Pericles and Fabius Maximus both held a city back from the battle it wanted. Pericles kept Athens inside the walls while Sparta burned the fields. Fabius kept Rome off a pitched fight with Hannibal after Lake Trasimene.

Plutarch treats the two delays as the same kind of sense. When he turns to what they built, he gives Pericles a pre-eminence that leaves Rome's works, down to the Caesars, out of the contest.