ical
opponents--Cleon, Simmias, or Lacratidas, perhaps all three in
conjunction--took care to provide an opportunity for this prevalent
irritation to manifest itself in act, by bringing an accusation against
him before the _dicastery_. The accusation is said to have been
preferred on the ground of pecuniary malversation, and ended by his
being sentenced to pay a considerable fine, the amount of which is
differently reported--fifteen, fifty, or eighty talents, by different
authors. The accusing party thus appeared to have carried their point,
and to have disgraced, as well as excluded from reelection, the veteran
statesman. The event, however, disappointed their expectations. The
imposition of the fine not only satiated all the irritation of the
people against him, but even occasioned a serious reaction in his favor,
and brought back as strongly as ever the ancient sentiment of esteem and
admiration. It was quickly found that those who had succeeded Pericles
as generals neither possessed nor deserved in an equal degree the public
confidence. He was accordingly soon reelected, with as much power and
influence as he had ever in his life enjoyed.

But that life, long, honorable, and useful, had already been prolonged
considerably beyond the sixtieth year, and there were but too many
circumstances, besides the recent fine, which tended to hasten as well
as to embitter its close. At the very moment when Pericles was preaching
to his countrymen, in a tone almost reproachful, the necessity of manful
and unabated devotion to the common country in the midst of private
suffering, he was himself among the greatest of sufferers, and most
hardly pressed to set the example of observing his own precepts. The
epidemic carried off not merely his two sons--the only two legitimate,
Xanthippus and Paralus--but also his sister, several other relatives,
and his best and most useful political friends. Amid this train of
domestic calamities, and in the funeral obsequies of so many of his
dearest friends, he remained master of his grief, and maintained his
habitual self-command, until the last misfortune--the death of his
favorite son Paralus, which left his house without any legitimate
representative to maintain the family and the hereditary sacred rites.
On this final blow, though he strove to command himself as before, yet
at the obsequies of the young man, when it became his duty to place a
wreath on the dead body, his grief became uncontrol