Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/191

 SECOND AND THIRD YEARS OF THE WAR. 163 their point, and to have disgraced, as well as excluded from reelection, the veteran statesman. But the event disappointed their expectations : the imposition of the fine not only satiated all the irritation of the people against him, but even occasioned a serious reaction in his favor, and brought back as strongly as ever the ancient sentiment of esteem and admiration. It was quickly found that those who had succeeded Perikles as gen- erals, neither possessed nor deserved in an equal degree, the public confidence, and he was accordingly soon reflected, with as much power and influence as he had ever in his life en- joyed. 1 But that life long, honorable, and useful had already been prolonged considerably beyond the sixtieth year, and there were but too many circumstances, besides the recent fine, which tended to hasten as well as to embitter its close. At the very moment when Perikles was preaching to his countrymen, in a tone almost reproachful, the necessity of manful and unabated devotion to the common country, in the midst of private suffering, he was himself among the greatest of sufferers, and most hardly pressed to set the example of observing his own precepts. The epidemic carried off not merely his two sons, the only two legitimate, Xanthippus and Paralus, but also his sister, several other rela- tives, and his best and most useful political friends. Amidst this train of domestic calamities, and in the funeral obsequies of so many of his dearest friends, he remained master of his grief, and maintained his habitual self-command, until the last misfortune, the death of his favorite son Paralus, which left his house without any legitimate representative to maintain the family and the hereditary sacred rites. On this final blow, though he strove to command himself as before, yet, at the obsequies of the young man, when it became his duty to place a garland on the dead body, his grief became uncontrollable, and he burst out, for the first time of his life, into profuse tears and sobbing. 2 In the midst of these several personal trials he received the intimation, through Alkibiades and some other friends, of the restored confidence of the people towards him, and of his re- election to the office of strategus : nor was it without difficulty 1 Thucyd. ii, 65. Plutarch, Perikles, c. 36. VOL. TI. 8