With Atreus' sons, this city sent of yore Divine Menestheus to the
Trojan shore; Of all the Greeks, so Homer's verses say, The ablest man
an army to array; So old the title of her sons the name Of chiefs and
champions in the field to claim.
Though the name of Cimon is not mentioned in these inscriptions, yet his
contemporaries considered them to be the very highest honors to him;
as neither Miltiades nor Themistocles ever received the like. When
Miltiades claimed a garland, Sochares of Decelea stood up in the midst
of the assembly and opposed it, using words which, though ungracious,
were received with applause by the people. "When you have gained a
victory by yourself, Miltiades, then you may ask to triumph so too."
One mark of Cimon's great favor with the people, was the judgment,
afterwards so famous upon the tragic poets. Sophocles, still a young
man, had just brought forward his first plays; opinions were much
divided, and the spectators had taken sides with some heat. So, to
determine the case, Apsephion, who was at that time Archon, would
not cast lots who should be judges; but when Cimon, and his brother
commanders with him, came into the theatre, after they had performed
the usual rites to the god of the festival, he would not allow them to
retire, but came forward and made them swear, being ten in all, one from
each tribe, the usual oath; and so being sworn judges, he made them sit
down to give sentence. The eagerness for victory grew all the warmer,
from the ambition to get the suffrages of such honorable judges. And the
victory was at last adjudged to Sophocles, which Aeschylus is said to
have taken so ill, that he left Athens shortly after, and went in anger
to Sicily, where he died, and was buried near the city of Gela.
Ion relates that when he was a young man, and had recently come from
Chios to Athens, he chanced to sup with Cimon, at Laomedon's house.
After supper, when they had, according to custom, poured out wine to the
honor of the gods, Cimon was desired by the company to give them a song,
which he did with sufficient success, and received the commendations of
the company, who remarked on his superiority to Themistocles, who, on a
like occasion, had declared he had never learnt to sing, or to play, and
only knew how to make a city rich and powerful. After talking of things
incident to such entertainments, they entered upon the particulars of
the several actions for which Cimon had been famous. And when they were
mentioning the most signal, he told them they had omitted one, upon
which he valued himself most for address and good contrivance. He gave
this account of it. When the allies had taken a great number of
the barbarians prisoners in Sestos and Byzantium, they gave him the
preference to divide the booty; he accordingly put the prisoners in one
lot, and the spoils of their rich attire and jewels in the other. This
the allies complained of as an unequal division; but he gave them their
choice to take which lot they would, saying that the Athenians should be
content with that which they refused. Herophytus of Samos advised them
to take the ornaments for their share, and leave the slaves to the
Athenians; and Cimon went away, and was much laughed at for his
ridiculous division. For the allies carried away the golden bracelets,
and armlets, and collars, and purple robes, and the Athenians had only
the naked bodies of the captives, which they could make no advantage of,
being unused to labor. But a little while after, the friends and kinsmen
of the prisoners coming from Lydia and Phrygia, redeemed every one his
relations at a high ransom; so that by this means Cimon got so much
treasure that he maintained his whole fleet of galleys with the money
for four months; and yet there was some left to lay up in the treasury
at Athens.
Cimon now grew rich, and what he gained from the barbarians with honor,
he spent yet more honorably upon the citizens. For he pulled down all
the enclosures of his gardens and grounds, that strangers, and the needy
of his fellow-citizens, might gather of its fruits freely. At home, he
kept a table, plain, but sufficient for a considerable number, to which
any poor townsman had free access, and so might support himself without
labor, with his whole time left free for public duties. Aristotle
states, however, that this reception did not extend to all the
Athenians, but only to his own fellow townsmen, the Laciadae.* Besides
this, he always went attended by two or three young companions, very
well clad; and if he met with an elderly citizen in a poor habit, one
of these would change clothes with the decayed citizen, which was
looked upon as very nobly done. He enjoined them, likewise, to carry
a considerable quantity of coin about them, which they were to convey
silently into the hands of the better class of poor men, as they stood
by them in the market-place. This, Cratinus, the poet, speaks of in one
of his comedies, the Archilochi:--
For I, Metrobius too, the scrivener poor,
Of ease and comfort in my age secure,
By Greece's noblest son in life's decline,
Cimon, the generous-hearted, the divine,
Well-fed and feasted hoped till death to be,
Death which, alas! has taken him ere me.
