TWO:If private society exercised a demoralising influence on its most gifted members, and in turn suffered a still further debasement by listening to their opinions, the same fatal interchange of corruption went on still more actively in public life, so far, at least, as Athenian democracy was concerned. The people would tolerate no statesman who did not pamper199 their appetites; and the statesmen, for their own ambitious purposes, attended solely to the material wants of the people, entirely neglecting their spiritual interests. In this respect, Pericles, the most admired of all, had been the chief of sinners; for he was the first who gave the people pay and made them idle and cowardly, and encouraged them in the love of talk and of money. Accordingly, a righteous retribution overtook him, for at the very end of his life they convicted him of theft, and almost put him to death. So it had been with the other boasted leaders, Miltiades, Themistocles, and Cimon; all suffered from what is falsely called the ingratitude of the people. Like injudicious keepers, they had made the animal committed to their charge fiercer instead of gentler, until its savage propensities were turned against themselves. Or, changing the comparison, they were like purveyors of luxury, who fed the State on a diet to which its present ulcerated and swollen condition was due. They had filled the city full of harbours, and docks, and walls, and revenues and all that, and had left no room for justice and temperance. One only among the elder statesmen, Aristeides, is excepted from this sweeping condemnation, and, similarly, Socrates is declared to have been the only true statesman of his time.127"How did you get here?" she asked curtly. "How did you find me out?"
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