excitement, and bring back the citizens to a more reasonable view of
their prospects, he summoned an assembly, and addressed the multitude
in terms of grave and dignified rebuke. He reminded them that they
themselves had voted for war, and remonstrated against the unfairness
of making him responsible for their own decision. If war could have
been avoided without imperilling the very existence of their city,
then that decision was wrong; but if, as was the fact, peace could
only have been preserved by ruinous concessions, then his advice had
been good, and they had been right in following it. The welfare of the
individual citizen depended on the welfare of the community to which
he belonged; as long as that was secured, private losses could always
be made good, but public disaster meant private ruin. On this
principle they had acted two years before, when they determined to
reject the demands of Sparta. Why, then, were they now indulging in
weak regrets, and turning against him whom they had appointed as their
chosen guide and adviser? Was there anything in his character, any
fact in his whole life, which justified them in suspecting him of
unworthy motives? Was he the man to lead them astray, in order to save
some selfish end--he, the great Pericles, whose loyalty, eloquence,
clear-sightedness, and incorruptibility, had been proved in a public
career of more than thirty years? If any other course had been open to
them, he would have been to blame in counselling war; but the
alternative was between that and degradation. The immediate pressure
of private calamity was blinding them to the magnitude of the
interests at stake--Athens, with all her fond traditions, and all the
lustre of her name. That they were sure of victory he had already
declared to them on many infallible grounds. But seeing them so sunk
in despair, he would speak in a tone of loud assurance, and boldly
assert a fact which they seemed to have overlooked. They were lords of
the sea, absolute masters, that was to say, of half the world! Let