Greece -- Biography -- Early works to 1800; Rome -- Biography -- Early works to 1800
"Bowed down
With a dreadful frown,
Because matters of state have gone wrong,
Until at last,
From his head so vast,
His ideas burst forth in a throng."
And Eupolis, in his play of 'Demoi,' asking questions about each of the
great orators as they come up from the other world one after the other,
when at last Perikles ascends, says,
"The great headpiece of those below."
IV. Most writers tell us that his tutor in music was Damon, whose name
they say should be pronounced with the first syllable short. Aristotle,
however, says that he studied under Pythokleides. This Damon, it seems,
was a sophist of the highest order, who used the name of music to
conceal this accomplishment from the world, but who really trained
Perikles for his political contests just as a trainer prepares an
athlete for the games. However, Damon's use of music as a pretext did
not impose upon the Athenians, who banished him by ostracism, as a
busybody and lover of despotism. He was ridiculed by the comic poets;
thus Plato represents some one as addressing him,
"Answer me this, I humbly do beseech,
For thou, like Cheiron, Perikles did'st teach."
Perikles also attended the lectures of Zeno, of Elea, on natural
philosophy, in which that philosopher followed the method of Parmenides.
Zeno moreover had made an especial study of how to reduce any man to
silence who questioned him, and how to enclose him between the horns of
a dilemma, which is alluded to by Timon of Phlius in the following
verses:
"Nor weak the strength of him of two-edged tongue,
Zeno that carps at all."
But it was Anaxagoras of Klazomenae who had most to do with forming
Perikles's style, teaching him an elevation and sublimity of expression
beyond that of ordinary popular speakers, and altogether purifying and
ennobling his mind. This Anaxagoras was called Nous, or Intelligence, by
the men of that day, either because they admired his own intellect, or
because he taught that an abstract intelligence is to be traced in all
the concrete forms of matter, and that to this, and not to chance, the
universe owes its origin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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