XXXVII. Athens made trial of her other generals and public men to
conduct her affairs, but none appeared to be of sufficient weight or
reputation to have such a charge entrusted to him. The city longed for
Perikles, and invited him again to lead its counsels and direct its
armies; and he, although dejected in spirits and living in seclusion in
his own house, was yet persuaded by Alkibiades and his other friends to
resume the direction of affairs. The people apologised for their
ungrateful treatment of him, and when he was again in office and elected
as general, he begged of them to be released from the operations of the
law of bastardy, which he himself had originally introduced, in order
that his name and race might not altogether become extinct for want of
an heir. The provisions of the law were as follows:--Perikles many years
before, when he was at the height of his power and had children born to
him, as we have related, of legitimate birth, proposed a law that only
those born of an Athenian father and mother should be reckoned Athenian
citizens. But when the king of Egypt sent a present of forty thousand
_medimni_ of wheat to be divided among the citizens, many lawsuits arose
about the citizenship of men whose birth had never been questioned
before that law came into force, and many vexatious informations were
laid. Nearly five thousand men were convicted of illegitimacy of birth
and sold for slaves, while those who retained their citizenship and
proved themselves to be genuine Athenians amounted to fourteen thousand
and forty.
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