A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

Pericles Wins the People 185
Cimon to himself. As he was not so rich a man as Cimon,
who used from his own ample means to give a dinner daily
to any poor Athenian who required it, clothe aged persons,
and take away the fences around his property, so that anyone
might gather the fruit, Pericles, unable to vie with him
in this, turned his attention to a distribution of the public
funds among the people, at the suggestion, we are told
by Aristotle, of Damonides of Oia. By the money paid
for pubhc spectacles, for citizens acting as jurymen and
other paid offices, and largesses, he soon won over the
people to his side, so that he was able to use them in his
attack upon the Council of the Areopagus, of which he ^^t^dmt
himself was not a member, never having been chosen
archon, or thesmothete, or king archon, or polemarch.
These offices had from ancient times been obtained by lot.
and it was only through them that those who had approved
World, 126.
The lot was
jn 487"rc.;
themselves in the discharge of them were advanced to fyg"[J'^ -^
the Areopagus. For this reason it was that Pericles, when
he gained strength with the populace, destroyed this
Senate, making Ephialtes bring forward a bill
which restricted
its judicial powers, while he himself succeeded
in getting Cimon banished by ostracism, as a friend of
Sparta and a hater of the people, although he was second
to no Athenian in birth or fortune, had won most brilliant
victories over the Persians, and had filled Athens with
plunder and spoils of war, as will be found related in his
life. So great was the power of Pericles with the common
people. . . .
III.
The Public Works
The building of the temples, by which Athens was
adorned, the people were delighted, and the rest of the
world astonished, and which now alone prove that the