Gorgias the Leontine gives him this character, that he got riches that
he might use them, and used them that he might get honor by them. And
Critias, one of the thirty tyrants, makes it, in his elegies, his wish
to have
The Scopads' wealth, and Cimon's nobleness,
And king Agesilaus's success.
Lichas, we know, became famous in Greece, only because on the days of
the sports, when the young boys ran naked, he used to entertain the
strangers that came to see these diversions. But Cimon's generosity
outdid all the old Athenian hospitality and good-nature. For though
it is the city's just boast that their forefathers taught the rest of
Greece to sow corn, and how to use springs of water, and to kindle fire,
yet Cimon, by keeping open house for his fellow-citizens, and giving
travelers liberty to eat the fruits which the several seasons produced
in his land, seemed to restore to the world that community of goods,
which mythology says existed in the reign of Saturn. Those who object to
him that he did this to be popular, and gain the applause of the vulgar,
are confuted by the constant tenor of the rest of his actions, which all
ended to uphold the interests of the nobility and the Spartan policy,
of which he gave instances, when, together with Aristides, he opposed
Themistocles, who was advancing the authority of the people beyond its
just limits, and resisted Ephialtes, who to please the multitude, was
for abolishing the jurisdiction of the court of Areopagus. And when all
the men of his time, except Aristides and Ephialtes, enriched themselves
out of the public money, he still kept his hands clean and untainted,
and to his last day never acted or spoke for his own private gain or
emolument. They tell us that Rhoesaces, a Persian, who had traitorously
revolted from the king his master, fled to Athens, and there, being
harassed by sycophants who were still accusing him to the people, he
applied himself to Cimon for redress, and to gain his favor, laid down
in his doorway two cups, the one full of gold, and the other of silver
Darics. Cimon smiled and asked him whether he wished to have Cimon's
hired service or his friendship. He replied, his friendship. "If so,"
said he, "take away these pieces, for being your friend, when I shall
have occasion for them, I will send and ask for them."
The allies of the Athenians began now to be weary of war and military
service, willing to have repose, and to look after their husbandry and
traffic. For they saw their enemies driven out of the country, and did
not fear any new vexations from them. They still paid the tax they were
assessed at, but did not send men and galleys, as they had done before.
This the other Athenian generals wished to constrain them to, and
by judicial proceedings against defaulters, and penalties which they
inflicted on them, made the government uneasy, and even odious. But
Cimon practiced a contrary method; he forced no man to go that was not
willing, but of those that desired to be excused from service he took
money and vessels unmanned, and let them yield to the temptation of
staying at home, to attend to their private business. Thus they lost
their military habits, and luxury and their own folly quickly changed
them into unwarlike husbandmen and traders; while Cimon, continually
embarking large numbers of Athenians on board his galleys, thoroughly
disciplined them in his expeditions, and ere long made them the lords of
their own paymasters. The allies, whose indolence maintained them, while
they thus went sailing about everywhere, and incessantly bearing
arms and acquiring skill, began to fear and flatter them, and found
themselves after a while allies no longer, but unwittingly become
tributaries and slaves.
