Aristophanes and Plautus show us how often resort was had to the discipline of the lash even in the case of domestic slaves.
Tne scurrilous motives which Aristophanes suggests for this measure can be entirely disregarded.
Of other 5th-century sources, Aristophanes is obviously a caricaturist, pseudo-Xenophon (de republica Atheniensium) a mere party pamphleteer.
Plutarch (Pericles) gives many interesting details as to Pericles' personal bearing, home life, and patronage of art, literature and philosophy, derived in part from the old comic poets, Aristophanes, Cratinus, Eupolis, Hermippus, Plato and Teleclides; in part from the contemporary memoirs of Stesimbrotus and Ion of Chios.
According to Philochorus, as quoted by a scholiast on Aristophanes, he fled to Elis, where he made the great statue of Zeus for the Eleans, and was afterwards put to death by them.