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"They say that he has represented me and himself in Athene's shield." "That is the mob's doing, which hates all greatness! Anaxagoras banished because he was too wise; Aristides banished because he was too just; Themistocles, Pausanias.... What did you do, Pericles, when you gave the people power?" "What was lawful and right. I fall certainly by my own sword, but honourably.
And what noble figures on those front seats; Pericles, with Aspasia beside him, and all his friends Anaxagoras the sage, Phidias the sculptor, and many another immortal artist; and somewhere among the free citizens, perhaps beside his father Sophroniscus the sculptor, a short, square, pug- nosed boy of ten years old, looking at it all with strange eyes "who will be one day," so said the Pythoness at Delphi, "the wisest man in Greece" sage, metaphysician, humorist, warrior, patriot, martyr for his name is Socrates.
Little as we have been able to learn about them in one short hour, do they not seem to you worth studying and worth thinking about, as we look at the beautiful results of their work? The ancient Greeks worshipped the sun, and condemned to death one of their greatest philosophers, named Anaxagoras, because he denied that it was a god.
There was another man of note in Athens at this time, the philosopher Socrates, a truly wise and good man. He was no politician, however; and, instead of troubling himself about the state, he spent all his spare moments in studying, or in teaching the young men of Athens. Like his friend Anaxagoras, Socrates was a very deep thinker.
"I trust I may live up to their opinion of me," said Anaxagoras. Then Pericles looked at the children and laid his hand gently upon their tousled heads. "So you ran alone through Athens at night to warn me, did you?" he said. "And you have been in great danger for my sake? I shall know how to deal with those two pious old serpents of the Acropolis. Thanks to you, I shall not fall into their coils.
To have predicated the sun as a great molten mass of iron was indeed a wonderful anticipation of the results of the modern spectroscope. Nor can it be said that this hypothesis of Anaxagoras was a purely visionary guess. It was in all probability a scientific deduction from the observed character of meteoric stones.
Ask the young noble, who has been to him as a father; and his response will be 'Anaxagoras. Ask the poor fisherman at the gates, who has been to him as a brother; and he will answer 'Anaxagoras. When the merry-hearted boys throng your doors to sing their welcome to Ornithae, inquire from whom they receive the kindest word and the readiest gift; and they will tell you, 'Anaxagoras. The Amphiaraus of Eschylus, says, 'I do not wish to appear to be a good man, but I wish to be one. Ask any of the poets, what living man most resembles Amphiaraus in this sentiment; and his reply will surely be, 'It is Anaxagoras.
And when you arrived there, how large do you think you would find him to be? Anaxagoras, a learned Greek, was laughed at by all his fellow Greeks because he said that the sun was as large as the Peloponne-sus, that is about the size of Middlesex.
The popular tribunal which condemned Anaxagoras had evidently not risen to the metaphysical point of view. Hippocrates, who was concerned only with a select and instructed class, could say with impunity, speaking of what were called the god-inflicted diseases, that to his mind they were neither more nor less god-inflicted than all others.
Others, that it is the reflection of our sight upon the sun, which gives the resemblance of comets much after the same manner as images are reflected in mirrors. Anaxagoras and Democritus, that two or more stars being in conjunction by their united light make a comet. Aristotle, that it is a fiery coalition of dry exhalations.
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