Nor did any man ever do more than Cimon did to humble the pride of
the Persian king. He was not content with ridding Greece of him; but
following close at his heels, before the barbarians could take breath
and recover themselves, what with his devastations, and his forcible
reduction of some places and the revolts and voluntary accession of
others, in the end, from Ionia to Pamphylia, all Asia was clear of
Persian soldiers. Word being brought him that the royal commanders were
lying in wait upon the coast of Pamphylia, with a numerous land army,
and a large fleet, he determined to make the whole sea on this side the
Chelidonian islands so formidable to them that they should never dare
to show themselves in it; and setting off from Cnidos and the Triopian
headland, with two hundred galleys, which had been originally built with
particular care by Themistocles, for speed and rapid evolutions, and
to which he now gave greater width and roomier decks along the sides
to move to and fro upon, so as to allow a great number of full-armed
soldiers to take part in the engagements and fight from them, he shaped
his course first of all against the town of Phaselis, which, though
inhabited by Greeks, yet would not quit the interests of Persia, but
denied his galleys entrance into their port. Upon this he wasted the
country, and drew up his army to their very walls; but the soldiers of
Chios, who were then serving under him, being ancient friends to the
Phaselites, endeavoring to propitiate the general in their behalf, at
the same time shot arrows into the town, to which were fastened letters
conveying intelligence. At length he concluded peace with them, upon the
conditions that they should pay down ten talents, and follow him against
the barbarians. The Persian admiral lay waiting for him with the whole
fleet at the mouth of the river Eurymedon, with no design to fight, but
expecting a reinforcement of eighty Phoenician ships on their way from
Cyprus. Cimon, aware of this, put out to sea, resolved, if they would
not fight a battle willingly, to force them to it. The barbarians,
seeing this, retired within the mouth of the river to avoid
being attacked; but when they saw the Athenians come upon them,
notwithstanding their retreat, they met them with six hundred ships,
as Phanodemus relates, but according to Ephorus, with three hundred
and fifty. However, they did nothing worthy such mighty forces, but
immediately turned the prows of their galleys toward the shore, where
those that came first threw themselves upon the land, and fled to their
army drawn up thereabout, while the rest perished with their vessels, or
were taken. By this, one may guess at their number, for though a great
many escaped out of the fight, and a great many others were sunk, yet
two hundred galleys were taken by the Athenians.
When their land army drew toward the seaside, Cimon was in suspense
whether he should venture to try and force his way on shore; as he
should thus expose his Greeks, wearied with slaughter in the first
engagement, to the swords of the barbarians, who were all fresh men, and
many times their number. But seeing his men resolute, and flushed with
victory, he bade them land, though they were not yet cool from their
first battle. As soon as they touched ground, they set up a shout and
ran upon the enemy, who stood firm and sustained the first shock
with great courage, so that the fight was a hard one, and some of
the principal men of the Athenians in rank and courage were slain. At
length, though with much ado, they routed the barbarians, and killing
some, took others prisoners, and plundered all their tents and
pavilions, which were full of rich spoil. Cimon, liked a skilled athlete
at the games, having in one day carried off two victories, wherein
he surpassed that of Salamis by sea, and that of Plataea by land, was
encouraged to try for yet another success. News being brought that the
Phoenician succors, in number eighty sail, had come in sight at Hydrum,
he set off with all speed to find them, while they as yet had not
received any certain account of the larger fleet, and were in doubt what
to think; so that thus surprised, they lost all their vessels, and most
of their men with them. This success of Cimon so daunted the king
of Persia, that he presently made that celebrated peace, by which he
engaged that his armies should come no nearer the Grecian sea than the
length of a horse's course; and that none of his galleys or vessels
of war should appear between the Cyanean and Chelidonian isles. In the
collection which Craterus made of the public acts of the people, there
is a draft of this treaty given.
The people of Athens raised so much money from the spoils of this war,
which were publicly sold, that, besides other expenses, and raising the
south wall of the citadel, they laid the foundation of the long walls,
not, indeed, finished till at a later time, which were called the Legs.
And the place where they built them being soft and marshy ground, they
were forced to sink great weights of stone and rubble to secure the
foundation, and did all this out of the money Cimon supplied them with.
It was he, likewise, who first embellished the upper city with those
fine and ornamental places of exercise and resort, which they afterward
so much frequented and delighted in. He set the market-place with plane
trees; and the Academy, which was before a bare, dry, and dirty spot, he
converted into a well-watered grove, with shady alleys to walk in, and
open courses for races.
