This tale, about protecting Pheidias under the charge of embezzlement, was the story most widely in circulation against Periklês—ἡ χειρίστη μὲν αἰτία πασῶν, ἔχουσα δὲ πλείστους μάρτυρας (Plutarch, Periklês, c. 31).
[178] See the Dissertation of O. Müller (De Phidiæ Vitâ, c. 17, p. 35), who lays out the facts in the order in which I have given them.
[179] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 13-32.
[180] Aristophan. Pac. 587-603: compare Acharn. 512; Ephorus, ap. Diodor. xii, 38-40; and the Scholia on the two passages of Aristophanês; Plutarch, Periklês, c. 32.
Diodorus (as well as Plutarch, Alkibiad. c. 7) relates another tale, that Alkibiadês once approached Periklês when he was in evident low spirits and embarrassment, and asked him the reason: Periklês told him that the time was near at hand for rendering his accounts, and that he was considering how this could be done: upon which Alkibiadês advised him to consider rather how he could evade doing it. The result of this advice was that Periklês plunged Athens into the Peloponnesian war: compare Aristophan. Nub. 855, with the Scholia,—and Ephorus, Fragm. 118, 119, ed. Marx, with the notes of Marx.
It is probable enough that Ephorus copied the story, which ascribes the Peloponnesian war to the accusations against Pheidias and Periklês, from Aristophanês or other comic writers of the time. But it deserves remark, that even Aristophanês is not to be considered as certifying it. For if we consult the passage above referred to in his comedy Pax, we shall find that, first, Hermês tells the story about Pheidias, Periklês, and the Peloponnesian war; upon which both Trygæus, and the Chorus, remark that they never heard a word of it before: that it is quite new to them.
Tryg. Ταῦτα τοίνυν, μὰ τὸν Ἀπόλλω, ᾽γὼ ᾽πεπύσμην οὐδενὸς,
Οὐδ᾽ ὅπως αὐτῇ (Εἰρήνῃ) προσήκοι Φειδίας ἠκηκόη.
Chorus. Οὐδ᾽ ἔγωγε πλήν γε νυνί.
If Aristophanês had stated the story ever so plainly, his authority could only have been taken as proving that it was a part of the talk of the time: but the lines just cited make him as much a contradicting as an affirming witness.