Pericles

And it was thought that before this, too, Elpinice had rendered Pericles more lenient towards Cimon, when he stood his trial on the capital charge of treason.[*](463. B.C. Cf. Plut. Cim. 14.2-4.) Pericles was at that time one of the committee of prosecution appointed by the people, and on Elpinice’s coming to him and supplicating him, said to her with a smile: Elpinice, thou art an old woman, thou art an old woman, to attempt such tasks. However, he made only one speech, by way of formally executing his commission, and in the end did the least harm to Cimon of all his accusers.

How, then, can one put trust in Idomeneus, who accuses Pericles of assassinating the popular leader Ephialtes, though he was his friend and a partner in his political program, out of mere jealousy and envy of his reputation? These charges he has raked up from some source or other and hurled them, as if so much venom, against one who was perhaps not in all points irreproachable, but who had a noble disposition and an ambitious spirit, wherein no such savage and bestial feelings can have their abode.

As for Ephialtes, who was a terror to the oligarchs and inexorable in exacting accounts from those who wronged the people, and in prosecuting them, his enemies laid plots against him, and had him slain secretly by Aristodicus of Tanagra, as Aristotle says.[*](Aristot. Const. Ath. 25.4.) As for Cimon, he died on his campaign in Cyprus.[*](449 B.C. Cf. Plut. Cim. 18-19.)

Then the aristocrats, aware even some time before this that Pericles was already become the greatest citizen, but wishing nevertheless to have some one in the city who should stand up against him and blunt the edge of his power, that it might not be an out and out monarchy, put forward Thucydides of Alopece, a discreet man and a relative of Cimon, to oppose him.