Pericles

At all events, since it is not the wont of Duris, even in cases where he has no private and personal interest, to hold his narrative down to the fundamental truth, it is all the more likely that here, in this instance, he has given a dreadful portrayal of the calamities of his country, that he might calumniate the Athenians. When Pericles, after his subjection of Samos, had returned to Athens, he gave honorable burial to those who had fallen in the war, and for the oration which he made, according to the custom, over their tombs, he won the greatest admiration.

But as he came down from the bema, while the rest of the women clasped his hand and fastened wreaths and fillets on his head, as though he were some victorious athlete, Elpinice drew nigh and said: This is admirable in thee, Pericles, and deserving of wreaths, in that thou hast lost us many brave citizens, not in a war with Phoenicians or Medes, like my brother Cimon, but in the subversion of an allied and kindred city.

On Elpinice’s saying this, Pericles, with a quiet smile, it is said, quoted to her the verse of Archilochus:—

1. Thou hadst not else, in spite of years, perfumed thyself.

And indeed his estimate of himself was not unjust, nay, the war actually brought with it much uncertainty and great peril, if indeed, as Thucydides says,[*](Thuc. 8.76.4.) the city of Samos came within a very little of stripping from Athens her power on the sea.

After this, when the billows of the Peloponnesian War were already rising and swelling, he persuaded the people to send aid and succour to the Corcyraeans[*](433 B.C.) in their war with the Corinthians, and so to attach to themselves an island with a vigorous naval power at a time when the Peloponnesians were as good as actually at war with them.

But when the people had voted to send the aid and succour, he despatched Lacedaemonius, the son of Cimon, with only ten ships, as it were in mockery of him. Now there was much good-will and friendship on the part of the house of Cimon towards the Lacedaemonians. In order, therefore, that in case no great or conspicuous achievement should be performed under the generalship of Lacedaemonius, he might so be all the more calumniated for his Iaconism, or sympathy with Sparta, Pericles gave him only a few ships, and sent him forth against his will.

And in general he was prone to thwart and check the sons of Cimon, on the plea that not even in their names were they genuinely native, but rather aliens and strangers, since one of them bore the name of Lacedaemonius, another that of Thessalus, and a third that of Eleius. And they were all held to be the sons of a woman of Arcadia.[*](Cf. Plut. Cim. 16.1.) Accordingly, being harshly criticized because of these paltry ten ships on the ground that he had furnished scanty aid and succour to the needy friends of Athens, but a great pretext for war to her accusing enemies, he afterwards sent out other ships, and more of them, to Corcyra,—the ones which got there after the battle.[*](Cf. Thuc. 1.50.5.)