Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/501

 CHARACTER OF BRASIDAS. 479 to be practicable. The fears of Athens, and the hopes of Sparta, in respect to the future, disappeared alike with him. The Athe- nian generals, Phormio and Demosthenes, had both of them acquired among the Akarnanians an influence personal to them- selves, apart from their post and from their country: but the career of Brasidas, exhibited an extent of personal ascendency and admiration, obtained as well as deserved, such as had never before been paralleled by any military chieftain in Greece : and Plato might well select liim as the most suitable historical coun- terpart to the heroic Achilles. 1 All the achievements of Brasidas were his own individually, with nothing more than bare encour- agement, sometimes even without encouragement, from his coun- try. And when we recollect the strict and narrow routine in which as a Spartan he had been educated, so fatal to the develop- ment of everything like original thought or impulse, and so completely estranged from all experience of party or political discussion, we are amazed at his resource and flexibility of char- acter, his power of adapting himself to new circumstances and new persons, and his felicitous dexterity in making himself the rallying-point of opposite political parties in each of the various cities which he acquired. The combination "of every sort of practical excellence," valor, intelligence, probity, and gentleness of dealing, which his character presented, was never forgotten among the subject-allies of Athens, and procured for other Spartan officers in subsequent years favorable presumptions, which their conduct was seldom found to realize. 2 At the time when Brasidas perished, in the flower of his age, he was unques- tionably the first man in Greece ; and though it is not given to us to predict what he would have become had he lived, we may be sure that the future course of the war would have been sen- sibly modified ; perhaps even to the advantage of Athens, since she might have had sufficient occupation at home to keep her from the disastrous enterprise in Sicily. Thucydides seems to take pleasure in setting forth the gallant exploits of Brasidas, from the first at Methone to the last at Amphipolis, not less than the dark side of Kleon ; both, though in different senses, the causes of his banishment. He nevei 1 Plato, Symp c. 36, p. 221, 2 Thuc. ir, 81. e56ar elvai Kara xuvra dyatfdf, etc