a storm comes on at sea, places everything in the best trim to meet it, and trusting to his own skill and seamanship, disregarding the tears and entreaties of the sea-sick and terrified passengers; so did Perikles shut the gates of Athens, place sufficient forces to ensure the safety of the city at all points, and calmly carry out his own policy, taking little heed of the noisy grumblings of the discontented.  Many of his friends besought him to attack, many of his enemies threatened him and abused him, and many songs and offensive jests were written about him, speaking of him as a coward, and one who was betraying the city to its enemies.  Kleon too attacked him, using the anger which the citizens felt against him to advance his own personal popularity, as we see from the following lines of Hermippus: 

“King of Satyrs, wherefore fear you
Spear to wield, and only dare to
Talk in swelling phrase, while yet you
Cower, Teles like,
And when goaded on, past bearing,
By our Kleon’s tongue so daring,
Only gnash your teeth despairing,
Still afraid to strike.”

[Footnote A:  The Dorians of Boeotia and Peloponnesus were accounted the best infantry soldiers of Greece.]

XXXIV.  Perikles was unmoved by any of these attacks, but quietly endured all this storm of obloquy.  He sent a fleet of a hundred ships to attack Peloponnesus, but did not sail with it himself, remaining at home to keep a tight hand over Athens until the Peloponnesians drew off their forces.  He regained his popularity with the common people, who suffered much from the war, by giving them allowances of money from the public revenue, and grants of land; for he drove out the entire population of the island of Aegina, and divided the land by lot among the Athenians.  A certain amount of relief also was experienced by reflecting upon the injuries which they were inflicting on the enemy; for the fleet as it sailed round Peloponnesus destroyed many small villages and cities, and ravaged a great extent of country, while Perikles himself led an expedition into the territory of Megara and laid it all waste.  By this it is clear that the allies, although they did much damage to the Athenians, yet suffered equally themselves, and never could have protracted the war for such a length of time as it really lasted, but, as Perikles foretold, must soon have desisted had not Providence interfered and confounded human counsels.  For now the pestilence fell among the Athenians, and cut off the flower of their youth.  Suffering both in body and mind they raved against Perikles, just as people when delirious with disease attack their fathers or their physicians.  They endeavoured to ruin him, urged on by his personal enemies, who assured them that he was the author of the plague, because he had brought all the country people into the city, where they were compelled to live during the heat of summer, crowded together in small rooms and stifling tents, living an idle life too, and breathing foul air instead of the pure country breezes to which they were accustomed.  The cause of this, they said, was the man who, when the war began, admitted the masses of the country people into the city, and then made no use of them, but allowed them to be penned up together like cattle, and transmit the contagion from one to another, without devising any remedy or alleviation of their sufferings.