The eloquent harangue of Pericles diminished, but did not remove, the alarm and irritation of the Athenians, and they not only dismissed him from all his offices, but imposed upon him a heavy fine. Meanwhile domestic afflictions were combining with political anxieties and mortifications to oppress the mind of this eminent man, for the members of his family were one by one perishing by the plague. Still, however, he bore himself up with a fortitude which was witnessed with admiration by all around him; but at the funeral of the last of his children, his firmness at length gave way; and while he was, according to the custom of the country, placing a garland of flowers on the head of the corpse, he burst into loud lamentations, and shed a torrent of tears. It was not long till his mutable countrymen repented of their harshness towards him, and reinvested him with his civil and military authority. He soon after followed his children to the grave, falling, like them, a victim to the prevailing pestilence (429 B. C.). The concurrent testimony of the ancient writers assigns to Pericles the first place among Grecian statesmen for wisdom and eloquence. Though ambitious of power, he was temperate in its exercise; and it is creditable to his memory, that, in an age and country so little scrupulous in the shedding of blood, his long administration was as merciful and mild as it was vigorous and effective. When constrained to make war, the constant study of this eminent statesman was, how to overcome his enemies with the least possible destruction of life, as well on their side as on his own. It is related that, when he was lying at the point of death, and while those who surrounded him were recounting his great actions, he suddenly interrupted them by expressing his surprise that they should bestow so much praise on achievements in which he had been rivaled by many others, while they omitted to mention what he considered his highest and peculiar honor――namely, _that no act of his had ever caused any Athenian to put on mourning_.