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The age of Pericles was rich in such characters; Pericles himself, Pheidias, Plato, above all Sophocles, Thucydides also, Xenophon and Socrates, each in his own order, the perfection of one remaining undiminished by that of the others. They are ideal artists of themselves, cast each in one flawless mould, works of art, which stand before us as an immortal presentment of the gods.
In this point of view, doubtless, many or most writers are elaborate; and those certainly not the least whose style is furthest removed from ornament, being simple and natural, or vehement, or severely business-like and practical. Who so energetic and manly as Demosthenes? Yet he is said to have transcribed Thucydides many times over in the formation of his style.
Speaking generally his descriptions of the years '14, '15, and '16 "Years which reeled beneath us, terrible years" are as great and as memorable as anything ever recorded in human history. As a picture of a people undergoing the supreme test and seen in the fullest intimacy and absolutely at first-hand, it is equal to anything even in Thucydides.
Sometimes, however, we find a positive statement of the view that Tyche ruled over the gods also. It is characteristic of the state of affairs; men did not want to relinquish the old gods, but could not any longer allow them the leading place. If we return for a moment to Polybius, we shall find that his conception of Tyche strikingly illustrates the distance between him and Thucydides.
For myself, I must avow that, in all my reading and I have read Thucydides and have studied and admired the master statesmen of the world for solidity of reason, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion under a complication of difficult circumstances, no body of men can stand in preference to the general Congress of Philadelphia.
The only relaxation he permits himself, is to read Thucydides in the holidays. Everybody asks him out to dinner, on account of his brass-buttons with the Queen's cipher, and to have the air of being well with the Foreign Office. "Where I dine," he says solemnly, "I think it is my duty to go to evening-parties." That is why he is here. He never dances, never sups, never drinks.
No one was sure of anything except that the political quicksands were moving rapidly, and that it behoved them not to be behind others in forming advantageous alliances. The mood of the time could not be painted in more impressive words than those which Hyde uses, after the manner of Thucydides in describing the moral effects of the Peloponesian war.
But to return to the subject of our narrative. What a mystery is the soul of man! Here was Charles, busy with Aristotle and Euripides, Thucydides and Lucretius, yet all the while growing towards the Church, "to the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ."
Now we maintain the sufficiency of private judgment in interpreting the Scriptures in no other sense than that in which every sane man maintains its sufficiency, in interpreting Thucydides or Aristotle; we mean, that, instead of deferring always to some one interpreter, as an idle boy follows implicitly the Latin version of his Greek lesson, the true method is to consult all accessible authorities, and to avail ourselves of the assistance of all.
It must, however, be mentioned that the two contemporary writers from whom we draw our materials for the portrait of Cleon, the historian Thucydides and the comic poet Aristophanes, were both violently prejudiced against him.
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