The budding of Athenian architectural magnificence may be said to have begun under Themistocles and Cimon, the immediate predecessors of Pericles, but not to have ripened and flowered in its perfection until his advent into power. Then it was that the task of building a city in every way worthy of the people who had proved their prowess before the Persian hosts in war, and who in peace could delight in the musical poems of Homer, was pushed to a speedy realization with enthusiasm. Nothing in all the biography of Pericles has contributed so greatly to the perpetuity of his fame as this attention which he gave to the development of the architectural magnificence of Athens. “That which gave most pleasure and ornament to the city of Athens,” says Plutarch, “and the greatest admiration and even astonishment to all strangers, and that which now is Greece’s only evidence that the power she boasts of and her ancient wealth are no romance or idle story, was his construction of the public and sacred buildings. The materials were stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony and cypress-wood; the artisans that wrought and fashioned them were smiths and carpenters, moulders, founders and braziers, stone-cutters, dyers, goldsmiths, ivory-workers, painters, embroiderers, turners; those again that conveyed them to the town for use, merchants and mariners and ship-masters by sea; and by land, cartwrights, cattle breeders, wagoners, rope-makers, flax-workers, shoemakers and leather-dressers, road-makers, miners. And every trade in the same nature, as a captain in an army has his particular company of soldiers under him, had its own hired company of journeymen and laborers belonging to it banded together as in array, to be, as it were, the instrument and body for the performance of the service. Thus, to say all in a word, the occasions and services of these public works distributed plenty through every age and condition.” “Architecture,” says Robert Adam, “in a particular manner depends upon the patronage of the great, as they alone are able to execute what the architect plans.” This being so, the architects of his time had in Pericles a patron in every way worthy their best efforts. Indeed, so ambitious was he to grace the city of his nativity with all the beauties of architecture that his enemies found here a pretext for censure, and complained that he spent too much of the public treasure for such a purpose. He met the criticism, however, with the argument that those who pursued the arts of war should not be the only ones to receive support at the expense of the state, but that those who possessed the skill and industry of true artists and artisans were quite as much entitled to public encouragement and support as the soldier.