influencing men's minds, and to use it in its highest application, when
it deals with men's passions and characters, which, like certain strings
of a musical instrument, require a skilful and delicate touch. The
secret of his power is to be found, however, as Thucydides says, not so
much in his mere oratory, as in his pure and blameless life, because he
was so well known to be incorruptible, and indifferent to money; for
though he made the city, which was a great one, into the greatest and
richest city of Greece, and though he himself became more powerful than
many independent sovereigns, who were able to leave their kingdoms to
their sons, yet Perikles did not increase by one single drachma the
estate which he received from his father.

XVI. This is the clear account of his power which is given by Thucydides
the historian; though the comic poets misrepresent him atrociously,
calling his immediate followers the New Peisistratidae, and calling upon
him to swear that he never would make himself despot, as though his
pre-eminence was not to be borne in a free state. And Telekleides says,
that the Athenians delivered up into his hands

"The tribute from the towns, the towns themselves,
The city walls, to build or to destroy,
The right of making either peace or war,
And all the wealth and produce of the land."

And all this was not on any special occasion, or when his administration
was especially popular, but for forty years he held the first place
among such men as Ephialtes, Leokrates, Myronides, Kimon, Tolmides, and
Thucydides; and, after the fall and banishment of Thucydides by
ostracism, he united in himself for five-and-twenty years all the
various offices of state, which were supposed to last only for one year;
and yet during the whole of that period proved himself incorruptible by
bribes. As to his paternal estate, he was loth to lose it, and still
more to be troubled with the management of it; consequently, he adopted
what seemed to him the simplest and most exact method of dealing with
it. Every year's produce was sold all together, and with the money thus
obtained, he would buy what was necessary for his household in the
market, and thus regulate his expenditure. This did not make him
popular with his sons when they grew up; nor yet did the women of his
family think him a liberal manager, but blamed his exact regulation of
his daily expenses, which allowed none of the superfluities common in
g