2285 PERICLES AND ASPASIA. . Clean to Wasia ASPASIA TO CLEONE. Abuses of many kinds, and of great enormity, have been detected by the Samians in their overthrown government. What exasperates the people most, and indeed the most justly, is the discovery that the ruling families have grossly abused the temples, to the high displeasure of the gods. Sacrilege has been carried to such a pitch, that some among them have appointed a relative or dependent to the serve of more than one sanctuary. You remember that anciently all the worship of this island was confined to Juno. She displeased the people, I know not upon what occasion, and they suffered the greater part of her fanes to fall in ruins, and transferred the richest of the remainder to the priests of Bacchus. Several of those who had bent the knee before Juno, took up the thyrsus with the same devotion. The people did indeed hope that the poor and needy, and particularly such as had lost their limbs in war, or their parents or their children by shipwreck, would be succoured out of the wealth arising from the domains of the priesthood; and the rather as these domains were bequeathed by religious men, whose whole soul rested upon Juno, and whose bequest was now utterly frustrated, by taking them from the sister of Jupiter and giving them exclusively to his son. Beside, it was recollected by the elderly, that out of these vast possessions aid was afforded to the state when the state required it; and that, wherever there stood one of these temples, hunger and sickness, sorrow and despair, were comforted and assuaged. The people, it appears, derived no advantages from the change, and only grew more dissatisfied and violent; for, if those who had officiated in the temples of Juno were a little more licentious than became the ministers of a goddess, they did not run into the streets, and through the country places, drunk and armed; nor did they seize upon the grapes, because they belonged to Bacchus ; nor upon the corn, because it is unwholesome to drink wine without bread; nor upon cattle, because man cannot live on bread alone. These arguments you may suspect of insufficiency: what then will you think when you hear another reason of theirs, which is, that the nation has no right to take from them what belongs to the goddess. The people cry, How then can it belong to you? Pushed upon this side, they argue that they cannot be deprived of their salaries, because they are from land. What! reply the citizens, Are not gold and silver the products of land also? But long possession .. We will remedy that too, as well as we can. The soldiers and sailors have the most reason to complain, when they see twelve priests in the enjoyment of more salary than seven thousand of the bravest combatants. The military are disbanded, and deprived of pay at the instant when their services are no longer necessary; yet no part, it appears, of a superfluous and idle priesthood is to be reduced or regulated; on the contrary, it is rapacious and irreligious to take away three temples from a venerable oc 1* |