When the Persians who had made themselves masters of the Chersonese, so
far from quitting it, called in the people of the interior of Thrace
to help them against Cimon, whom they despised for the smallness of his
forces, he set upon them with only four galleys, and took thirteen of
theirs; and having driven out the Persians, and subdued the Thracians,
he made the hole Chersonese the property of Athens. Next, he attacked
the people of Thasos, who had revolted from the Athenians; and, having
defeated them in a fight at sea, where he captured thirty-three of their
vessels, he took their own by siege, and acquired for the Athenians all
the mines of gold on the opposite coast, and the territory dependent on
Thasos.
This opened him a fair passage into Macedon, so that he might, it was
thought, have acquired a good portion of that country, and because he
neglected the opportunity, he was suspected of corruption, and of
having been bribed off by king Alexander. So, by the combination of
his adversaries, he was accused of being false to his country. In his
defence he told the judges, that he had always shown himself in his
public life the friend, not, like other men, of rich Ionians and
Thessalonians, to be courted, and to receive presents, but of the
Lacedaemonians; for as he admired, so he wished to imitate, the
plainness of their habits, their temperance, and simplicity of living,
which he preferred to any sort of riches; but that he always had
been, and still was proud to enrich his country with the spoils of her
enemies. Pericles proved the mildest of his prosecutors, and rose up but
once all the while, almost as a matter of form, to plead against him.
Cimon was acquitted.
In his public life after this, he continued, while at home, to control
the common people, who would have trampled upon the nobility, and drawn
all the power and sovereignty to themselves. But when he afterwards was
sent out to war, the multitude broke loose, as it were, and overthrew
all the ancient laws and customs they had hitherto observed, and,
chiefly at the instigation of Ephialtes, withdrew the cognizance of
almost all causes from the Areopagus; so that all jurisdiction now being
transferred to them, the government was reduced to a perfect democracy,
and this by the help of Pericles, who was already powerful, and had
pronounced in favor of the common people.
He was indeed a favorer of the Lacedaemonians even from his youth, and
gave the names of Lacedaemonius and Eleus to his two sons, twins.
Cimon was countenanced by the Lacedaemonians in opposition to
Themistocles, whom they disliked; and while he was yet very young,
they endeavored to raise and increase his credit in Athens. This
the Athenians perceived at first with pleasure, and the favor the
Lacedaemonians showed him was in various ways advantageous to them and
their affairs; as at that time they were just rising to power, and were
occupied in winning the allies to their side. So they seemed not at all
offended with the honor and kindness showed to Cimon, who then had the
chief management of all the affairs of Greece, and was acceptable to
the Lacedaemonians, and courteous to the allies. But afterwards the
Athenians, grown more powerful, when they saw Cimon so entirely devoted
to the Lacedaemonians, began to be angry, for he would always in
speeches prefer them to the Athenians, and upon every occasion, when he
would reprimand them for a fault, or incite them to emulation, he
would exclaim, "The Lacedaemonians would not do thus." This raised the
discontent, and got him in some degree the hatred of the citizens; but
that which ministered chiefly to the accusation against him fell out
upon the following occasion.
In the fourth year of the reign of Archidamus, the son of Zeuxidamus,
king of Sparta, there happened in the country of Lacedaemon, the
greatest earthquake that was known in the memory of ma; the earth opened
into chasms, and the mountain Taygetus was so shaken that some of the
rocky points of it fell down, and except five houses, all the town of
Sparta was shattered to pieces. They say that a little before any
motion was perceived, as the young men and the boys just grown up were
exercising themselves together in the middle of the portico, a hare,
of a sudden, started out just by them, which the young men, though all
naked and daubed with oil, ran after for sport. No sooner were they
gone from the place, than the gymnasium fell down upon the boys who had
stayed behind, and killed them all. Their tomb is to this day called
Sismatias.* Archidamus, by the present danger made apprehensive of what
might follow, and seeing the citizens intent upon removing the most
valuable of their goods out of their houses, commanded an alarm to be
sounded, as if an enemy were coming upon them, in order that they should
collect about him in a body, with arms. It was this alone that saved
Sparta at that time, for the Helots had come together from the country
about, with design of surprising the Spartans, and overpowering
those whom the earthquake had spared. But finding them armed and well
prepared, they retired into the towns and openly made war with them,
gaining over a number of the Laconians of the country districts; while
at the same time the Messenians, also, made an attack upon the Spartans,
who therefore despatched Periclidas to Athens to solicit succor, of whom
Aristophanes says in mockery that he came and
In a red jacket, at the altars seated,
With a white face, for men and arms entreated.
