Pericles

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. III. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1916.

She, in her dreams, once fancied that she had given birth to a lion, and a few days thereafter bore Pericles.[*](Cf. Hdt. 6.131 ) His personal appearance was unimpeachable, except that his head was rather long and out of due proportion. For this reason the images of him, almost all of them, wear helmets, because the artists, as it would seem, were not willing to reproach him with deformity. The comic poets of Attica used to call him Schinocephalus, or Squill-head (the squill is sometimes called schinus)

So the comic poet Cratinus, in his Cheirons, says:

Faction and Saturn, that ancient of days, were united in wedlock; their offspring was of all tyrants the greatest, and lo! he is called by the gods the head-compeller.
[*](Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 86.) And again in his Nemesis:
Come, Zeus! of guests and heads the Lord!
[*](Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 49.)

And Telecleides speaks of him as sitting on the acropolis in the greatest perplexity, now heavy of head, and now alone, from the eleven-couched chamber of his head, causing vast uproar to arise.[*](Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 2220.) And Eupolis, in his Demes, having inquiries made about each one of the demagogues as they come up from Hades, says, when Pericles is called out last:—

  1. The very head of those below hast thou now brought.
[*](Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 280.)

His teacher in music, most writers state, was Damon (whose name, they say, should be pronounced with the first syllable short); but Aristotle[*](Plato, rather, in Plat. Alc. 1 118c.) says he had a thorough musical training at the hands of Pythocleides. Now Damon seems to have been a consummate sophist, but to have taken refuge behind the name of music in order to conceal from the multitude his real power, and he associated with Pericles, that political athlete, as it were, in the capacity of rubber and trainer.

However, Damon was not left unmolested in this use of his lyre as a screen, but was ostracized for being a great schemer and a friend of tyranny, and became a butt of the comic poets. At all events, Plato[*](Plato the comic poet.Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 655. ) represented some one as inquiring of him thus:—

  1. In the first place tell me then, I beseech thee, thou who art
  2. The Cheiron, as they say, who to Pericles gave his craft.