engaged in writing biography, and have arranged this tenth book to
contain the lives of Perikles and of Fabius Maximus, who fought against
Hannibal, men who especially resembled one another in the gentleness and
justice of their disposition, and who were both of the greatest service
to their native countries, because they were able to endure with
patience the follies of their governments and colleagues. Of my success,
the reader of the following pages will be able to judge for themself.

III. Perikles was of the tribe Akamantis, and of the township of
Cholargos, and was descended from the noblest families in Athens, on
both his father's and mother's side. His father, Xanthippus, defeated
the Persian generals at Mykale, while his mother, Agariste, was a
descendant of Kleisthenes, who drove the sons of Peisistratus out of
Athens, put an end to their despotic rule, and established a new
constitution admirably calculated to reconcile all parties and save the
country. She dreamed that she had brought forth a lion, and a few days
afterwards was delivered of Perikles. His body was symmetrical, but his
head was long out of all proportion; for which reason in nearly all his
statues he is represented wearing a helmet, as the sculptors did not
wish, I suppose, to reproach him with this blemish. The Attic poets
called him squill-head, and the comic poet, Kratinus, in his play
'Cheirones,' says,

"From Kronos old and faction,
Is sprung a tyrant dread,
And all Olympus calls him,
The man-compelling head."

And again in the play of 'Nemesis'

"Come, hospitable Zeus, with lofty head."

Telekleides, too, speaks of him as sitting

"Bowed down
With a dreadful frown,
Because matters of state have gone wrong,
Until at last,
From his head so vast,
His ideas burst forth in a throng."

And Eupolis, in his play of 'Demoi,' asking questions about each of the
great orators as they come up from the other world one after the other,
when at last Perikles ascends, says,

"The great headpiece of those below."

IV. Most writers tell us that his tutor in music was Damon, whose name
they say should be pronounced with the first syllable short. Aristotle,
however, says that he studied under Pythokleides. This Damon, it seems,
was a sophist of the highest order, who used the name of music to
conceal this accomplishment from the world, but who really traine