aim,
he was the "First Citizen of Athens." The age in which he lived is
called the Age of Pericles.

Shakespeare died less than three hundred years ago, and although he
lived in a writing age, and every decade since has seen a plethora of
writing men, yet writing men are now bandying words as to whether he
lived at all.

Between us and Pericles lie a thousand years of night, when styli were
stilled, pens forgotten, chisels thrown aside, brushes were useless, and
oratory was silent, dumb. Yet we know the man Pericles quite as well as
the popular mind knows George Washington, who lived but yesterday, and
with whom myth and fable have already played their part.

Thucydides, a contemporary of Pericles, who outlived him by nearly half
a century, wrote his life. Fortunately, Thucydides was big enough
himself to take the measure of a great man. At least seven other
contemporaries, whose works we have in part, wrote also of the First
Citizen.

To Plutarch are we indebted for much of our knowledge of Pericles, and
fortunately we are in position to verify most of Plutarch's gossipy
chronicles.

The vanishing-point of time is seen in that Plutarch refers to Pericles
as an "ancient"; and through the mist of years it hardly seems possible
that between Plutarch and Pericles is a period of five hundred years.
Plutarch resided in Greece when Paul was at Athens, Corinth and other
Grecian cities. Later, Plutarch was at Miletus, about the time Saint
Paul stopped there on his way to Rome to be tried for blasphemy--the
same offense committed by Socrates, and a sin charged, too, against
Pericles. Nature punishes for most sins, but sacrilege, heresy and
blasphemy are not in her calendar, so man has to look after them.
Plutarch visited Patmos where Saint John was exiled and where he wrote
the Book of Revelation. Plutarch was also at "Malta by the Sea," where
Saint Paul was shipwrecked; but so far as we know, he never heard of
Paul nor of Him of whom, upon Mars Hill, Paul preached.

Paul bears testimony that at Athens the people spent their time in
nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. They were
curious as children, and had to be diverted and amused. They were the
same people that Pericles had diverted, amused and used--used without
their knowing it, five hundred years before.

* * * * *

The gentle and dignified Anaxagoras, who abandoned all his property to
the State that he might