nder the influence of his
public measures, changed from a sober, thrifty people, that maintained
themselves by their own labors, to lovers of expense, intemperance, and
license.

At the first, as has been said, when he set himself against Cimon's
great authority, he did caress the people. Finding himself come short
of his competitor in wealth and money, by which advantages the other was
enabled to take care of the poor, inviting every day some one or other
of the citizens that was in want to supper, and bestowing clothes on the
aged people, and breaking down the hedges and enclosures of his grounds,
that all that would might freely gather what fruit they pleased.
Pericles, thus outdone in popular arts, turned to the distribution of
the public moneys; and in a short time having bought the people over,
what with moneys allowed for shows and for service on juries, and what
with the other forms of pay and largess, he made use of them against the
council of Areopagus, and directed the exertions of his party against
this council with such success, that most of those causes and matters
which had been formerly tried there, were removed from its
cognizance; Cimon, also, was banished by ostracism as a favorer of the
Lacedaemonians and a hater of the people, though in wealth and noble
birth he was among the first, and had won several most glorious
victories over the barbarians, and had filled the city with money and
spoils of war. So vast an authority had Pericles obtained among the
people.

The ostracism was limited by law to ten years; but the Lacedaemonians,
in the meantime, entering with a great army into the territory of
Tanagra, and the Athenians going out against the Cimon, coming from his
banishment before his time was out, put himself in arms and array with
those of his fellow-citizens that were of his own tribe, and desired by
his deeds to wipe off the suspicion of his favoring the Lacedaemonians,
by venturing his own person along with his countrymen. But Pericles's
friends, gathering in a body, forced him to retire as a banished man.
For which cause also Pericles seems to have exerted himself more than
in any other battle, and to have been conspicuous above all for his
exposure of himself to danger. All Cimon's friends, also, to a man, fell
together side by side, whom Pericles had accused with him of taking part
with the Lacedaemonians. Defeated in this battle on their own frontiers,
and expecting a new and perilous a