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Cimon

5 Pages 1192 Words


Cimon was an Athenian General of the 5th Century B.C. Cimon's father, Miltiades, died in prison when he could not pay a fine of fifty talents where he died, and his mother was named Hegesipyle, the daughter of King Olorus of Thrace.
As a young man, Cimon had a reputation for being a drunk and not very bright. They accused him, in his younger years, of cohabiting with his own sister Elpinice, who, indeed, otherwise had no very clear reputation, but was reported to have been over intimate with Polygnotus, the painter. Some affirm that Elpinice lived with her brother, not secretly, but as his married wife, her poverty excluding her from any suitable match. But afterward, when Callias, one of the richest men of Athens, fell in love with her, and proffered to pay the fine the father was condemned in, if he could obtain the daughter in marriage, with Elpinice's own consent, Cimon betrothed her to Callias.
No Greek before Cimon ever carried the scene of war so far from their own country. In politics, Cimon was pro-Sparta and the aristocracy, and it was only during one of his absences from the city that Ephialtes and Pericles managed to have control in most cases transferred from the court of the Areopagus to citizen juries.
He was, indeed, a favorer of the Lacedaemonians even from his youth, and he gave the names of Lacedaemonius and Eleus to two sons, twins, whom he had, as Stesimbrotus says, by a woman of Clitorium, here as Pericles often upbraided them with their mother's blood. But Diodorus, the geographer, asserts that both these, and another son of Cimon’s, whose name was Thessalus, was born of Isodice, the daughter of Euryptolemus, the son of Megacles.
When Athens was abandoned before the battle of Salamis, Cimon was the first to dedicate his bridle to Athena and board the ships. He fought well in the battle, and after Salamis, he was appointed admiral with Aristides. He followed Aristides' example, and by reasonable dealing ...

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