If Periklês was ever tried on such a charge, there can be no doubt that he was honorably acquitted: for the language of Thucydidês respecting his pecuniary probity is such as could never have been employed if a verdict of guilty on a charge of peculation had ever been publicly pronounced. But we cannot be certain that he ever was tried: indeed, another accusation urged by his enemies, and even by Aristophanês, in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war, implies that no trial took place: for it was alleged that Periklês, in order to escape this danger, “blew up the Peloponnesian war,” and involved his country in such confusion and peril as made his own aid and guidance indispensably necessary to her: especially that he passed the decree against the Megarians by which the war was really brought on.[180] We know enough, however, to be certain that such a supposition is altogether inadmissible. The enemies of Periklês were far too eager, and too expert in Athenian political warfare, to have let him escape by such a stratagem: moreover, we learn from the assurance of Thucydidês, that the war depended upon far deeper causes,—that the Megarian decree was in no way the real cause of it,—that it was not Periklês, but the Peloponnesians, who brought it on, by the blow struck at Potidæa. [180] Aristophan. Pac. 587-603: compare Acharn. 512; Ephorus, ap. Diodor. xii, 38-40; and the Scholia on the two passages of Aristophanês; Plutarch, Periklês, c. 32. Diodorus (as well as Plutarch, Alkibiad. c. 7) relates another tale, that Alkibiadês once approached Periklês when he was in evident low spirits and embarrassment, and asked him the reason: Periklês told him that the time was near at hand for rendering his accounts, and that he was considering how this could be done: upon which Alkibiadês advised him to consider rather how he could evade doing it. The result of this advice was that Periklês plunged Athens into the Peloponnesian war: compare Aristophan. Nub. 855, with the Scholia,—and Ephorus, Fragm. 118, 119, ed. Marx, with the notes of Marx. It is probable enough that Ephorus copied the story, which ascribes the Peloponnesian war to the accusations against Pheidias and Periklês, from Aristophanês or other comic writers of the time. But it deserves remark, that even Aristophanês is not to be considered as certifying it. For if we consult the passage above referred to in his comedy _Pax_, we shall find that, first, Hermês tells the story about Pheidias, Periklês, and the Peloponnesian war; upon which both Trygæus, and the Chorus, remark that _they never heard a word of it before_: that it is quite _new_ to them. Tryg. Ταῦτα τοίνυν, μὰ τὸν Ἀπόλλω, ᾽γὼ ᾽πεπύσμην οὐδενὸς, Οὐδ᾽ ὅπως αὐτῇ (Εἰρήνῃ) προσήκοι Φειδίας ἠκηκόη. Chorus. Οὐδ᾽ ἔγωγε πλήν γε νυνί.