Entering also the Euxine Sea with a large and finely equipped fleet,
he obtained for the Greek cities any new arrangements they wanted, and
entered into friendly relations with them; and to the barbarous nations,
and kings and chiefs round about them, displayed the greatness of the
power of the Athenians, their perfect ability and confidence to sail
wherever they had a mind, and to bring the whole sea under his control.
He left the Sinopians thirteen ships of war, with soldiers under the
command of Lamachus, to assist them against Timesileus the tyrant; and,
when he and his accomplices had been thrown out, obtained a decree that
six hundred of the Athenians that were willing should sail to Sinope and
plant themselves there with the Sinopians, sharing among them the houses
and land which the tyrant and his party had previously held.
But in other things he did not comply with the giddy impulses of the
citizens, nor quit his own resolutions to follow their fancies, when,
carried away with the thought of their strength and great success,
they were eager to interfere again in Egypt, and to disturb the king of
Persia's maritime dominions. Nay, there were a good many who were, even
then, possessed with that unblest and unauspicious passion for Sicily,
which afterward the orators of Alciabes's party blew up into a flame.
There were some also who dreamt of Tuscany and of Carthage, and not
without plausible reason in their present large dominion and the
prosperous course of their affairs.
But Pericles curbed this passion for foreign conquest, and unsparingly
pruned and cut down their ever-busy fancies for a multitude of
undertakings, and directed their power for the most part to securing
and consolidating what they had already got, supposing it would be quite
enough for them to do, if they could keep the Lacedaemonians in check;
to whom he entertained all along a sense of opposition; which, as upon
many other occasions, he particularly showed by what he did in the time
of the holy war. The Lacedaemonians, having gone with an army to
Delphi, restored Apollo's temple, which the Phocians had got into
their possession, to the Delphians; immediately after their departure,
Pericles, with another army, came and restored it to the Phocians. And
the Lacedaemonians having engraven the record of their privilege of
consulting the oracle before others, which the Delphians gave them, upon
the forehead of the brazen wolf which stands there, he, also, having
received from the Phocians the like privilege for the Athenians, had it
cut upon the same wolf of brass, on his right side.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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