This Ephialtes opposed, protesting that they ought not to raise up or
assist a city that was a rival to Athens; but that being down, it
were best to keep her so, and let the pride and arrogance of Sparta
be trodden under. But Cimon, as Critias says, preferring the safety of
Lacedaemon to the aggrandizement of his own country, so persuaded the
people, that he soon marched out with a large army to their relief. Ion
records, also, the most successful expression which he used to move the
Athenians. "They ought not to suffer Greece to be lamed, nor their own
city to be deprived of her yoke fellow."
In his return from aiding the Lacedaemonians, he passed with his army
through the territory of Corinth; whereupon Lachartus reproached him for
bringing his army into the country, without first asking leave of the
people. For he that knocks at another man's door ought not to enter
the house till the master gives him leave. "But you, Corinthians, O
Lachartus," said Cimon, "did not knock at the gates of the Cleonaeans
and Megarians, but broke them down and entered by force, thinking that
all places should be open to the stronger." And having thus rallied
the Corinthian, he passed on with his army. Some time after this, the
Lacedaemonians sent a second time to desire succor of the Athenians
against the Messenians and Helots, who had seized upon Ithome. But when
they came, fearing their boldness and gallantry, of all that came to
their assistance, they sent them only back, alleging that they were
designing innovations. The Athenians returned home, enraged at this
usage, and vented their anger upon all those who were favorers of the
Lacedaemonians; and seizing some slight occasion, they banished Cimon
for ten years, which is the time prescribed to those that are banished
by the ostracism. In the mean time, the Lacedaemonians, on their return
after freeing Delphi from the Phocians, encamped their army at Tanagra,
whither the Athenians presently marched with design to fight them.
Cimon also, came thither armed and ranged himself among those of his own
tribe, which was the Oeneis, desirous of fighting with the rest against
the Spartans; but the council of five hundred being informed of this,
and frightened at it, his adversaries crying out that he would disorder
the army, and bring the Lacedaemonians to Athens, commanded the officers
not to receive him. Wherefore Cimon left the army, conjuring Euthippus,
the Anaphylstian, and the rest of his companions, who were most
suspected as favoring the Lacedaemonians, to behave themselves bravely
against their enemies, and by their actions make their innocence evident
to their countrymen. These, being in all a hundred, took the arms of
Cimon, and followed his advice; and making a body by themselves, fought
so desperately with the enemy, that they were all cut off, leaving the
Athenians deep regret for the loss of such brave men, and repentance for
having so unjustly suspected them. Accordingly, they did not long retain
their severity toward Cimon, partly upon remembrance of his former
services, and partly, perhaps, induced by the juncture of the times.
For being defeated at Tanagra in a great battle, and fearing the
Peloponnesians would come upon them at the opening of the spring, they
recalled Cimon by a decree, of which Pericles himself was author. So
reasonable were men's resentments in those times, and so moderate their
anger, that it always gave way to the public good. Even ambition,
the least governable of all human passions, could then yield to the
necessities of the State.
