| Plutarch's Parallel Lives | |
| The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch | |
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CIMON Cimon was the son of Miltiades and Hegesipyle, who was by birth a
Thracian, and daughter to the king Olorus. By this means the
historian Thucydides was his kinsman by the mother's side; for his
father's name also, in remembrance of this common ancestor, was
Olorus, and he was the owner of the gold mines in Thrace, and met
his death, it is said, by violence, in Scapte Hyle, a district of
Thrace. Cimon was left an orphan very young, with his sister
Elpinice, who was also young and unmarried. And at first he had
but an indifferent reputation, being looked upon as disorderly in
his habits, fond of drinking, and resembling his grandfather, also
called Cimon, in character, whose simplicity got him the surname
of Coalemus the simpleton. Stesimbrotus of Thasos, who lived about
the same time with Cimon, reports of him that he had little
acquaintance either with music, or any of the other liberal
studies and accomplishments, then common among the Greeks; that he
had nothing whatever of the quickness and the ready speech of his
countrymen in Attica; that he had great nobleness and candor in
his disposition, and in his character in general, resembled rather
a native of Peloponnesus, than of Athens; as Euripides describes
Hercules: -- ----Rude And unrefined, for great things, well-endued; for this may fairly be added to the character which Stesimbrotus
has given of him. Almost all the points of Cimon's character were noble and good. He
was as daring as Miltiades, and not inferior to Themistocles in
judgment, and was incomparably more just and honest than either of
them. Fully their equal in all military virtues, in the ordinary
duties of a citizen at home he was immeasurably their superior.
And this, too, when he was very young, his years not strengthened
by any experience. For when Themistocles, upon the Median
invasion, advised the Athenians to forsake their city and their
country, and to carry all their arms on shipboard, and fight the
enemy by sea, in the straits of Salamis; when all the people stood
amazed at the confidence and rashness of this advice, Cimon was
seen, the first of all men, passing with a cheerful countenance
through the Ceramics, on his way with his companions to the
citadel, carrying a bridle in his hand to offer to the goddess,
intimating that there was no more need of horsemen now, but of
mariners. There, after he had paid his devotions to the goddess,
and offered up the bridle, he took down one of the bucklers that
hung upon the walls of the temple, and went down to the port; by
this example giving confidence to many of the citizens. He was
also of a fairly handsome person, according to the poet Ion, tall
and large, and let his thick and curly hair grow long. After he
had acquitted himself gallantly in this battle of Salamis, he
obtained great repute among the Athenians, and was regarded with
affection, as well as admiration. He had many who followed after
him, and bade him aspire to actions not less famous than his
father's battle of Marathon. And when he came forward in political
life, the people welcomed him gladly, being now weary of
Themistocles; in opposition to whom, and because of the frankness
and easiness of his temper, which was agreeable to every one, they
advanced Cimon to the highest employments in the government. The
man that contributed most to his promotion was Aristides, who
early discerned in his character his natural capacity, and
purposely raised him, that he might be a counterpoise to the craft
and boldness of Themistocles. After the Medes had been driven out
of Greece, Cimon was sent out as admiral, when the Athenians had
not yet attained their dominion by sea, but still followed
Pausanias and the Lacedaemonians; and his fellow-citizens under
his command were highly distinguished, both for the excellence of
their discipline, and for their extraordinary zeal and readiness.
And further, perceiving that Pausanias was carrying on secret
communications with the barbarians, and writing letters to the
king of Persia to betray Greece, and, puffed up with authority and
success, was treating the allies haughtily, and committing many
wanton injustices, Cimon, taking advantage, by acts of kindness to
those who were suffering wrong, and by his general humane bearing,
robbed him of the command of the Greeks, before he was aware, not
by arms, but by his mere language and character. Cimon,
strengthened with the accession of the allies, went as general
into Thrace. For he was told that some great men among the
Persians, of the king's kindred, being in possession of Eion, a
city situated upon the river Strymon, infested the neighboring
Greeks. First he defeated these Persians in battle, and shut them
up within the walls of their town. Then he fell upon the Thracians
of the country beyond the Strymon, because they supplied Eion with
victuals, and driving them entirely out of the country, took
possession of it as conqueror, by which means he reduced the
besieged to such straits, that Butes, who commanded there for the
king, in desperation set fire to the town, and burned himself, his
goods, and all his relations, in one common flame. By this means,
Cimon got the town, but no great booty; as the barbarians had not
only consumed themselves in the fire, but the richest of their
effects. However, he put the country into the hands of the
Athenians, a most advantageous and desirable situation for a
settlement. For this action, the people permitted him to erect the
stone Mercuries, upon the first of which was this inscription:-- Of bold and patient spirit, too, were those Who, where the Strymon
under Eion flows, With famine and the sword, to utmost need
Reduced at last the children of the Mede. Upon the second stood this:-- The Athenians to their leaders this reward For great and useful
service did accord; Others hereafter, shall, from their applause,
Learn to be valiant in their country's cause. And upon the third, the following:-- 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.
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