indubitable signs of genius; indeed, in this particular he has a claim
on our admiration quite extraordinary and unparalleled. By his own
native capacity, alike unformed and unsupplemented by study, he was at
once the best judge in those sudden crises which admit of little or of
no deliberation, and the best prophet of the future, even to its
most distant possibilities. An able theoretical expositor of all
that came within the sphere of his practice, he was not without the
power of passing an adequate judgment in matters in which he had no
experience. He could also excellently divine the good and evil which
lay hid in the unseen future. In fine, whether we consider the
extent of his natural powers, or the slightness of his application,
this extraordinary man must be allowed to have surpassed all others in
the faculty of intuitively meeting an emergency. Disease was the
real cause of his death; though there is a story of his having ended
his life by poison, on finding himself unable to fulfil his promises
to the king. However this may be, there is a monument to him in the
marketplace of Asiatic Magnesia. He was governor of the district,
the King having given him Magnesia, which brought in fifty talents a
year, for bread, Lampsacus, which was considered to be the richest
wine country, for wine, and Myos for other provisions. His bones, it
is said, were conveyed home by his relatives in accordance with his
wishes, and interred in Attic ground. This was done without the
knowledge of the Athenians; as it is against the law to bury in Attica
an outlaw for treason. So ends the history of Pausanias and
Themistocles, the Lacedaemonian and the Athenian, the most famous
men of their time in Hellas.
To return to the Lacedaemonians. The history of their first embassy,
the injunctions which it conveyed, and the rejoinder which it
provoked, concerning the expulsion of the accursed persons, have
been related already. It was followed by a second, which ordered
Athens to raise the siege of Potidaea, and to respect the independence
of Aegina. Above all, it gave her most distinctly to understand that
war might be prevented by the revocation of the Megara decree,
excluding the Megarians from the use of Athenian harbours and of the
market of Athens. But Athens was not inclined either to revoke the
decree, or to entertain their other proposals; she accused the
Megarians of pushing their cultivation into the consecrated ground and
the unenclosed land on the border, and of harbouring her runaway
slaves. At last an embassy arrived with the Lacedaemonian ultimatum.
The ambassadors were Ramphias, Melesippus, and Agesander. Not a word
was said on any of the old subjects; there was simply this:
"Lacedaemon wishes the peace to continue, and there is no reason why
it should not, if you would leave the Hellenes independent." Upon this
the Athenians held an assembly, and laid the matter before their
consideration. It was resolved to deliberate once for all on all their
demands, and to give them an answer. There were many speakers who came
forward and gave their support to one side or the other, urging the
necessity of war, or the revocation of the decree and the folly of
allowing it to stand in the way of peace. Among them came forward
Pericles, son of Xanthippus, the first man of his time at Athens,
ablest alike in counsel and in action, and gave the following advice:
"There is one principle, Athenians, which I hold to through
everything, and that is the principle of no concession to the
Peloponnesians. I know that the spirit which inspires men while they
are being persuaded to make war is not always retained in action; that
as circumstances change, resolutions change. Yet I see that now as
before the same, almost literally the same, counsel is demanded of me;
and I put it to those of you who are allowing yourselves to be
persuaded, to support the national resolves even in the case of
reverses, or to forfeit all credit for their wisdom in the event of
success. For sometimes the course of things is as arbitrary as the
plans of man; indeed this is why we usually blame chance for
whatever does not happen as we expected. Now it was clear before
that Lacedaemon entertained designs against us; it is still more clear