The long schooling through which Pericles had passed in the art of war and the rare combination of caution and energy which he had displayed in every command held by him had secured him the confidence of the citizens. Therefore they for a succession of years elected him general, and as such invested him with an extraordinary authority, which reduced the offices of the other nine generals to mere posts of honor which were filled by persons agreeable to him. During the period of his administration the whole centers of gravity of public life lay in this office. Inasmuch as Pericles, besides the authority of a “strategy” prolonged to him in an extraordinary degree, also filled the office of superintendent of the finances; inasmuch as he was repeatedly and for long periods of years superintendent of public works; inasmuch as his personal influence was so great that he could in all important matters determine the civic elections according to his wish; it is easy to understand how he ruled the state in time of war and peace, and how the power of both the council and of the whole civic body in all essentials passed into his hands. He was the type of temperance and sobriety. He made it a rule never to assist at a festive banquet; and no Athenian could remember to have seen Pericles, since he stood at the head of the state, in the company of friends over the wine-cup. He was known to no man except as one serious and collected, full of grave thoughts and affairs. His whole life was devoted to the service of the state, and his power accompanied by so thorough a self-denial and so full a measure of labor that the multitude in its love of enjoyment could surely not regard the possession of that power as an enviable privilege. For him there existed only one road, which he was daily seen to take, the road leading from his house to the market-place and the council-hall, the seat of the government, where the current business of state was transacted. EPAMINONDAS. BY ERNST CURTIUS. [The greatest of the Theban generals and statesmen, and one of the greatest men of antiquity; born about 418 B.C., killed on the battle-field of Mantinea in the hour of victory, 362. He raised Thebes from a subordinate place to the leadership of Greece by his genius in arms and wisdom in council. Eminent as soldier, statesman, and orator, Epaminondas was a model of virtue in his private life, and was not only devoted to his native republic, but in the largest sense a Greek patriot. References: Grote’s “History of Greece,” Curtius’s “History of Greece,” Plutarch’s “Lives.”]