though not highly celebrated for military exploits, was deemed
superior to Cimon, whether as a practical statesman or a popular
orator. Thucydides, their new champion, united with natural gifts
whatever advantage might result from the memory of Cimon; and his
connexion with that distinguished warrior, to whom he was brother-in-
law, served to keep together the various partisans of the faction, and
retain to the eupatrids something of the respect and enthusiasm which
the services of Cimon could not fail to command, even among the
democracy. The policy embraced by Thucydides was perhaps the best
which the state of affairs would permit; but it was one which was
fraught with much danger. Hitherto the eupatrids and the people,
though ever in dispute, had not been absolutely and totally divided;
the struggles of either faction being headed by nobles, scarcely
permitted to the democracy the perilous advantage of the cry--that the
people were on one side, and the nobles on the other. But Thucydides,
seeking to render his party as strong, as compact, and as united as
possible, brought the main bulk of the eupatrids to act together in
one body. The means by which he pursued and attained this object are
not very clearly narrated; but it was probably by the formation of a
political club--a species of social combination, which afterward
became very common to all classes in Athens. The first effect of this
policy favoured the aristocracy, and the energy and union they
displayed restored for a while the equilibrium of parties; but the
aristocratic influence, thus made clear and open, and brought into
avowed hostility with the popular cause, the city was rent in two, and
the community were plainly invited to regard the nobles as their foes
[251]. Pericles, thus more and more thrown upon the democracy, became
identified with their interests, and he sought, no less by taste than
policy, to prove to the populace that they had grown up into a wealthy
and splendid nation, that could dispense with the bounty, the shows,