It would be a pleasant exercise in style to criticise Jowett’s translation, and a still more profitable exercise to amend it. To a mere student of comparative values in Periclean Greek and idiomatic English, some of the errors in Jowett’s translation are obvious. Such a student needs not to refer with the scholar’s precision to the original Greek to be able, with the approval of all men of taste, to pronounce that such and such a phrase or word is most certainly not what may be called Periclean _English_. It stands to the totality of reason that it is not so. We may be certain, for instance, that Pericles, were he delivering his _Oration_ in English, with all the taste and training he possessed as a Greek of his age, would never have employed such phrases as these: “commended the law-giver,” “a worthy thing,” “burial to the dead,” “reputation ... imperilled on ... the eloquence,” “who knows the facts,” “suspect exaggeration.” Pericles, we cannot but suppose both from the man and his age, spoke with studied simplicity, that is to say, with perfect naturalness. The words and phrases he used were in all probability the most ordinary to the ear of the Athenian, and well within the limits of serious conversation. But such phrases as I have mentioned are not of the same English character; they are written, not spoken phrases, and approximate more to a leading commemorative article in _The Times_ than to a speech we should all regard as excellent. It would be interesting to have Lord Rosebery’s version of Pericles’ speech, or even Mr. Asquith’s. Both, it is probable, would be nearer the original than Jowett’s, though still some distance off perfection. In another fifty years perfection will be reached.