A sentence from El Anacronópete

Question

Hola. Here is another long sentence from Enrique Gaspar's novel El Anacronópete that I can't understand. Any help is much appreciated:

Ahí tenemos sino las guerras del Peloponeso que debieron su origen al rapto que de tres doncellas educandas de Aspasia, que la cosa no había de ser del agrado de Pericles--de quien dicen malas lenguas si tenía ó no tenía que ver con la profesora--y paréceme á mí que sí que le gustaba al hombre.

Answer 1

I know this is a rather contorted sentence. That's the humorous way that Gaspar wrote. Here is the full sentence (I omitted some in the first post) along with my attempt at a translation to English. I am only a second-semester Spanish student, so you can probably understand my difficulty. Any feedback would be much appreciated!

En español:

Ahí tenemos sino las guerras del Peloponeso á las que la historia atribuye una razón eminentemente política y que sin embargo debieron su origen al rapto que de tres doncellas educandas de Aspasia, hicieron unos habitantes de Megara, jóvenes de buen humor, sin contar que la cosa no había de ser del agrado de Pericles — de quien dicen malas lenguas si tenía ó no tenía que ver con la profesora. — Y paréceme á mí que sí que le gustaba al hombre porque, cuando acusada de impiedad él se encargó de su defensa, no supo hacer más que cubrirse el rostro con el manto y llorar como un chiquillo en el Pnix; lo que por cierto le valió la absolución á la buena discípula de Anaxágoras.

My English:

As a case in point, we have but to examine the Peloponnesian War, which history attributes to eminently political motives, but which nevertheless owed its origins to the abduction of three maidens from the tutelage of fair Aspasia, perpetrated by those raucous youths of Megara and (as goes without saying) a thing not at all to the liking of Pericles—about whom malicious ne’er-do-wells gossip on whether he had anything to do with the tutor herself...though it seems to me that the man was rather more amorous towards her than not, because when she was accused of impiety, he took charge of her defense without knowing more than to bury his face in his cloak and shed tears like a toddler in the Pnyx, which incidentally did earn absolution for the good disciple of Anaxágoras.