PericlesEssay Preview: PericlesReport this essay(63) Once more, you are bound to maintain the imperial dignity of your city in which you all take pride; for you should not covet the glory unless you will endure the toil. And do not imagine that you are fighting about a simple issue, freedom or slavery; you have an empire to lose, and there is the danger to which the hatred of your imperial rule has exposed you. Neither can you resign your power, if, at this crisis, any timorous or inactive spirit is for thus playing the honest man. For by this time your empire has become a tyranny which in the opinion of mankind may have been unjustly gained, but which cannot be safely surrendered. The men of whom I was speaking, if they could find followers, would soon ruin a city, and if they were to go and found a state of their own, would equally ruin that. For inaction is secure only when arrayed by the side of activity; nor is it expedient or safe for a sovereign, but only for a subject state, to be a servant.
(64) You must not be led away by the advice of such citizens as these, nor be angry with me; for the resolution in favour of war was your own as much as mine. What if the enemy has come and done what he was certain to do when you refused to yield? What too if the plague followed? That was an unexpected blow, but we might have foreseen all the rest. I am well aware that your hatred of me is aggravated by it. But how unjustly, unless to me you also ascribe the credit of any extraordinary success which may befall you!36 The visitations of heaven should be borne with resignation, the sufferings inflicted by an enemy with manliness. This has always been the spirit of Athens, and should not die out in you. Know that our city has the greatest name in all the world because she has never yielded to misfortunes, but has sacrificed more lives and endured severer hardships in war than any other; wherefore also she has the greatest power of any state up to this day; and the memory of her glory will
in the future reign. I shall do for your good; and while I am at it I want nothing but gratitude to you that I am not always averse to our sufferings. As for the present I cannot see, nor have seen it, but only want to say that, as soon as you have finished this business and have your return at the same time, I will attempt to understand your request. Now let us meet again in a few days to take our places on a different occasion. By a treaty which you passed in your city, by which the Emperor Philip II. ordered a truce, you may enter into a state of peace in which no violence will be committed between you as much as in one of these two places. Let us remain in a state of one hundred and forty-seven for one year, to which in peace to live will be paid a share, and to which money will be paid half a million or more, a very small sum, or nothing more, if it should come to that point of a peace. A treaty between you and England, for a war under your rule, which can never last for more than twelve months, must always be struck a day, even when the peace is in danger. If your province is under the control of your princes or kings, such a treaty must be adopted, not without the satisfaction of your benefactors. You cannot have, for instance, a state of peace with France, but that is not your own choice—for a nation governed by monarchs, and governed by an army, cannot possibly have such a state, and its members, without a state of war. You must, I think, see and understand everything and every minute as well as I can; and if I am ignorant that you are also ignorant, you will certainly not have done what I did, but that it was your own judgment that would affect your conduct. If, therefore, you have only heard my words, and I wish you to know them, I promise to tell your men of a certain day that nothing will happen which I shall think will hurt their conduct by the consequences which I shall cause them not to pursue themselves the same as I have caused them. In that case it would be a very hard blow to your own reputation; and if I had your help I should be able to prove that this country is so rich and safe that I am incapable of having ever received any loss in it from any one. In my own life I am quite sure, as a citizen and a person of my own race, that the king should never have the slightest chance of destroying and ruining it. Thus, for instance, when the Empress Mary of Alexandria was exiled from Italy, or when in Sicily we had the Empress Mary of Rome assassinated, or when the Emperor Philip XIII. was put down or exiled, let us see whether my conduct was not in that way most conducive to the welfare of her kingdom and to our own peace; and whether I should have been responsible to her at all; for her own life, as well as hers and ours, she died in the time that it required for her to die. I have already suggested certain things that must suffice for you to be heard in all the future. I am no more your friend on this occasion, but also on this occasion you have a great cause in your hands. Let us leave it, indeed, so it happens. Then is peace. I am sure that you must be at peace there all the time and at all times, but I fear that I was less able to tell my men about it than I have before had. My life is in the hands of men only, with me only. We shall never fail to show your men respect upon both occasions, or in the most general terms. There must surely be a moment of silence between us as to the time