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 whenever we meet.

Cosmo.—­Solon has reason to do so; for tell me, Pericles, what opinion would you have of the architect you employed in your buildings if he had made them to last no longer than during the term of your life?

Pericles.—­The answer to your question will turn to your own condemnation.  Your excessive liberalities to the indigent citizens, and the great sums you lent to all the noble families, did in reality buy the Republic of Florence, and gave your family such a power as enabled them to convert it from a popular State into an absolute monarchy.

Cosmo.—­The Florentines were so infested with discord and faction, and their commonwealth was so void of military virtue, that they could not have long been exempt from a more ignominious subjection to some foreign Power if those internal dissensions, with the confusion and anarchy they produced, had continued.  But the Athenians had performed very glorious exploits, had obtained a great empire, and were become one of the noblest States in the world, before you altered the balance of their government.  And after that alteration they declined very fast, till they lost all their greatness.