" At these words of Elpinike, Perikles merely smiled
and repeated the verse of Archilochus--
"Too old thou art for rich perfumes."
Ion says that his victory over the Samians wonderfully flattered his
vanity. Agamemnon, he was wont to say, took ten years to take a
barbarian city, but he in nine months had made himself master of the
first and most powerful city in Ionia. And the comparison was not an
unjust one, for truly the war was a very great undertaking, and its
issue quite uncertain, since, as Thucydides tells us, the Samians came
very near to wresting the empire of the sea from the Athenians.
XXIX. After these events, as the clouds were gathering for the
Peloponnesian war, Perikles persuaded the Athenians to send assistance
to the people of Korkyra, who were at war with the Corinthians, and thus
to attach to their own side an island with a powerful naval force, at a
moment when the Peloponnesians had all but declared war against them.
When the people passed this decree, Perikles sent only ten ships under
the command of Lacedaemonius, the son of Kimon, as if he designed a
deliberate insult; for the house of Kimon was on peculiarly friendly
terms with the Lacedaemonians. His design in sending Lacedaemonius out,
against his will, and with so few ships, was that if he performed
nothing brilliant he might be accused, even more than he was already, of
leaning to the side of the Spartans.
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