Pericles
Plutarch
Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. III. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1916.
On Elpinice’s saying this, Pericles, with a quiet smile, it is said, quoted to her the verse of Archilochus:—
[*](That is, thou art too old to meddle in affairs. Cf. chapter x. 5. ) Ion says that he had the most astonishingly great thoughts of himself for having subjected the Samians; whereas Agamemnon was all of ten years in taking a barbarian city, he had in nine months time reduced the foremost and most powerful people of Ionia.
- 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.