IX. Thucydides represents the constitution under Perikles 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, as we have already
said, Perikles had to measure himself with Kimon, and to transfer the
affections of the people from Kimon to himself. As he was not so rich a
man as Kimon, 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 any one might gather the fruit,
Perikles, 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 had approved themselves in the discharge of them were advanced
to the Areopagus. For this reason it was that Perikles, when he gained
strength with the populace, destroyed this Senate, making Ephialtes
bring forward a bill which restricted its judicial powers, while he
himself succeeded in getting Kimon banished by ostracism, as a friend of
Sparta and a hater of the people, although he was second to no Athenian
in birth or fortune, had won most brilliant victories over the Persians,
and had filled Athens with plunder and spoils of war, as will be found
related in his life. So great was the power of Perikles with the common
people.

X. One of the provisions of ostracism was that the person banished
should remain in exile for ten years. But during this period the
Lacedaemonians with a great force invaded the terr