Cimon, as soon as he returned, put an end to the war, and reconciled the
two cities. Peace thus established, seeing the Athenians impatient of
being idle, and eager for the honor and aggrandizement of war, lest they
should set upon the Greeks themselves, or with so many ships cruising
about the isles and Peloponnesus, they should give occasions for
intestine wars, or complaints of their allies against them, he equipped
two hundred galleys, with design to make an attempt upon Egypt and
Cyprus; purposing, by this means, to accustom the Athenians to fight
against the barbarians, and enrich themselves honestly by despoiling
those who were the natural enemies to Greece. But when all things were
prepared, and the army ready to embark, Cimon had this dream. It seemed
to him that there was a furious female dog barking at him, and, mixed
with the barking, a kind of human voice uttered these words:
Come on, for thou shalt shortly be
A pleasure to my whelps and me.
This dream was hard to interpret, yet Astyphilus of Posidonia, a man
skilled in divinations, and intimate with Cimon, told him that his death
was presaged by this vision, which he thus explained. A dog is enemy
to him he barks at; and one is always most a pleasure to one's enemies,
when one is dead; the mixture of human voice with barking signifies the
Medes, for the army of the Medes is mixed up of Greeks and barbarians.
After this dream, as he was sacrificing to Bacchus, and the priest
cutting up the victim, a number of ants, taking up the congealed
particles of the blood, laid them about Cimon's great toes. This was not
observed for a good while, but at the very time when Cimon spied it, the
priest came and showed him the liver of the sacrifice imperfect, wanting
that part of it called the head. But he could not then recede from the
enterprise, so he set sail. Sixty of his ships he sent toward Egypt;
with the rest he went and fought the king of Persia's fleet, composed
of Phoenician and Cilician galleys, recovered all the cities thereabout,
and threatened Egypt; designing no less than the entire ruin of the
Persian empire. And the more because he was informed that Themistocles
was in great repute among the barbarians, having promised the king
to lead his army, whenever he should make war upon Greece. But
Themistocles, it is said, abandoning all hopes of compassing his
designs, very much out of the despair of overcoming the valor and
good-fortune of Cimon, died a voluntary death. Cimon, intent on great
designs, which he was now to enter upon, keeping his navy about the isle
of Cyprus, sent messengers to consult the oracle of Jupiter Ammon upon
some secret matter. For it is not known about what they were sent, and
the god would give them no answer, but commanded them to return again,
for Cimon was already with him. Hearing this, they returned to sea, and
as soon as they came to the Grecian army, which was then about Egypt,
they understood that Cimon was dead; and computing the time of the
oracle, they found that his death had been signified, he being then
already with the gods.
He died, some say, of sickness, while besieging Citium, in Cyprus;
according to others, of a wound he received in a skirmish with the
barbarians. When he perceived that he was going to die, he commanded
those under his charge to return, and by no means to let the news of his
death be known by the way; this they did with such secrecy that they all
came home safe, and neither their enemies nor the allies knew what had
happened. Thus, as Phanodemus relates, the Grecian army was, as it were,
conducted by Cimon thirty days after he was dead. But after his
death there was not one commander among the Greeks that did any thing
considerable against the barbarians, and instead of uniting against
their common enemies, the popular leaders and partisans of war animated
them against one another to such a degree, that none could interpose
their good offices to reconcile them. And while, by their mutual
discord, they ruined the power of Greece, they gave the Persians time
to recover breath, and repair all their losses. It is true, indeed,
Agesilaus carried the arms of Greece into Asia, but it was a long time
afterwards; there were some brief appearances of a war against the
king's lieutenants in the maritime provinces, but they all quickly
vanished; before he could perform any thing of moment, he was recalled
by fresh civil dissensions and disturbances at home. So that he was
forced to leave the Persian king's officers to impose what tribute they
pleased on the Greek cities in Asia, the confederates and allies of
the Lacedaemonians. Whereas, in the time of Cimon, not so much as a
letter-carrier, or a single horseman, was ever seen to come within four
hundred furlongs of the sea.
The monuments, called Cimonian to this day, in Athens, show that his
remains were conveyed home, yet the inhabitants of the city Citium pay
particular honor to a certain tomb which they call the tomb of Cimon,
according to Nausicrates the rhetorician, who states that in a time
of famine, when the crops of their land all failed, they sent to the
oracle, which commanded them not to forget Cimon, but give him the
honors of a superior being.