Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/388

 364 fflSTORY OF GREECE. Perikles was administered with a strict, though benevolent econ- omy, by his ancient steward Evangelus, — the produce of his lands being all sold, and the consumption of his house supplied by purchase in the market.^ It was by such regularity that his perfect and manifest independence of all pecuniary seduction was sustained. In taste, in talent, and in character, Kimon was the very opposite of Perikles, — a brave and efficient com- mander, a lavish distributor, a man of convivial and amorous habits, but incapable of sustained attention to business, untaught in music or letters, and endued with Laconian aversion to rhet- oric and philosophy ; while the ascendency of Perikles was founded on his admirable combination of civil qualities, — prob- ity, firmness, diligence, judgment, eloquence, and power of guid- ing partisans. As a military commander, though noway deficient in personal courage, he rarely courted distinction, and was prin- cipally famous for his care of the lives of the citizens, discoun- tenancing all rash or distant enterprises : his private habits were sober and recluse, — his chief conversation was with Anaxagoras, Protagoras,^ Zeno, the musician Damon, and other philosophers, — while the tenderest domestic attachment bound him to the engaging and cultivated Aspasia. Such were the two men who stood forward at this time as most conspicuous in Athenian party-contest, — the expanding democ- racy against the stationary democracy of the past generation, which now passed by the name of oligarchy, — the ambitious and talkative energy spread even among the poor population, which was no^v forming more and more the characteristic of Athens, against the unlettered and uninquiring valor of the conquerors of Marathon.3 Ephialtes, son of Sophonides, was at this time the leading auxiliary, seemingly indeed the equal of Perikles, and no way inferior to him in personal probity, though he was a poor man : 4 as to aggressive political warfare, he was even more active ' Plutarch, Perikles, c. 9, 16; Ivimon, c. 10; Reipnbl. Gerend. Praecept. p. 818. ' The personal intercourse between Perikles and Protagoras is attested by ihe interesting fragment of the latter which we find in Plutarch, Cbnsolat. ad ApoUonium, c. 33, p. 119. ^ Aristophan. Nubes, 972, 1000, seq. and Eanae, 1071.
 * Plutarch. Kimon. c. 10 : ^lian, V. H. ii, 43 : xi. 9.