We can imagine the thoughts with which the old man came home from the Assembly which decreed his degradation and his punishment. He had made Athens what she was. He had guarded her from foes without, the people from their foe within, ever ready to rob them of their rights. It was in his mind that had first risen up the idea of a great Hellenic empire, one confederation, which should include all the self-governing states and towns of Greek origin, with Athens at its head. It had been his hope to call together a pan-Hellenic congress, to consider the rights, the wrongs, the divergent interests, of them all, that they might proceed together, self-defended from barbarian attack, to higher intellectual and ethic greatness, to even nobler efforts in their arts and in their literature—a policy which, had he been allowed an opportunity to carry it out unto its end, must have gone near to realize the great ideal of his hopes, and would certainly have saved Athens and the whole of Greece from the catastrophe which was now about to be unfolded. It was as a symbol of imperial headship that he had caused Athens to be decorated with the splendid monuments that arose within the city in his time. And now, awakening from his dream of what she—what all Greece—might have been, he found Athens threatened upon every side, and himself marked by her people as the victim for their sacrifice. Harder blows came on him nearer home. He had seen his old companions, his colleagues, pass away. The plague bore off his only sister, then his eldest son, and then his Paralos, his youngest, best beloved. As the old man placed the funeral wreath upon that head, the emotion he had mastered hitherto quite mastered him; he fell down, overwhelmed with woe. The human mass which ruled in Athens, even they were touched at that sad spectacle. The people recollected what he had done for them, for Athens; they called their leader back to power as suddenly as they had driven him away. But Perikles was broken down. He felt his sun was setting. His far-reaching plans had failed. He longed for peace and for silent converse with his sorrow. Alkibiades, the bright, the rising sun, came to his old friend and tutor, whose glory was departing, and, after much persuasion, induced the old warrior and chief to return to lead the people. Once more he heard the shouts of gratulation as he raised a trembling arm and swayed them as of old. Once more his eyes, grown dim with age and grief, saw the vast sea of faces gazing at him as he kept the huge concourse silent with his word. But the elasticity was gone. The heart within him rose not as it had used to do. His day was done. Within another year the greatest of Greek statesmen was taken, not reluctantly, to his last resting-place. And the world, save for the undying works he left behind him, went on as though he had not been.