popularity, and
in general gave him his elevation and sublimity of purpose and of
character, was Anaxagoras of Clazomenae; whom the men of those times
called by the name of Nous, that is mind, or intelligence, whether in
admiration of the great and extraordinary gift he displayed for the
science of nature, or because he was the first of the philosophers who
did not refer the first ordering of the world to fortune or chance, nor
to necessity or compulsion, but to a pure, unadulterated intelligence,
which in all other existing mixed and compound things acts as a
principle of discrimination, and of combination of like with like.

For this man, Pericles entertained an extraordinary esteem and
admiration, and, filling himself with this lofty and, as they call it,
up-in-the-air sort of thought, derived hence not merely, as was natural,
elevation of purpose and dignity of language, raised far above the
base and dishonest buffooneries of mob-eloquence, but, besides this,
a composure of countenance, and a serenity and calmness in all his
movements, which no occurrence whilst he was speaking could disturb,
a sustained and even tone of voice, and various other advantages of a
similar kind, which produced the greatest effect on his hearers. Once,
after being reviled and ill-spoken of all day long in his own hearing by
some abandoned fellow in the open market-place where he was engaged in
the despatch of some urgent affair, he continued his business in perfect
silence, and in the evening returned home composedly, the man still
dogging him at the heels, and pelting him all the way with abuse and
foul language; and stopping into his house, it being by this time dark,
he ordered one of hi servants to take a light and to go along with the
man and see him safe home.

Nor were these the only advantages which Pericles derived from
Anaxagoras's acquaintance; he seems also to have become, by his
instructions, superior to that superstition with which an ignorant
wonder at appearances, for example, in the heavens, possesses the minds
of people unacquainted with their causes, eager for the supernatural,
and excitable through an inexperience which the knowledge of natural
causes removes, replacing wild and timid superstition by the good hope
and assurance of an intelligent piety.

There is a story that once Pericles had brought to him from a country
farm of his, a ram's head with one horn, and that Lampon, the diviner,
upon seeing the horn g