according to a great modern authority, is the resource of ignorant
generals; when they know not what to do they fight a battle. It
was almost universally the resource of the age of Pericles; little
conception was entertained of military operations beyond ravage
and a battle. His genius led him to a superior system, which the
wealth of his country enabled him to carry into practice. His
favorite maxim was to spare the lives of his soldiers; and scarcely
any general ever gained so many important advantages with so
little bloodshed.

"This splendid character, however, perhaps may seem to receive
some tarnish from the political conduct of Pericles; the
concurrence, at least, which is imputed to him, in depraving the
Athenian Constitution, to favor that popular power by which he
ruled, and the revival and confirmation of that pernicious
hostility between the democratical and aristocratical interests,
first in Athens and then by the Peloponnesian war throughout the
nation. But the high respect with which he is always spoken of
by three men in successive ages, Thucydides, Xenophon, and
Isoc'rates, all friendly to the aristocratical interest, and all
anxious for concord with Lacedaemon, strongly indicates that what
may appear exceptionable in his conduct was, in their opinion,
the result, not of choice, but of necessity. By no other conduct,
probably, could the independence of Athens have been preserved;
and yet that, as the event showed, was indispensable for the
liberty of Greece."

* * * * *

II. THE ATHENIAN DEMAGOGUES.