Walter Savage Landor
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 90
Get eBook
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1879 edition. Excerpt: ... CCXXm. AXCIBIADES TO PERICLES. Potidaea has surrendered. The dead of the city are scarcely more shadows than the living, and yet how bravely they fought to the last! I should have been sorry for them a few months ago; but I have now learnt what it is to be a soldier. We must rise superior to pain, and then take another flight, farther afield, and rise superior to pity. Beside, the Potidaeans were traitors; and next, they were against us; and furthermore, they were so wicked as to eat one another rather than submit. This shows their malice. Now we have done nothing half so bad toward them; and I assure you, if others are disposed to such cruelty, I will take no part in it; for who would ever kiss me afterward? CCXXIV. PERICLES TO ALCIBIADES. The remembrance of past days that were happy, increases the gloominess of those that are not, and intercepts the benefits of those that would be. In the midst of the plague this reflection strikes me, on the intelligence I have received from Lampsacos. You likewise will be sorry, O Alcibiades! to hear that Anaxagoras is dying. Although he seldom conversed with you, and seldom commended you in private, believe me, he never omitted an occasion of pointing out to your friends any sign you had manifested of ability or virtue. He declined the character of teacher, yet few have taught so much, wherever his wisdom was accessible. Philosophers there have been indeed, at Athens and elsewhere, earnest in the discovery and in the dissemination of truth; but, excepting Thales and Pherecydes, none among them has been free from ostentation, or from desire of obtaining the absolute and exclusive possession of weak and ductile minds. Now the desire of great influence over others is praiseworthy only where great good...