stood blinking, now, trying to comprehend with his senile wits. So he said, while frowning formidably at Xanthippus, and resembling his father acutely, “Do not mind Xanthippus, Grandfather. He loves to tease. He means nothing by it.”
“I never say a word which is not pertinent,” said Xanthippus, who affectionately made fists at his brother and stood in the attitude of a pugilist.
After Callias, Daedalus loved Paralus best. He was afraid of Xanthippus and his acid wit, and so disliked him while still loving him.
He said, “Pindar has asserted, ‘Strive not to become a god. Mortal aims befit mortal men.’” (He had heard this in the Assembly only yesterday.) He added, “Your father strives to become a god before the people, for their worship. Men are but mortal; they are as dust before the gods, something your father does not realize.”
Xanthippus shook his naughty head and imitating Paralus’ gravity he proclaimed, “Sophocles has said, ‘Wonders are many, but none is more wonderful than man.’ My father is a wonder. Therefore, he is as wonderful as the gods.”
“Your syllogism lacks something,” said the temperate Paralus. “My father is not mad; he is above the folly of considering himself divine and his decrees are not infallible.” He smiled. “One should not quote philosophers as the ultimate authority, for they dispute with each other and are frequently contentious. They are also not quite sane, in our own dull interpretation of sanity.”
“It is true,” said Xanthippus, “that you are frequently dull, my brother,” and they laughed in each other’s eyes and pushed each other. “You should encounter Pan!”
Daedalus was not following this quick exchange. He said with bitterness, “Your father is trying to lead us into war again. Who profits by war, except tyrants such as he?”
“Hah!” cried Xanthippus. “Has not Homer said, ‘All dreadful glared the iron face of war, but touched with joy the bosoms of the brave’?”
Paralus said quickly, “Poets, too, often disagree with each other—as do the gods. I doubt, Grandfather, that our father is warlike, though he is a soldier. He is trying to unify Greece, and if he appears devious at times we must trust him.”
Daedalus was incredulous and his eyes bulged. “Trust your father? I should prefer to trust the harpies!”
“It is a matter of taste,” said Xanthippus, and was thrust from the room by the more forceful Paralus, to join their mother. While they travelled down a corridor Paralus said to his brother, “Why do you torment that poor old man, who has nothing but his hat
red to feed him in his age?”
“Hatred is the bread of Hades to which he is destined,” said Xanthippus, who knew little mercy and found life ridiculous. He did not have the cold control of either his father or brother. He had only wit and intellect, and a huge sense of humor which others found infuriating. Above all things he loathed stupidity, and could not forgive it, though Paralus often told him, “Blame stupidity not on the intransigent nature of him who possesses it, but on his fathers who bequeathed it to him and on the gods who decreed it. Does a swine ordain his snout, and the monkey his lice, and the vulture his stink? We are what we are, not by our own desire, but from the loins of our fathers and the wombs of our mothers, and nothing can change that, not government, not alms, not learning, not prayer. We are fixed in our natures from our conception, and we cannot escape our fate.”
“We can try,” said Xanthippus. “At least it is in our power to order the filthiest aspects of ourselves. Do we defecate in the streets? No, we go to latrines. Let the stupid go to theirs and learn discretion, so that they do not offend others.”
“We can perhaps teach the stupid,” said Paralus, sighing, “even though they destroy those who would teach them,” to which Xanthippus disagreed and said, “You have refuted your own argument.”
They loved each other dearly, they so dissimilar, and they entered their mother’s quarters in amiability, and arm in arm. Dejanira was overjoyed to see them. They visited her at least once weekly but she greeted them as if she had not seen them for years, with embraces and smiling tears. She did not immediately inquire about their health but asked about their father with an eagerness they both found moving. Their grandmother lurked in the background sullenly with an air of chronic disapproval. She listened to the conversation, grunting, and as she, like other Greek women, did not believe in idleness, she was sewing industriously. But her eyes, black and small, darted about like cockroaches. She had affection for the sons of Pericles, though her love was for her grandson, Callias. So she felt some sullenness towards Xanthippus and Paralus, who did not resemble her or her daughter in the least. Her animosity towards Pericles extended to his sons, if not with the hatred she had for the father. This conflict of emotions made her irascible and her grunts always became very loud in the presence of the youths. Though they showed her the courtesy she deserved as their grandmother they ignored her after the greetings.