He far surpassed all others by using this
"lofty intelligence and power of universal consummation," as the divine
Plato calls it; in addition to his natural advantages, adorning his
oratory with apt illustrations drawn from physical science. For this
reason some think that he was nicknamed the Olympian; though some refer
this to his improvement of the city by new and beautiful buildings, and
others from his power both as a politician and a general. It is not by
any means unlikely that these causes all combined to produce the name.

Pericles was very cautious about his words, and, whenever he ascended
the tribune to speak, used first to pray to the gods that nothing
unfitted for the present occasion might fall from his lips. He left no
writings, except the measures which he brought forward, and very few of
his sayings are recorded.

Thucydides represents the constitution under Pericles as a democracy in
name, but really an aristocracy, because the government was all in the
hands of one leading citizen. But as many other writers tell us that,
during his administration, the people received grants of land abroad,
and were indulged with dramatic entertainments, and payments for their
services, in consequence of which they fell into bad habits, and became
extravagant and licentious, instead of sober hard-working people as they
had been before, let us consider the history of this change, viewing it
by the light of the facts themselves. First of all, Pericles had to
measure himself with Cimon, and to transfer the affections of the people
from Cimon to himself. As he was not so rich a man as Cimon, who used
from his own ample means to give a dinner daily to any poor Athenian who
required it, clothe aged persons, and take away the fences round his
property, so that anyone might gather the fruit, Pericles, unable to vie
with him in this, turned his attention to a distribution of the public
funds among the people, at the suggestion, we are told by Aristotle, of
Damonides of Oia. By the money paid for public spectacles, for citizens
acting as jurymen, and other paid offices, and largesses, he soon won
over the people to his side, so that he was able to use them in his
attack upon the senate of the Areopagus, of which he himself was not a
member, never having been chosen _archon_, or _thesmothete_, or _king
archon_, or _polemarch_. These offices had from ancient times been
obtained by lot, and it was only through them that those who