and directed their power for the most part to securing
and consolidating what they had already got, supposing it would be quite
enough for them to do, if they could keep the Lacedaemonians in check;
to whom he entertained all along a sense of opposition; which, as upon
many other occasions, he particularly showed by what he did in the time
of the holy war. The Lacedaemonians, having gone with an army to
Delphi, restored Apollo's temple, which the Phocians had got into
their possession, to the Delphians; immediately after their departure,
Pericles, with another army, came and restored it to the Phocians. And
the Lacedaemonians having engraven the record of their privilege of
consulting the oracle before others, which the Delphians gave them, upon
the forehead of the brazen wolf which stands there, he, also, having
received from the Phocians the like privilege for the Athenians, had it
cut upon the same wolf of brass, on his right side.

When Pericles, in giving up his accounts, stated a disbursement of
ten talents, as laid out upon fit occasion, the people, without any
question, nor troubling themselves to investigate the mystery, freely
allowed it. And some historians, in which number is Theophtastus the
philosopher, have given it as a truth that Pericles every year used
to send privately the sum of ten talents to Sparta, with which he
complimented those in office, to keep off the war; not to purchase peace
either, but time, that he might prepare at leisure, and be the better
able to carry on war hereafter.

After this, having made a truce between the Athenians and Lacedaemonians
for thirty years, he ordered, by public decree, the expedition against
the Isle of Samos, on the ground, that, when they were bid to leave off
their war with the Milesians, they had not complied. For the two states
were at war for the possession of Priene; and the Samians, getting
the better, refused to lay down their arms and to have the controversy
betwixt them decided by arbitration before the Athenians. Pericles,
therefore, fitting out a fleet, went and broke up the oligarchal
government at Samos, and, taking fifty of the principal men of the town
as hostages, and as many of their children, sent them to the Isle of
Lemnos, there to be kept, though he had offers, as some relate, of a
talent apiece for himself from each one of the hostages, and of many
other presents from those who were anxious not to have a democracy.
Moreover, Pissuthnes