his party had previously held. But in other things he did not comply with the impulses of the citizens, nor quit his own resolutions to follow their fancies, when, carried away with the thought of their strength and success, they were eager to interfere again in Egypt, and to disturb the king of Persia's maritime dominions. Indeed, there were a good many who were, even then, possessed with that unblest and inauspicious passion for Sicily, which afterward the orators of Alcibiades's party blew into a flame. There were some also who dreamt of Tuscany and of Carthage; and not without plausible reason; in their present large dominion and the prosperous course of their affairs.

This, their passion for distant adventure, Pericles 21 curbed, and unsparingly cut down their desires for a multitude of undertakings; and directed their power mainly to securing and consolidating what they had got, judging it quite enough for them to do to keep the Lacedæmonians in check; to whom he maintained all along a certain opposition; as was seen upon many occasions, and particularly by the course he took in the time of the holy war. The Lacedæmonians having gone with an army to Delphi, restored Apollo's temple, which the Phocians had got into their possession, to the Delphians immediately after their departure, Pericles, with another army, came and restored the Phocians. And the Lacedæmonians having engraven the record of their privilege of consulting the oracle before others, which the Delphians gave them, upon the forehead of the brazen wolf which stands there, he also, having received the like privilege for the

of Eu

22

vasion

by the Lacedæmonians,

B.C. 445.

Athenians, had it cut upon the same wolf of brass on his right side.*

That he did wisely in thus restraining the exertions of the Athenians within the compass of Greece, the events themselves bore witness. For, in the first place, Revolt the Euboeans revolted, against whom he passed over boea and with forces; and then, immediately, news came that Megara, and in- the Megarians were turned their enemies, and that a of Attica hostile army was on the borders of Attica, under Plistoanax king of the Lacedæmonians. So Pericles came with his forces back again in haste out of Eubœa, to meet the war which threatened at home; and did not venture to engage a numerous and brave army eager for battle; but perceiving that Plistoanax was a very young man, and among his counsellors followed mostly the advice of Cleandridas, whom the ephors had sent with him, on account of his youth, to be a kind of guardian and assistant to him, he privately made trial of this man's integrity, and in a short time, having corrupted him with money, prevailed with him to withdraw the Peloponnesians out of Attica. When the forces had retired and dispersed into their several states, the Lacedæmonians in anger fined their king in so large a sum of money, that, unable to pay it, he quitted Lacedæmon; while Cleandridas fled and had sentence of death passed upon him in his absence. This was the

The brazen wolf at Delphi was famous. A man who carried off some treasure from the temple, went to hide it in the thick woods of Parnassus. A wolf fell upon him and killed him, and for many days after came daily into the city and howled. At last the people followed him, discovered the gold, and set up this image of the wolf. (Pausanias, x. 14.)

father of Gylippus, who defeated the Athenians in Sicily. And it seems that this covetousness was an hereditary disease, transmitted naturally from father to son; for Gylippus also was caught in foul practices and expelled from Sparta for it; as is related in the life of Lysander.

When Pericles, in giving up his accounts of his office 23 of general, stated a disbursement of ten talents, as laid out upon fit occasion, the people, without any question, nor troubling themselves to learn the facts, allowed it. And some historians, among whom is Theophrastus the philosopher, have given it as a truth that Pericles every year sent a sum of ten talents to Sparta, with which he made presents to those in office, to keep off the war; not to purchase peace either, but time, that he might prepare at leisure, and be the better able to carry on the war hereafter. However, immediately after this, turning his forces against the revolters, and passing over to Euboea with fifty ships and five thousand men in arms, he reduced their cities, and drove out the citizens of the Chalcidians, the horse-feeders, as they called them*, the chief persons for wealth and reputation among them; and removing all the Histiaans out of the country, brought in a plantation of Athenians in their room; making them his one example of severity, because they had captured an Attic ship and killed all on board.

After this, having made a truce between the Athenians 24 and Lacedæmonians for thirty years, he had a decree The Thirty,

* Hippóbote, much like the Hippeis, the horsemen or knights, at Athens, and the Equites at Rome, wealthier citizens who maintained horses for war, and served in the cavalry.

Peace,

Years' passed for the expedition against Samos, on the B.C. 445. ground, that when they were bid to leave off their war with the Milesians, they had not complied. And as these measures against the Samians are thought to Samian have been taken to please Aspasia, this may be a fit point for inquiry about this person, what art or potent

The

War,

B. C. 440.

faculty she had, to captivate, as she did, the greatest statesmen, and to give the philosophers occasion to mention her, not unfrequently, and not to her disparagement. That she was a Milesian by birth, the daughter of Axiochus, is agreed. And they say it was in emulation of Thargelia, one of the women of the old Ionian times, that she made her addresses to men of great power. Thargelia was of a beautiful person, very charming, and at the same time sagacious; she had numerous suitors among the Greeks, and brought over all who had to do with her to the Persian interest, and by their means, they being men of the greatest power and station, sowed

the seeds of the Median faction up and down in the cities.* Aspasia, some say, was courted and caressed by Pericles upon account of her knowledge and skill in politics. Socrates himself sometimes went to visit her with his acquaintance; and those who frequented her would carry company their wives with them to listen to her. Eschines also tells us that Lysicles, the sheep-dealer, a man of low birth and character, by keeping Aspasia company after Pericles's death, came to be a chief man in Athens. And in Plato's Menexenus†, though we do not take the introduction as quite serious, still thus much seems to be historical, that she had the repute of being resorted to by many of the Athenians for instruction in the art of speaking. Pericles's attachment to her seems, however, to have rather proceeded from the passion of love. He had a wife who was near of kin to him, who had been married first to Hipponicus, by whom she had Callias, surnamed the Rich; and also she brought Pericles, while she lived with him, two sons, Xanthippus and Paralus. Afterwards, when they did not live happily together, he parted with her, with her own consent, to another man, and himself took Aspasia, and loved her with wonderful affection; every day, they tell us, both as he went out and as he came in from the city-place, he saluted and kissed her. In the comedies she goes

Thargelia," says Athenæus, was married to fourteen husbands; a woman of great beauty and cleverness."

+ Plato's Menexenus is a funeral panegyric. Socrates, who delivers it, pretends in the introduction that he had learnt it all from Aspasia, it was the remnant in fact of the lessons she gave Pericles, when she composed his funeral oration for him.