or Pliletas or Archilochus. But virtue,
by the bare statement of its actions, can so affect men's minds as to
create at once both admiration of the things done and desire to imitate
the doers of them. The goods of fortune we would possess and would
enjoy; those of virtue we long to practice and exercise; we are
content to receive the former from others, the latter we wish others to
experience from us.

And so we have thought fit to spend our time and pains in writing of
the lives of famous persons; and have composed this tenth book upon that
subject, containing the life of Pericles, and that of Fabius Maximus,
who carried on the war against Hannibal, men alike, as in their other
virtues and good parts, so especially in their mild and upright temper
and demeanor, and in that capacity to bear the cross-grained humors of
their fellow-citizens and colleagues in office which made them both most
useful and serviceable to the interests of their countries. Whether we
take a right aim at our intended purpose, it is left to the reader to
judge by what he shall find here.

Pericles was of the tribe of Acamantis, and the township Cholargus, of
the noblest birth both on his father's and mother's side. Xanthippus,
his father, who defeated the king of Persia's generals in the battle at
Mycale, took to Wife Agariste, the grandchild of Clisthenes, who drove
out the sons of Pisistratus, and nobly put and end to their tyrannical
usurpation, and moreover made a body of laws, and settled a model of
government admirably tempered and suited for the harmony and safety of
the people.

Pericles in other respects was perfectly formed physically, only his
head was somewhat longish and out of proportion. For which reason almost
all the images and statues that were made of him have the head covered
with a helmet, the workmen not apparently being willing to expose him.
The poets of Athens called him "Schinocephalos," or squill-head, from
"schinos," a squill, or sea-onion.

Pericles was a hearer of Zeno, the Eliatic, who treated of natural
philosophy in the same manner as Parmenides did, but had also perfected
himself in an art of his own for refuting and silencing opponents in
argument; as Timon of Phlius describes it,--

Also the two-edged tongue of mighty Zeno, who,
Say what one would, could argue it untrue.

But he saw most of Pericles, and furnished him most especially with a
weight and grandeur of sense, superior to all arts of