The steps by which he rose to the commanding position which he occupied in later life cannot be traced with certainty. According to Plutarch, Pericles, whose fortune did not allow him to imitate the profuse hospitality by which Cimon endeared himself to the people, sought to outbid him by a lavish distribution of the public moneys among the poorer classes; this device was suggested to him by Damonides, says Plutarch on the authority of Aristotle. We may doubt the motive alleged by Plutarch, but we cannot doubt the fact that Pericles did extend, if not originate, the practice of distributing large sums among the citizens either as gratuities or as payment for services rendered—a practice which afterwards attained most mischievous proportions. According to Plato, it was a common saying that Pericles, by the system of payments which he introduced, had corrupted the Athenians, rendering them idle, cowardly, talkative, and avaricious. It was Pericles who introduced the payment of jurymen, and, as there were six thousand of them told off annually for duty, of whom a great part sat daily, the disbursement from the treasury was great, while the poor and idle were encouraged to live at the public expense. But the payment for attendance on the public assembly or parliament (of which all citizens of mature age were members), though probably suggested by the payment of the jurymen, was not introduced by Pericles, and indeed does not seem to have existed during his lifetime. It was he who instituted the payment of the citizens for military service—a measure but for which the Athenians would probably not have prolonged the Peloponnesian War as they did, and in particular would not have been so ready to embark on the fatal Sicilian expedition.