tatesmen,
philosophers, artists, dramatists, historians, men preeminent in all
departments of the higher life. Foremost among these was Pericles's
friend and counsellor, Phidias, a "king in the domain of art, as
Pericles was in political life."

"What an age it was, truly, when, as the companions of Pericles, there
were assembled in one city Sophocles and Euripides, Herodotus and
Thucydides, Meton and Hippocrates, Aristophanes and Phidias, Socrates
and Anaxagoras, Appollodorus and Zeuxis, Polygnotus and Parrhasius;--in
a city which had but lately lost AEschylus, and was soon to possess
Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle; a city which, moreover, to make the
illustrious dead its own, erected statues to their memory!"

"What should we expect the pupils of such masters to be? What they
were,--the masters of Greece. Thucydides says that Athens was at this
time the instructress of Greece, as she was the source of its supplies.
Behold this fine democracy going from the theatre of Sophocles to the
Parthenon of Phidias, or to the Bema where Pericles speaks to them in
the language of the gods; listening to Herodotus, who recounts the great
collision between Europe and Asia; Hippocrates of Cos, and the Athenian
Meton, of whom one founded the science of medicine, and the other,
mathematical astronomy; Anaxagoras, who eliminates the idea of God as
distinct from matter; Socrates, who establishes the principles of
morals! What lessons were these! Art, history, poetry, philosophy--all
take a sublime flight. There is no place for second-rate talent here.
The art that Athens honors most is the greatest of all
arts--architecture; her poetry is the drama--the highest expression of
poetic genius, for it unites all forms in itself, as architecture calls
all the other arts to its service. At this fortunate moment all is
great, the power of Athens as well as the genius of the eminent men who
guide the city and do it honor."

Such, in brief, is the picture of Athens in her greatest days, as drawn
by an eminent historian. The splendor and supremacy of the city in this
epoch were largely due to the constructive genius of one man--Pericles;
and if we study his private life to the end that we may discover the
formative influences which contributed to his greatness, we find that
the chief source of his inspiration was a woman--the Milesian Aspasia,
the most brilliant and cultured woman of classic times.

Aspasia ranks as one of the most remarkable w