The thirty years' peace with Sparta (445) left him free to carry out his schemes for the internal prosperity of Athens. Cimon was now dead and was succeeded in the leadership of the aristocratic party by Thucydides, son of Melesias, who in 444 B.C. made a strong effort to overthrow the supremacy of Pericles by attacking him in the popular assembly for squandering the public money on buildings and in festivals and amusements. Thucydides made an effective speech; but Pericles immediately rose and offered to execute the buildings at his own expense, if the citizens would allow him to put his own name upon them instead of theirs. The sarcasm was successful. Thucydides was ostracized, and to the end of his life, Pericles reigned the undisputed master of the public policy of Athens. During the rest of his career "there was," says the historian Thucydides, "in name a democracy, but in reality a government in the hands of the first man." And the Athens of his day was the home of AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Anaxagoras, Zeno, Protagoras, Socrates, as well as Myron and Phidias; while there flourished at the same time, but elsewhere in Greece, Herodotus, Hippocrates, Pindar, Empedocles, and Democritus. The centre of this splendid group was Pericles, of whom the truthful pen of Thucydides records that he never did anything unworthy of his high position, that he did not flatter the people or oppress his adversaries, and that with all his unlimited command of the public purse, he was personally incorruptible.