Why, though, did he have to do that? Why not deviate, as Lincoln would later do, to avoid swamps, deserts, and chasms? Like Lincoln, Pericles looked ahead to the ages. He even left them monuments and sent them messages. But he didn’t leave behind a functional state: it would take well over two millennia for democracy again to become a model with mass appeal. That’s not farsightedness in a steersman. It’s running your vessel onto rocks, with a long wait for rescuers to arrive.
