of the Bisaltae,
and others to the new colony in Italy founded by the city of Sybaris,
which was named Thurii. By this means he relieved the state of numerous
idle agitators, assisted the necessitous, and overawed the allies of
Athens by placing his colonists near them to watch their behavior.
The building of the temples, by which Athens was adorned, the people
delighted, and the rest of the world astonished, and which now alone
prove that the tales of the ancient power and glory of Greece are no
fables, was what particularly excited the spleen of the opposite
faction, who inveighed against him in the public assembly, declaring
that the Athenians had disgraced themselves by transferring the common
treasury of the Greeks from the island of Delos to their own custody.
"Pericles himself," they urged, "has taken away the only possible excuse
for such an act--the fear that it might be exposed to the attacks of the
Persians when at Delos, whereas it would be safe at Athens. Greece has
been outraged, and feels itself openly tyrannized over, when it sees us
using the funds--which we extorted from it for the war against the
Persians--for gilding and beautifying our city as if it were a vain
woman, and adorning it with precious marbles and statues and temples
worth a thousand talents." To this Pericles replied that the allies had
no right to consider how their money was spent, so long as Athens
defended them from the Persians; while they supplied neither horses,
ships, nor men, but merely money, which the Athenians had a right to
spend as they pleased, provided they afforded them that security which
it purchased. It was right, he argued, that after the city had provided
all that was necessary for war, it should devote its surplus money to
the erection of buildings which would be a glory to it for all ages,
while these works would create plenty by leaving no man unemployed, and
encouraging all sorts of handicraft, so that nearly the whole city would
earn wages, and thus derive both its beauty and its profit from itself.
For those who were in the flower of their age, military service offered
a means of earning money from the common stock; while, as he did not
wish the mechanics and lower classes to be without their share, nor yet
to see them receive it without doing work for it, he had laid the
foundations of great edifices which would require industries of every
kind to complete them; and he had done this in the interests of the
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