222 B. Pcrriii, 



charge that Pericles feared the results of threatened prosecution, 

 ■' and so kindled into flame the threatening" and smouldering war, 

 hoping thereby to dissipate the charges made against him and allay 

 the people's jealousy, inasmuch as when great undertakings were 

 on foot, and great perils threatened, the city entrusted herself to 

 him and to him alone, by reason of his worth and power," Plutarch 

 has only courage to say, " such, then, are the reasons which are 

 alleged for his not suffering the people to yield to the Lacedaemon- 

 ians ; but the truth about the matter is not clear " (xxxii, 3). And 

 yet the truth was perfectly clear to Thucydides, judging from the 

 lofty words which he puts into the mouth of Pericles (i, 140 f.), 

 " I would have none of you imagine that he will be fighting for 

 a small matter if we refuse to annul the Megarian decree, of which 

 they make so much, telling us that its revocation would prevent 

 the war. You should have no lingering itneasiness about this ; you 

 are not really going to war for a trifle. For in the seeming 

 trifle is involved the trial and confirmation of your whole jiurpose 

 . . . Any claim, the smallest as well as the greatest, imposed on a 

 neighbor and an equal when there has been no legal award, can 

 mean nothing but slavery- " (Jowett). 



In the face of malicious testimony against Pericles we find Plu- 

 tarch thus making concession, or suspending judgment. But in the 

 case now under study, where he is confronted by apparently con- 

 tradictory testimony from authorities high in his regard, we find 

 him making an amiable compromise. At a certain point in his 

 career there was a change in Pericles, a uETc<,ioktj, before which he 

 was the Platonic Pericles, and after which he was the Thucydidean 

 Pericles. This is the assumption which Plutarch makes in ix, 1, 

 and then argues fully, with bountiful illustration, from ix, 2 through 

 XV, at the close of which we find him once more fully imlnied 

 with the Thucydidean estimate of Pericles. Similarly, in his estimate 

 of Themistocles, we find him Herodotean in manner and matter, 

 but finally Thucydidean in spirit. After making his assumption, 

 then, Plutarch thus proceeds, examining in detail "the reason for 

 the change." 



hi the beginning, pitted as Pericles was against Cimon, he tried 

 to ingratiate himself with the people. And since he was Cimon's 

 inferior in wealth, by means of which Cimon won over the poor, 

 he had recourse to the distribution of the people's own wealth. 

 And soon, what with festival-grants and jurors' wages and other 

 feeings and largesses, he bribed the multitude by the wholesale, 

 and used them to humble the Areiopagus and ostracise Cimon (ix). 



