opposition and enmity which he would incur from the high-born politicians, and organized party clubs, as soon as he appeared to be rising up into ascendency. [404] Thucyd. v, 43. Ἀλκιβιάδης—ἀνὴρ ἡλικίᾳ μὲν ὢν ἔτι τότε νέος, ὡς ἐν ἄλλῃ πόλει, ἀξιώματι δὲ προγόνων τιμώμενος. Compare Xenophon, Memorabil. i, 2, 25; iii, 6, 1. The free march of political and judicial affairs raised up several such men, during the years beginning and immediately preceding the Peloponnesian war. Even during the lifetime of Periklês, they appear to have arisen in greater or less numbers: but the personal ascendency of that great man,—who combined an aristocratical position with a strong and genuine democratical sentiment, and an enlarged intellect rarely found attached to either,—impressed a peculiar character on Athenian politics. The Athenian world was divided into his partisans and his opponents, among each of whom there were individuals high-born and low-born,—though the aristocratical party, properly so called, the majority of wealthy and high-born Athenians, either opposed or disliked him. It is about two years after his death that we begin to hear of a new class of politicians: Eukratês, the rope-seller; Kleon, the leather-seller; Lysiklês, the sheep-seller; Hyperbolus, the lamp-maker;[405] the two first of whom must have been already well-known as speakers in the ekklesia, even during the lifetime of Periklês. Among them all, the most distinguished was Kleon, son of Kleænetus. [405] Aristophan. Equit. 130, _seqq._, and Scholia; Eupolis, Demi, Fram. xv, p. 466, ed. Meineke. See the remarks in Ranck, Commentat. de Vitâ Aristophanis, p. cccxxxiv, _seqq._