Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets

Pericles: “I Shall Begin with Our Ancestors”

So the swindle goes on: one generation outdoing itself to undo the work of the others. Even the classics are full of the high‐sounding humbug.

“I shall begin with our ancestors,” said Pericles, in his speech for the dead soldiers of Athens.¹¹ This was after the first battles of the Peloponnesian War in 431–430 b.c. The custom was to give a public eulogy—a kind of Thanksgiving and Veterans Day rolled into one—each year.

“And if our remote ancestors deserve praise, much more do our own fathers, who added to their inheritance the empire which we now possess, and spared no pains to be able to leave their acquisitions to the present generation.”

Pericles began as George W. Bush might, honoring the achievements of the nation's fighting men. An unsentimental historian might wonder what those achievements were worth. Athens, like other city‐states, seemed prone to go to war with its neighbors for no particular reason and no particular advantage. Finally, it was brought low by plague, treachery, and other empire builders; all the Sturm und Drang seemed to get it nowhere.

Then, in his speech, Pericles made equally dubious remarks about Athens itself. These, too, might have come from the mouth of America's current president, if someone would write them out for him in short words. This little insight should put to rest forever the idea of Athens as a center of serious thinking. Pericles was a better humbugger than Bush, but the flatteries were the ...