ill among the people, for
wisdom and for love of his countrymen.

But of all his expeditions, that to the Chersonese gave most
satisfaction and pleasure, having proved the safety of the Greeks who
inhabited there. For not only by carrying along with him a thousand
fresh citizens of Athens he gave new strength and vigor to the cities,
but also by belting the neck of land, which joins the peninsula to the
continent, with bulwarks and forts from sea to sea, he put a stop to the
inroads of the Thracians, who lay all about the Chersonese, and closed
the door against a continual and grievous war, with which that country
had been long harassed, lying exposed to the encroachments and influx
of barbarous neighbors, and groaning under the evils of a predatory
population both upon and within its borders.

Entering also the Euxine Sea with a large and finely equipped fleet,
he obtained for the Greek cities any new arrangements they wanted, and
entered into friendly relations with them; and to the barbarous nations,
and kings and chiefs round about them, displayed the greatness of the
power of the Athenians, their perfect ability and confidence to sail
wherever they had a mind, and to bring the whole sea under his control.
He left the Sinopians thirteen ships of war, with soldiers under the
command of Lamachus, to assist them against Timesileus the tyrant; and,
when he and his accomplices had been thrown out, obtained a decree that
six hundred of the Athenians that were willing should sail to Sinope and
plant themselves there with the Sinopians, sharing among them the houses
and land which the tyrant and his party had previously held.

But in other things he did not comply with the giddy impulses of the
citizens, nor quit his own resolutions to follow their fancies, when,
carried away with the thought of their strength and great success,
they were eager to interfere again in Egypt, and to disturb the king of
Persia's maritime dominions. Nay, there were a good many who were, even
then, possessed with that unblest and unauspicious passion for Sicily,
which afterward the orators of Alciabes's party blew up into a flame.
There were some also who dreamt of Tuscany and of Carthage, and not
without plausible reason in their present large dominion and the
prosperous course of their affairs.

But Pericles curbed this passion for foreign conquest, and unsparingly
pruned and cut down their ever-busy fancies for a multitude of
undertakings,