all that Pericles did to
make his native city the most glorious in the ancient world. Greek
architecture and sculpture under his patronage reached perfection. To
him Athens owed the Parthenon, the Erechtheum, left unfinished at his
death, the Propylaea, the Odeum, and numberless other public and sacred
edifices; he also liberally encouraged music and the drama; and during
his life, industry and commerce were in so flourishing a condition that
prosperity was universal in Attica.

At length, in 431, the long foreseen and inevitable Peloponnesian war
broke out between Athens and Sparta. The plan of Pericles was for Athens
to adopt a defensive attitude, to defend the city itself, leaving Attica
to be ravaged by the enemy, but to cripple the power of Sparta by
harassing its coasts. The story of the war must be told elsewhere; here
it is enough to say that the result was unfavorable to Athens for
reasons for which Pericles was only in small part to blame. He trusted
in the ultimate success of Athens, both from her superior wealth and
from her possessing the command of the sea, but he had not calculated
upon the deterioration in her citizens' spirit, nor upon the robust
courage of the Boeotian and Spartan infantry. Nor was his advice to keep
behind the city walls rather than face the enemy in the field, best
calculated to arouse the Athenians' courage. The plague ravaged the city
in 430, and in the autumn of the following year, Pericles died after a
lingering fever. His two sons had been carried off by the plague, he had
been harassed by a charge of peculation brought by Cleon, and the actual
infliction of a fine by the dicastery, while he had been without office
from July, 430, to July, 429, but before the last he recovered his hold
over the Ecclesia, and was gratified in the closing days of his life by
its legitimation of his and Aspasia's son.

As a statesman his greatest fault was a failure to foresee that personal
government is ultimately ruinous to a nation. He taught the people to
follow a leader, but he could not perpetuate a descent of leaders like
himself. Hence we cannot wonder, when days of trouble broke over Athens,
how that men spoke bitterly of Pericles and all his glory. Yet he was a
lofty-minded statesman, inspired by noble aspirations, and his heart
was full of a noble love for the city and her citizens. Plutarch tells
the story that, as he lay dying and apparently unconscious, his friends
around his bed wer