Pericles

Plutarch

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

Telecleides says[*](In a play of unknown name. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 220. ) that the Athenians had handed over to him

  1. With the cities’ assessments the cities themselves, to bind or release as he pleases,
  2. Their ramparts of stone to build up if he likes, and then to pull down again straightway,
  3. Their treaties, their forces, their might, peace, and riches, and all the fair gifts of good fortune.
And this was not the fruit of a golden moment, nor the culminating popularity of an administration that bloomed but for a season; nay rather he stood first for forty years[*](Reckoning roundly from 469 to 429 B.C.) among such men as Ephialtes, Leocrates, Myronides, Cimon, Tolmides, and Thucydides,

and after the deposition of Thucydides and his ostracism, for no less than fifteen of these years did he secure an imperial sway that was continuous and unbroken, by means of his annual tenure of the office of general. During all these years he kept himself untainted by corruption, although he was not altogether indifferent to money-making; indeed, the wealth which was legally his by inheritance from his father, that it might not from sheer neglect take to itself wings and fly away, nor yet cause him much trouble and loss of time when he was busy with higher things, he set into such orderly dispensation as he thought was easiest and most exact.