where there is lamentable dearth of such guidance. Valuable
lines of ¹ Aristophanes inform us that the ill-treatment of
Pheidias by the Athenian demus, which warned Pericles too
surely of a coming assault upon himself, was antecedent to his
promotion of a certain obnoxious decree against Megara;
this, as we learn ² elsewhere, was already in force in 433-2 B.C.,
that is, within five or six years after the dedication of the
Parthenon, and only two or three after the Olympiad of
Pantarces' victory. Thus we obtain a limited interval within
which, but where exactly I cannot decide, must be set down
the renewed annoyance of the sculptor and the opening of the
most dangerous and malignant attack that Pericles was ever
called upon to encounter. Again it continued to be the policy
of his enemies to make proof of the feeling of the demus
towards him by assailing him obliquely through his friends,
and by charges that in some degree might appear to reflect
upon him personally, besides being insultingly offensive to
his sympathies.

Pheidias again was to bear the brunt in the first instance,
and this time fatally,--this time at the very culmination of
his largest Hellenic glory. How shall this be explained?
It is much to be feared that now again opportunity was
proffered by the same base jealousy that was active before,--
the irritability with which an ochlocracy as readily as a
tyrant, a trades union as readily as a self-made capitalist,
resents superiority as an injury and an insult. The art of
Pheidias was as conspicuously patriotic at Elis as at Athens;
the renown of Athens was scarcely more splendidly set forth
by the Parthenon and its adornments than by the artistic
and mythical embellishments of the Olympian temple. As-
sembled Hellas was challenged here to recognise an expression
of the gratitude for rescue which was indeed due to the gods
in the first instance, but due also to the Athenians as chief

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