J76 HISTORY OF GREECE. as calculating, with long-sighted wisdom, the conditions on which ultimate success depended. If we follow the elaborate funeral harangue of Perikles, which Thucydides, since he produces it at length, probably considered as faithfully illustrating the political point of view of that statesman, we shall discover a conception of democratical equality no less rational than generous ; an anxious care for the recreation and comfort of the citizens, but no disposition to emancipate them from active obligation, either public or private, and least of all, any idea of dispensing with such activity by abusive largesses out of the general revenue. The whole picture, drawn by Perikles, of Athens, " as the school- mistress of Greece," implies a prominent development of pri- vate industry and commerce, not less than of public citizenship and soldiership, of letters, arts, and recreative varieties of taste. Though Thucydides does not directly canvass the constitutional changes effected in Athens under Perikles, yet everything which he does say leads us to believe that he accounted the working of that statesman, upon the whole, on Athenian power as well as on Athenian character, eminently valuable, and his death as an irre- parable loss. And we may thus appeal to the judgment of an historian who is our best witness in every conceivable respect, as a valid reply to the charge against Perikles, of having corrupted the Athenian habits, character, and government. If he spent a large amount of the public treasure upon religious edifices and ornaments, and upon stately works for the city, yet the sum which he left untouched, ready for use at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, was such as to appear more than sufficient for all purposes of defence, or public safety, or military honor. It cannot be shown of Perikles that he ever sacrificed the greater object to the less, the permanent and substantially valuable, to the transitory and showy, assured present possessions, to the lust of new, distant, or uncertain conquests. If his advice had been listened to, the rashness which brought on the defeat of the Athenian Tolmides, at Koroneia in Bceotia, would have been avoided, and Athens might probably have maintained her ascendency over Megara an I Boeotia, which would have protected her territory from invasion, and given a new turn to the subsc-
rjuent history. Perikles is not to be treated as the author of thfl
