Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/306

284 284 HISTORY OF THE chiefly from the colonies in the east and west, established themselves at Athens, that the Athenians learnt the dangerous art of subjecting the traditional maxims of morality to a scrutinising examination. For al- though this examination ultimately led to the establishing of morality on a scientific basis, yet it at first gave a powerful impulse to immoral motives and tendencies, and, at any rate, destroyed the habits founded on unreasoning faith. These arts of the sophists — for such was the name of the new teachers — were the more pernicious to the Athenians, because the manliness of the Athenian character, which shone forth so nobly during the Persian war and the succeeding period, had already fallen off before the Peloponnesian war, under the administration of Pericles. This degeneracy was owing to the same accidental causes, which produced the noble qualities of the Athenians. Plato says that Pericles made the Athenians lazy, cowardly, loquacious, and covetous*. This severe judgment, suggested to Plato by his constant repugnance to the practical statesmen of his time, cannot be considered as just; yet it must be admitted that the principles of the policy of Pericles were closely connected with the demoralization so bluntly described by Plato. By founding the power of the Athenians on dominion of the sea, he led them to abandon land-war and the military exercises requi- site for it, which had hardened the old warriors of Marathon. In the ships, the rowers played the chief part, who, except in times of great danger, consisted not of citizens, but of mercenaries ; so that the Co- rinthians in Thucydides about the beginning of the Peloponnesian war justly describe the power of the Athenians as being rather purchased with money than nativet. In the next place, Pericles made the Athe- nians a dominant people, whose time was chiefly devoted to the business of governing their widely extended empire. Hence it was necessary for him to provide that the common citizens of Athens should be able to gain a livelihood by their attention to public business; and accord- ingly it was contrived that a considerable part of the large revenues of Athens should be distributed among the citizens, in the form of wages for attendance in the courts of justice, the public assembly, and the council, and also on less valid grounds, for example, as money for the theatre. Those payments to the citizens for their share in the public business were quite new in Greece ; and many well disposed persons considered the sitting and listening in the Pnyx and the courts of justice as an idle life in comparison with the labour of the ploughman and vinegrower in the country. Nevertheless, a considerable time elapsed before the bad qualities developed by these circumstances so far pre- vailed as to overcome the noble habits and tendencies of the Athenian character. For a long time the industrious cultivators, the brave war- f Thucyd. II. 121. Comp. Plutarch, Pericl. ?.
 * Plat. Gorg.p. 515. E.