Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/169

 BEGINNING OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR 147 uncertified, but backed by the most evident proofs, we shall be admired not less by posterity than by our contemporaries. Nor do we stand in need either of Homer or of any other panegyrist, whose words may for the moment please, while the truth when known would confute their intended meaning : we have compelled all land and sea to become accessible to our courage, and have planted everywhere imperishable monuments of our kindness as well as of our hostility. " Such is the city on behalf of which these warriors have nobly died in battle, vindicating her just title to unimpaired rights, 1 and on behalf of which all of us here left behind must willingly toil. It is for this reason that I have spoken at length concerning the city, at once to draw from it the lesson that the conflict is not for equal motives between us and enemies who possess nothing of the like excellence, and to demonstrate by proofs the truth of my encomium pronounced upon her." Perikles pursues at considerable additional length the same tenor of mixed exhortation to the living and eulogy of the dead ; with many special and emphatic observations addressed to the relatives of the latter, who were assembled around and doubtless very near him. But the extract which I have already made is so long, that no farther addition would be admissible : yet it was impossible to pass over lightly the picture of the Athenian com monwealth in its glory, as delivered by the ablest citizen of the age. The effect of the democratical constitution, with its diffused and equal citizenship, in calling forth not merely strong attach- ment, but painful self-sacrifice, on the part of all Athenians, is nowhere more forcibly insisted upon than in the words above cited of Perikles, as well as in others afterwards : " Contemplat- ing as you do daily before you the actual power of the state, and becoming passionately attached to it, when you conceive its full UOVTJ OVTE rfj irofafuy EirehdovTi ayavaKTijaiv e%ei ixp oluv Ka.K07ra.dei, ovre 7(f> virrjKoy KaTufj.efj.-^iv wf ov% M u^iuv apxerai. 1 Thucyd. ii- 42. irepl roiavrrjg ovv Tro/Uwf olde TE yevvaiuf SiKoiovvrff ui) uQaipE'&Tjvai avrrjv fia^ofievoi, ETe^evTr/aav, KOI TUV faiTrofievuv iravra rivcl '/cdf etfe/lav iinep avrije Ka.fj.vetv, I am not sure that I have rightly translated diKaiovvref /J.T) uQaipe&TJvai aiir^v, but neither Poppo, nor Goller, nor Dr. Arnold, say anything about tiiese words, which yet are not at all clear.