Speech of Pericles :: essays research papers

(63) Once more, you are bound to maintain the proud dignity of your metropolis in which you all take pride for you should not covet the glory unless you will endure the toil. And do not calculate 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 gallant rule has exposed you. Neither can you resign your power, if, at this crisis, whatever timorous or inactive spirit is for thus playing the respectable man. For by this time your empire has become a tyranny which in the opinion of mankind whitethorn have been unjustly gained, only when 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 inactiveness is secure only when arrayed by the side of activity nor is it expedient or safe for a sovereign, but only for a causa state, to be a serva nt.(64) You must not be led away(p) 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 oppositeness has come and done what he was certain to do when you refused to yield? What excessively 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. precisely how unjustly, unless to me you excessively ascribe the credit of any extraordinary success which may befall you36 The visitations of heaven should be borne with resignation, the sufferings inflicted by an enemy with manliness. This has of all time 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 t o this day and the storage of her glory will always survive. Even if we should be compelled at hold to abate somewhat of our greatness (for all things have their times of