Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
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, for 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 his 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 marketplace.
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 run 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 tended 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 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 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, their
enemies driven out of the country, 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 then, 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 getting rid of him out of
Greece; but following close at his heels, before the barbarians could
take breath and recover themselves, he was already at work, and 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. Ephorus says the
admiral of the Persian fleet was Tithraustes, and the general of the
land army Pherendates; but Callisthenes is positive that Ariomandes,
the son of Gobryas, had the supreme command of all the forces. He
lay waiting 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, only 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 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, like 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. Callisthenes, however,
says that he did not agree to any such articles, but that upon the
fear this victory gave him, he did in reality thus act, and kept off
so far from Greece, that when Pericles with fifty, and Ephialtes with
thirty galleys, cruised beyond the Chelidonian isles, they did not
discover one Persian vessel. But in the collection which Craterus
made of the public acts of the people, there is a draft of this
treaty given. And it is told, also, that at Athens they erected the