Once, after being reviled and ill-
spoken of all day long in his own hearing by some abandoned fellow
in the open market-place where he was engaged in the despatch of
some urgent affair, he continued his business in perfect silence,
and in the evening returned home composedly, the man still dogging
him at the heels, and pelting him all the way with abuse and foul
language; and stopping into his house, it being by this time dark,
he ordered one of hi servants to take a light and to go along with
the man and see him safe home.
Nor were these the only advantages which Pericles derived from
Anaxagoras's acquaintance; he seems also to have become, by his
instructions, superior to that superstition with which an ignorant
wonder at appearances, for example, in the heavens, possesses the
minds of people unacquainted with their causes, eager for the
supernatural, and excitable through an inexperience which the
knowledge of natural causes removes, replacing wild and timid
superstition by the good hope and assurance of an intelligent
piety.
There is a story that once Pericles had brought to him from a
country farm of his, a ram's head with one horn, and that Lampon,
the diviner, upon seeing the horn grow strong and solid out of the
midst of the forehead, gave it as his judgement that, there being
at that time two potent factions, parties, or interests in the
city, the one of Thucydides and the other of Pericles, the
government would come about to that one of them in whose ground or
estate this token or indication of fate had shown itself.
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