e interview with the king, as he was yet unacquainted
with the language and the manners of the Persians, to acquire which he
requested a year's time. During this period he applied himself so
zealously and with such success to these studies that at the close of
the year, when he was presented to the king, he is said to have excited
the jealousy of the courtiers, and was most kindly received by the king,
to whom he held out prospects of conquering Greece by his assistance.
The king became so attached to him, that Themistocles was always in his
company.

But death overtook him at the age of sixty-five, before any of his plans
were carried into effect. Most of the ancient writers state that he put
an end to his life by poison, or according to another strange story, by
drinking the blood of a bull, because he despaired of being able to
fulfil his promises to the king. The motive for his suicide is very
questionable. Reflection on his past life and upon the glory of his
former rivals at Athens, are much more likely to have rendered him
dissatisfied with life. Before he took the poison he is said to have
requested his friends to convey his remains secretly to Attica, and in
later times a tomb which was believed to contain them existed in Piraeus.
In the market-place of Magnesia a splendid monument was erected to his
memory, and his descendants in that place continued to be distinguished
by certain privileges down to the time of Plutarch.

PERICLES

(499-429 B.C.)

[Illustration: Pericles. [TN]]

Pericles, the greatest statesman of ancient Greece, was born of
distinguished parentage in the early part of the fifth century B.C. His
father was that Xanthippus who won the victory over the Persians at
Mycale, 479 B.C.; and by his mother, Agariste, the niece of the great
Athenian reformer, Cleisthenes, he was connected with the princely line
of Sicyon and the great house of the Alcmaeonidae. He received an
elaborate education, but of all his teachers the one whom he most
reverenced was the serene and humane philosopher, Anaxagoras. Pericles
was conspicuous all through his career for the singular dignity of his
manners, the Olympian grandeur of his eloquence, his "majestic
intelligence" in Plato's phrase, his sagacity, probity, and profound
Athenian patriotism. Both in voice and in appearance he was so like
Pisistratus, who had once overturned the Athenian republic and ruled as
a king, that for some time he was afraid to