Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and RomansPlutarch
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
Plutarch
Greece -- Biography -- Early works to 1800; Rome -- Biography -- Early works to 1800
At the first, as has been said, when he set himself against Cimon's
great authority, he did caress the people. Finding himself come short of
his competitor in wealth and money, by which advantages the other was
enabled to take care of the poor, inviting every day some one or other
of the citizens that was in want to supper, and bestowing clothes on the
aged people, and breaking down the hedges and enclosures of his grounds,
that all that would might freely gather what fruit they pleased,
Pericles, thus outdone in popular arts, by the advice of one Damonides
of Oea, as Aristotle states, turned to the distribution of the public
moneys; and in a short time having bought the people over, what with
moneys allowed for shows and for service on juries, and what with other
forms of pay and largess, he made use of them against the council of
Areopagus, of which he himself was no member, as having never been
appointed by lot either chief archon, or lawgiver, or king, or captain.
For from of old these offices were conferred on persons by lot, and they
who had acquitted themselves duly in the discharge of them were advanced
to the court of Areopagus. And so Pericles, having secured his power
and interest with the populace, directed the exertions of his party
against this council with such success, that most of those causes and
matters which had been used to be tried there, were, by the agency of
Ephialtes, removed from its cognizance, Cimon, also, was banished by
ostracism as a favorer of the Lacedaemonians and a hater of the people,
though in wealth and noble birth he was among the first, and had won
several most glorious victories over the barbarians, and had filled the
city with money and spoils of war; as is recorded in the history of his
life. So vast an authority had Pericles obtained among the people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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