not startle from its suddenness; while his birth, his services, and
his genius presented a combination of claims to power that his enemies
could not despise, and that justified the enthusiasm of his friends.
His public character was unsullied; of the general belief in his
integrity there is the highest evidence [263]; and even the few
slanders afterward raised against him--such as that of entering into
one war to gratify the resentment of Aspasia, and into another to
divert attention from his financial accounts, are libels so
unsupported by any credible authority, and so absurd in themselves,
that they are but a proof how few were the points on which calumny
could assail him.

II. The obvious mode to account for the moral power of a man in any
particular time, is to consider his own character, and to ascertain
how far it is suited to command the age in which he lived and the
people whom he ruled. No Athenian, perhaps, ever possessed so many
qualities as Pericles for obtaining wide and lasting influence over
the various classes of his countrymen. By his attention to maritime
affairs, he won the sailors, now the most difficult part of the
population to humour or control; his encouragement to commerce secured
the merchants and conciliated the alien settlers; while the stupendous
works of art, everywhere carried on, necessarily obtained the favour
of the mighty crowd of artificers and mechanics whom they served to
employ. Nor was it only to the practical interests, but to all the
more refined, yet scarce less powerful sympathies of his countrymen,
that his character appealed for support. Philosophy, with all
parties, all factions, was becoming an appetite and passion. Pericles
was rather the friend than the patron of philosophers. The increasing
refinement of the Athenians--the vast influx of wealth that poured
into the treasury from the spoils of Persia and the tributes of