Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/203

 THE PERICLEAN IDEAL 179 again the echoes of it come back ; as late as 424 B.C. the word 'violet-crowned' could make an audience sit erect and eager, and even a judicious use of the ad- jective 'shining' by a foreign ambassador could do diplo- matic wonders.^ It was a passionate romantic patriotism. In the best men the love for their personified city was inextricably united with a devotion to all the aims that they felt to be highest — Freedom, Law, Reason, and what the Greeks called 'the beautiful.' Theirs was a peerless city, and they made for her those overweening claims that a man only makes for his ideal or for one he loves. Pericles used that word : called himself her ' lover ' (epao-TT;?) — the word is keener and fresher in Greek than in English — and gathered about him a band of similar spirits, united lovers of an immortal mistress. This was why they adorned her so fondly. Other Greek states had made great buildings for the gods. The Athenians of this age were the first to lavish such immense effort on buildings like the Propyl?ea, the Docks, the Odeon, sacred only to Athens. Can Herodotus have quite sympathised with this ? He cannot at least — who can understand another man's passion ? — have liked the ultimate claim, definitely repeated to an indignant world, that the matchless city should be absolute queen of her ' allies,' a wise and bene- ficent tyrant, owing no duties except to protect and lead Hellas, and to beat off the barbarian.^ There was a great gulf between Herodotus and the younger generation in the circle of Pericles, the gulf of the sophistic culture. The men who had heard Anaxa- 1 Ar. Eq. 1 329, Ach. 637. ^ Thuc. ii. 63, Pericles ; much more strongly afterwards, iii. 37, Cleon ; V. 89, at Melos ; vi. 85, Euphemus ; cf. i. 124, Corinthians.