ttack with return of spring, the
Athenians now felt regret and sorrow for the loss of Cimon, and
repentance for their expulsion of him. Pericles, being sensible of their
feelings, did not hesitate or delay to gratify it, and himself made the
motion for recalling him home. He, upon his return, concluded a peace
betwixt the two cities; for the Lacedaemonians entertained as kindly
feelings towards him as they did the reverse towards Pericles and the
other popular leaders.

Cimon, while he was admiral, ended his days in the Isle of Cyprus. And
the aristocratical party, seeing that Pericles was already before
this grown to be the greatest and foremost man of all the city, but
nevertheless wishing there should be somebody set up against him, to
blunt and turn the edge of his power, that it might not altogether prove
a monarchy, put forward Thucydides of Alopece, a discreet person, and a
near kinsman of Cimon's, to conduct the opposition against him. And so
Pericles, at that time more than at any other, let loose the reins
to the people, and made his policy subservient to their pleasure,
contriving continually to have some great public show or solemnity, some
banquet, or some procession or other in the town to please them, coaxing
his countrymen like children, with such delights and pleasures as
were not, however, unedifying. Besides that, every year he sent
out threescore galleys, on board of which there went numbers of the
citizens, who were in pay eight months, at the same time learning and
practicing the art of seamanship.

He sent, moreover, a thousand of them into the Chersonese as planters,
to share the land among them by lot, and five hundred more into the
isle of Naxos, and half that number to Andros, a thousand into Thrace to
dwell among the Bisaltae, and others into Italy, when the city Sybaris,
which now was called Thurii, was to be repeopled. And this he did
to ease and discharge the city of an idle, and, by reason of their
idleness, a busy, meddling crowd of people; and at the same time to meet
the necessities and restore the fortunes of the poor townsmen, and to
intimidate, also, and check their allies from attempting any change, by
posting such garrisons, as it were, in the midst of them.

That which gave most pleasure and ornament to the city of Athens, and
the greatest admiration and even astonishment to all strangers, and that
which now is Greece's only evidence that the power she boasts of and her
ancien