But her real importance for Athens began on the day when she made the acquaintance of Pericles, and formed with him a connection of mutual love. It was a real marriage, which only lacked the civil sanction because she was a foreigner; it was an alliance of the truest and tenderest affection which death alone dissolved--the endless source of a domestic felicity which no man needed more than the statesman, who lived retired from all external recreations and was unceasingly engaged in the labors of his life. Doubtless the possession of this woman was in many respects invaluable for Pericles. Not only were her accomplishments the delights of the leisure hours which he allowed himself and the recreation of his mind from its cares, but she also kept him in intercourse with the daily life around him. She possessed what he lacked--the power of being perfectly at ease in every kind of society; she kept herself informed of everything that took place in the city; nor can distant countries have escaped her attention, since she is said to have first acquainted Pericles with Sicilian oratory, which was at that time developing itself. She was of use to him through her various connections at home and abroad as well as by the keen glance of her feminine sagacity and by her knowledge of men. Thus the foremost woman of her age lived in the society of the man whose superiority of mind had placed him at the head of the first city of the Hellenes, in loyal devotion to her friend and husband; and although the mocking spirits at Athens eagerly sought out every blemish which could be discovered in the life of Pericles, yet no calumny was ever able to vilify this rare union and to blacken its memory. Pericles had no leisure for occupying himself with the management of his private property. He farmed out his lands and intrusted the money to his faithful slave Evangelus, who accurately knew the measure which his master deemed the right one, and managed the household accordingly; which, indeed, presented a striking contrast to those of the wealthy families of Athens, and ill corresponded to the tastes of Pericles’s sons as they grew up. For in it there was no overflow, no joyous and reckless expenditure, but so careful an economy that everything was calculated down to drachm and obolus. Pericles was perfectly convinced that nothing short of a perfectly blameless integrity and the severest self-abnegation could render possible the permanency of his influence over his fellow-citizens and prevent the exposure of even the smallest blot to his cavilers and enemies. After Themistocles had for the first time shown how a statesman and general might enrich himself, Pericles was in this respect the admirer and most faithful follower of Aristides, and in the matter of conscientiousness went even much further than Cimon, spurning on principle every opportunity offered by the office of general for a perfectly justifiable personal enrichment.