a new epoch, the
most brilliant the world has known, a brief century packed with the art of
ages, filled to the tips with grace, lit with a light that still dazzles.
It was too fair. Willed by destiny, it menaced the supremacy of the
divine. "But by whom," Io asked, "is Destiny ruled?" "By the Furies," was
the prompt reply.

They were there. From the depths of the archaic skies they were peering,
prepared to pounce. After one war, another. After the rout of incoherent
Persia, a duel between Athens and Sparta, a duel of jealousy, feminine in
rancor, virile in strength, from which Sparta backed, yet only to return
and fight again, only to fall at last as Athens did, as Thebes did too,
beneath the might of Macedon, expiring all of them in those convulsions
that summoned Rome.

Meanwhile there was but light. Death had not come. In between was the
unexampled reign of beauty during which, after AEschylus and Pindar, came
the splendors of Sophocles, the magnificence of Euripides, Socratic
wisdom, and the rich, rare laugh of Aristophanes. That being insufficient,
there was Pheidias, there was Plato, art at its highest, beauty at its
best, and, that the opulent chain they formed might not sever too
suddenly, there followed Praxiteles, Apelles, Aristotle, Epicurus, and
Demosthenes. Even with them that chain could not end. Intertwisting with
the coil of death, it Hellenized Asia, Atticized Alexandria, girdled Rome,
resting in the latter's Lower Empire until recovered by the delighted
Renaissance.

The names of the Periclean age are high. There is a higher one yet, that
of Pericles. Statesman, orator, philosopher, soldier, artist, poet, and
lover, Pericles was so great that, another Zeus, he was called the
Olympian. If to him Egeria came, would it not, a poet somewhere asked, be
uncivil to depict her as less than he? It would be not only uncivil but
untrue.

Said Themistocles, "You see that boy of mine? Though but five, he governs
the universe. Yes, for he rules his mother, his mother rules me, I rule
Athens and Athens the world." After Themistocles it was Pericles' turn to
govern and be ruled. His sovereign was Aspasia.

Aspasia had come from Miletus with another hetaira to Athens which her
companion vacated to be bride of a Thessalian king, but where she became
the wife of one beside whom mere kings were nothing. It was her beauty
that first attracted Pericles. Beauty does attract, but only graciousness
can detain. In the h