hands of one leading citizen. But as many other writers tell us that,
during his administration, the people received grants of land abroad,
and were indulged with dramatic entertainments, and payments for their
services, in consequence of which they fell into bad habits, and became
extravagant and licentious, instead of sober hard-working people as they
had been before, let us consider the history of this change, viewing it
by the light of the facts themselves. First of all, Pericles had to
measure himself with Cimon, and to transfer the affections of the people
from Cimon to himself. As he was not so rich a man as Cimon, who used
from his own ample means to give a dinner daily to any poor Athenian who
required it, clothe aged persons, and take away the fences round his
property, so that anyone might gather the fruit, Pericles, unable to vie
with him in this, turned his attention to a distribution of the public
funds among the people, at the suggestion, we are told by Aristotle, of
Damonides of Oia. By the money paid for public spectacles, for citizens
acting as jurymen, and other paid offices, and largesses, he soon won
over the people to his side, so that he was able to use them in his
attack upon the senate of the Areopagus, of which he himself was not a
member, never having been chosen _archon_, or _thesmothete_, or _king
archon_, or _polemarch_. These offices had from ancient times been
obtained by lot, and it was only through them that those who had
approved themselves in the discharge of them were advanced to the
Areopagus. For this reason it was that Pericles, when he gained strength
with the populace, destroyed this senate, making Ephialtes bring forward
a bill which restricted its judicial powers, while he himself succeeded
in getting Cimon banished by ostracism, as a friend of Sparta and a
hater of the people, although he was second to no Athenian in birth or
fortune, and won most brilliant victories over the Persians, and had
filled Athens with plunder and spoils of war. So great was the power of
Pericles with the common people.