Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/190

 103 HISTORY OF GREECE. of individuals taken separately were still those of anger agamst him, as the author of that system which had brought them intc so much distress. His political opponents Kleon, Simmias, or Lakratidas, perhaps all three in conjunction took care to provide an opportunity for this prevalent irritation to manifest itself in act, by bringing an accusation against him before the dikastery. The accusation ia said to have been preferred on the ground of pecuniary malversation, and ended by his being sen- tenced to pay a considerable fine, the amount of which is differ- ently reported, fifteen, fifty, or eighty talents, by different authors. 1 The accusing party thus appeared to have carried 1 Thucyd. ii, 65 ; Plato, Gorgias, p. 515, c. 71 ; Plutarch, Perikle>, c. 33 ; Diodor. xii, c. 38-45. About Simmias. as the vehement enemy of Perikles, see Plutarch, Reipnb. Ger. Prsecept. p. 805. Plutarch and Diodorus both state that Perikles was not only fined, but also removed from his office of strategus. Thucydides mentions the fine, but not the removal : and his silence leads me to doubt the reality of the latter event altogether. For with such a man as Perikles, a vote of re- moval would have been a penalty more marked and cutting than the fine ; moreover, removal from office, though capable of being pronounced by vote of the public assembly, would hardly be inflicted as penalty by the dikastery. I imagine the events to have passed as follows : The strategi, with most other officers of the commonwealth, were changed or reflected at the be- ginning of Hekatombaeon, the first month of the Attic year ; that is, some- where about midsummer. Now the Peloponnesian army, invading Attica about the end of March or beginning of April, and remaining forty days, would leave the country about the first week in May. Perikles returned from his expedition against Peloponnesus shortly after they left Attica ; that is, about the middle of May (Thucyd. ii. 57) : there still remained, therefore, a month or six weeks before his office of strategus naturally expired, and required renewal. It was during this interval (which Thucydides ex- presses by the words In ff iarpaT^-ysi, ii, 59) that he convoked the assembly and delivered the harangue recently mentioned. But when the time for a new election of strategi arrived, the enemies of Perikles opposed his reelection, and brought a charge against him, in that trial of accountability to which every magistrate at Athens was exposed, nfter his period of office. They alleged against him some official miscon- duct in reference to the public money, and the diksistery visited him with a fine. His reelection was thus prevented, and with a man who had been so often reflected, this might be loosely called ' : taking away the office of general ;" so that the language of Plutarch and Diodorus, as well as the silence of Thucydides, would, on this supposition, be justified.