reduce them is almost impossible, though the circumstances of
the public should necessarily demand a reduction. But did not you
likewise, in order to advance your own greatness, throw into the hands of
the people of Athens more power than the institutions of Solon had
entrusted them with, and more than was consistent with the good of the
State?

_Pericles_.--We are now in the regions where Truth presides, and I dare
not offend her by playing the orator in defence of my conduct. I must
therefore acknowledge that, by weakening the power of the court of
Areopagus, I tore up that anchor which Solon had wisely fixed to keep his
Republic firm against the storms and fluctuations of popular factions.
This alteration, which fundamentally injured the whole State, I made with
a view to serve my own ambition, the only passion in my nature which I
could not contain within the limits of virtue. For I knew that my
eloquence would subject the people to me, and make them the willing
instruments of all my desires; whereas the Areopagus had in it an
authority and a dignity which I could not control. Thus by diminishing
the counterpoise our Constitution had settled to moderate the excess of
popular power, I augmented my own. But since my death I have been often
reproached by the Shades of some of the most virtuous and wisest
Athenians, who have fallen victims to the caprice or fury of the people,
with having been the first cause of the injustice they suffered, and of
all the mischiefs perpetually brought on my country by rash undertakings,
bad conduct, and fluctuating councils. They say, I delivered up the
State to the government of indiscreet or venal orators, and to the
passions of a misguided, infatuated multitude, who thought their freedom
consisted in encouraging calumnies against the best servants of the
Commonwealth, and conferring power upon those who had no other merit than
falling in with and soothing a popular folly. It is useless for me to
plead that, during my life, none of these mischiefs were felt; that I
employed my rhetoric to promote none but good and wise measures; that I
was as free from any taint of avarice or corruption as Aristides himself.
They reply that I am answerable for all the great evils occasioned
afterwards by the want of that salutary restraint on the natural levity
and extravagance of a democracy, which I had taken away. Socrates calls
me the patron of Anytus, and Solon himself frowns upon me whene