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Updated: June 11, 2025
At the instance of Glykon, the people voted to Menon, the informer, an immunity from public burdens, and ordered the generals of the State to provide for the wretch's safety. XXXII. About the same time Aspasia was prosecuted for impiety, at the suit of Hermippus, the comic playwright, who moreover accused her of harbouring free-born Athenian ladies, with whom Perikles carried on intrigues.
The kind treatment of Minucius by Fabius and his mildness of character contrast very favourably with the bitter party feud of Perikles with Kimon and Thucydides, who were men of good birth, and belonging to the conservative party, and whom Perikles drove into exile by the ostracism. Then, too, the power of Perikles was much greater than that of Fabius.
We have elsewhere given a fuller account of this affair. XIV. Alkibiades was dissatisfied at the respect shown for Nikias, both by enemies of the State and by the citizens of Athens. The common phrase among the Greeks of that time was that Perikles had begun the war, and Nikias had finished it; and the peace was usually called the peace of Nikias.
Fabius seems never to have fought a pitched battle, except that one which gained him his first triumph, while Perikles set up nine trophies for victories by sea and land. But again, there is no action of Perikles which can be compared to that of Fabius when he snatched away Minucius from the grasp of Hannibal, and saved an entire Roman army from destruction.
He obviously does not tell the truth when he says that Perikles took the captains and marine soldiers of each ship to the market-place at Miletus, bound them to planks, and after they had been so for ten days and were in a miserable state, knocked them on the head with clubs and cast out their bodies without burial.
If it be the part of a good general, not merely to deal with the present, but to make conjectures about the future, we may remark that the Peloponnesian war ended just as Perikles had foretold, for the Athenians frittered away their strength; whereas the Romans, contrary to the expectation of Fabius, by sending Scipio to attack Carthage gained a complete victory, not by chance, but by the skill of their general and the courage of their troops, who overthrew the enemy in a pitched battle.
In the battle the Samians proved victorious, taking many Athenians prisoners, and destroying many of their ships. By this victory they obtained command of the sea, and were able to supply themselves with more warlike stores than they had possessed before. Aristotle even says that Perikles himself was before this beaten by Melissus in a sea-fight.
At these words of Elpinike, Perikles merely smiled and repeated the verse of Archilochus "Too old thou art for rich perfumes." Ion says that his victory over the Samians wonderfully flattered his vanity. Agamemnon, he was wont to say, took ten years to take a barbarian city, but he in nine months had made himself master of the first and most powerful city in Ionia.
"Perikles himself," they urged, "has taken away the only possible excuse for such an act the fear that it might be exposed to the attacks of the Persians when at Delos, whereas it would be safe at Athens.
It breathes a strain of exaggerated confidence, and an undervaluing of real dangers, highly suitable for the occasion, but which neither Periklês nor Xenophon would have employed at any other moment.
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