enemies now doubtless found strong sympathy in their denunciations of
his character and policy. That unshaken and majestic firmness, which
ranked first among his many eminent qualities, was never more
imperiously required and never more effectively manifested.

In his capacity of _strategus_, or general, Pericles convoked a formal
assembly of the people, for the purpose of vindicating himself publicly
against the prevailing sentiment, and recommending perseverance in his
line of policy. The speeches made by his opponents, assuredly very
bitter, are not given by Thucydides; but that of Pericles himself is set
down at considerable length, and a memorable discourse it is. It
strikingly brings into relief both the character of the man and the
impress of actual circumstances--an impregnable mind conscious not only
of right purposes, but of just and reasonable anticipations, and bearing
up with manliness, or even defiance, against the natural difficulty of
the case, heightened by an extreme of incalculable misfortune. He had
foreseen, while advising the war originally, the probable impatience of
his countrymen under its first hardships, but he could not foresee the
epidemic by which that impatience had been exasperated into madness: and
he now addressed them not merely with unabated adherence to his own
deliberate convictions, but also in a tone of reproachful remonstrance
against their unmerited change of sentiment toward him--seeking at the
same time to combat that uncontrolled despair which for the moment
overlaid both their pride and their patriotism. Far from humbling
himself before the present sentiment, it is at this time that he sets
forth his titles to their esteem in the most direct and unqualified
manner, and claims the continuance of that which they had so long
accorded, as something belonging to him by acquired right.

His main object, through this discourse, is to fill the minds of his