


BOOK V.


FROM THE DEATH OF CIMON, B. C. 449, TO THE DEATH OF PERICLES, IN THE
THIRD YEAR OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR, B. C. 429.




CHAPTER I.

Thucydides chosen by the Aristocratic Party to oppose Pericles.--His
Policy.--Munificence of Pericles.--Sacred War.--Battle of Coronea.--
Revolt of Euboea and Megara.--Invasion and Retreat of the
Peloponnesians.--Reduction of Euboea.--Punishment of Histiaea--A
Thirty Years' Truce concluded with the Peloponnesians.--Ostracism of
Thucydides.


I.  On the death of Cimon (B. C. 449) the aristocratic party in Athens
felt that the position of their antagonists and the temper of the
times required a leader of abilities widely distinct from those which
had characterized the son of Miltiades.  Instead of a skilful and
enterprising general, often absent from the city on dazzling but
distant expeditions, it was necessary to raise up a chief who could
contend for their enfeebled and disputed privileges at home, and meet
the formidable Pericles, with no unequal advantages of civil
experience and oratorical talent, in the lists of the popular
assembly, or in the stratagems of political intrigue.  Accordingly
their choice fell neither on Myronides nor Tolmides, but on one who,
though not highly celebrated for military exploits, was deemed
superior to Cimon, whether as a practical statesman or a popular
orator.  Thucydides, their new champion, united with natural gifts
whatever advantage might result from the memory of Cimon; and his
connexion with that distinguished warrior, to whom he was
brother-in-law, served to keep together the various partisans of the
faction, and retain to the eupatrids something of the respect and
enthusiasm which the services of Cimon could not fail to command, even
among the democracy.  The policy embraced by Thucydides was perhaps the
best which the state of affairs would permit; but it was one which was
fraught with much danger.  Hitherto the eupatrids and the people, though
ever in dispute, had not been absolutely and totally divided; the
struggles of either faction being headed by nobles, scarcely permitted
to the democracy the perilous advantage of the cry--that the people were
on one side, and the nobles on the other.  But Thucydides, seeking to
render his party as strong, as compact, and as united as possible,
brought the main bulk of the eupatrids to act together in one body.  The
means by which he pursued and attained this object are not very clearly
narrated; but it was probably by the formation of a political club--a
species of social combination, which afterward became very common to all
classes in Athens.  The first effect of this policy favoured the
aristocracy, and the energy and union they displayed restored for a
while the equilibrium of parties; but the aristocratic influence, thus
made clear and open, and brought into avowed hostility with the popular
cause, the city was rent in two, and the community were plainly invited
to regard the nobles as their foes [251].  Pericles, thus more and more
thrown upon the democracy, became identified with their interests, and
he sought, no less by taste than policy, to prove to the populace that
they had grown up into a wealthy and splendid nation, that could
dispense with the bounty, the shows, and the exhibitions of individual
nobles.  He lavished the superfluous treasures of the state upon public
festivals, stately processions, and theatrical pageants.  As if desirous
of elevating the commons to be themselves a nobility, all by which he
appealed to their favour served to refine their taste and to inspire the
meanest Athenian with a sense of the Athenian grandeur.  It was said by
his enemies, and the old tale has been credulously repeated, that his
own private fortune not allowing him to vie with the wealthy nobles whom
he opposed, it was to supply his deficiencies from the public stock that
he directed some part of the national wealth to the encouragement of the
national arts and the display of the national magnificence.  But it is
more than probable that it was rather from principle than personal
ambition that Pericles desired to discountenance and eclipse the
interested bribes to public favour with which Cimon and others had
sought to corrupt the populace.  Nor was Pericles without the means or
the spirit to devote his private fortune to proper objects of
generosity.  "It was his wealth and his prudence," says