ords, saying, that "trees, when they
are lopped and cut, grow up again in a short time, but men, being once
lost, cannot easily be recovered." He did not convene the people into
an assembly, for fear lest they should force him to act against his
judgement; and many of his enemies threatened and accursed him for doing
as he did, and many made songs and lampoons upon him, which were sung
about the town to his disgrace, reproaching him with the cowardly
exercise of his office of general, and the tame abandonment of
everything to the enemy's hands.

Cleon, also, already was among his assailants, making use of the feeling
against him as a step to the leadership of the people, as appears in the
anapaestic verses of Hermippus.

Satyr-king, instead of swords,
Will you always handle words?
Very brave indeed we find them,
But a Teles lurks behind them.

(Teles was apparently some notorious coward.)

Yet to gnash your teeth you're seen,
When the little dagger keen,
Whetted every day anew,
Of sharp Cleon touches you.

Pericles, however, was not at all moved by any attacks, but took all
patiently, and submitted in silence to the disgrace they threw upon him
and the ill-will they bore him; and, sending out a fleet of a hundred
galleys to Peloponnesus, he did not go along with it in person, but
stayed behind, that he might watch at home and keep the city under his
own control, till the Peloponnesians broke up their camp and were gone.
Yet to soothe the common people, jaded and distressed with the war,
he relieved them with distributions of public moneys, and ordained
new divisions of subject land. For having turned out all the people of
Aegina, he parted the island among the Athenians, according to lot. Some
comfort, also, and ease in their miseries, they might receive from what
their enemies endured. For the fleet, sailing round the Peloponnesus,
ravaged a great deal of the country, and pillaged and plundered the
towns and smaller cities; and by land he himself entered with an army
the Megarian country, and made havoc of it all. Whence it is clear that
the Peloponnesians, though they did the Athenians much mischief by
land, yet suffering as much themselves from them by sea, would not have
protracted the war to such a length, but would quickly have given it
over, as Pericles at first foretold they would, had not some divine
power crossed human purposes.

In the first place, the pestile