ntial disease, or plague, seized upon the
city, and ate up all the flour and prime of their youth and strength.
Upon occasion of which the people, distempered and afflicted in their
souls, as well as in their bodies, were utterly enraged like madmen
against Pericles, and, like patients grown delirious, sought to lay
violent hands on their physician, or, as it were, their father.

Finding the Athenians ill affected and highly displeased with him, he
tried and endeavored what he could to appease and re-encourage them. But
he could not pacify or allay their anger nor persuade or prevail with
them anyway, til they freely passed their votes upon him, resumed their
power, took away his command from him, and fined him in a sum of money.

After this, public troubles were soon to leave him unmolested; the
people, so to say, discharged their passion in their stroke, and lost
their stings in the wound. But his domestic concerns were in an unhappy
condition, many of his friends and acquaintance having died in the
plague time, and those of his family having long since been in disorder
and in a kind of mutiny against him. For the eldest of his sons,
Xanthippus by name, being naturally prodigal, and marrying a young and
expensive wife, was highly offended at his father's economy in making
him but a scanty allowance, by little and little at a time. He sent
therefore, to a friend one day, and borrowed some money of him in his
father Pericles's name, pretending it was by his order. The man coming
afterward to demand the debt, Pericles was so far from yielding to pay
it, that he entered an action against him. Upon which the young man,
Xanthippus, thought himself so ill used and disobliged, that he openly
reviled his father; telling first, by way of ridicule, stories about his
conversations at home, and the discourses he had with the sophists and
scholars that came to his house. As for instance, how one who was a
practicer of the five games of skill, * having with a dart or javelin
unawares against his will struck and killed Epitimus the Pharsalian, his
father spent a whole day with Protagoras in a serious dispute, whether
the javelin, or the man that threw it, or the masters of the games
who appointed these sports, were, according to the strictest and best
reason, to be accounted the cause of this mischance. And in general,
this difference of the young man's with his father, in the breach
betwixt them, continued never to be healed or made