Cimon

Peripoltas the seer, who conducted King Opheltas with his subjects from Thessaly into Boeotia, left a posterity there which was in high repute for many generations. The greater part of them settled in Chaeroneia, which was the first city they won from the Barbarians. Now the most of this posterity were naturally men of war and courage, and so were consumed away in the Persian invasions and the contests with the Gauls, because they did not spare themselves. There remained, however, an orphan boy, Damon by name, Peripoltas by surname, who far surpassed his fellows in beauty of body and in vigor of spirit, though otherwise he was untrained and of a harsh disposition. With this Damon, just passed out of boy’s estate, the Roman commander of a cohort that was wintering in Chaeroneia fell enamored, and since he could not win him over by solicitations and presents, he was plainly bent on violence, seeing that our native city was at that time in sorry plight, and neglected because of her smallness and poverty. Violence was just what Damon feared, and since the solicitation itself had enraged him, he plotted against the man, and enlisted against him sundry companions,—a few only, that they might escape notice. There were sixteen of them in all, who smeared their faces with soot one might, heated themselves with wine, and at daybreak fell upon the Roman while he was sacrificing in the market-place, slew him, together with many of his followers, and departed the city. During the commotion which followed, the council of Chaeroneia met and condemned the murderers to death, and this was the defence which the city afterwards made to its Roman rulers. But in the evening, while the magistrates were dining together, as the custom is, Damon and his men burst into the town hall, slew them, and again fled the city. Now about that time it chanced that Lucius Lucullus passed that way, on some errand, with an army. Halting on his march and investigating matters while they were still fresh in mind, he found that the city was in no wise to blame, but rather had itself also suffered wrong. So he took its garrison of soldiers and led them away with him. Then Damon, who was ravaging the country with predatory forays and threatening the city, was induced by embassies and conciliatory decrees of the citizens to return, and was appointed gymnasiarch. But soon, as he was anointing himself in the vapor-bath, he was slain. And because for a long while thereafter certain phantoms appeared in the place, and groans were heard there, as our Fathers tell us, the door of the vapor-bath was walled up, and to this present time the neighbors think it the source of alarming sights and sounds. Descendants of Damon’s family (and some are still living, especially near Stiris in Phocis, Aeolians in speech) are called “Asbolomeni,” or “Besooted,” because Damon smeared himself with soot before he went forth to do his deed of murder. But the Orchomenians, who were neighbors and rivals of the Chaeroneians, hired a Roman informer to cite the city by name, as though it were an individual person, and prosecute it for the murder of the Roman soldiers who had been slain by Damon. The trial was held before the praetor of Macedonia (the Romans were not yet sending praetors to Greece), and the city’s advocates invoked the testimony of Lucullus. Lucullus, when the praetor wrote to him, testified to the truth of the matter, and so the city escaped capital condemnation. Accordingly, the people who at that time were saved by him erected a marble statue of Lucullus in the market-place beside that of Dionysus. And we, though many generations removed from him, think that his favour extends even down to us who are now living; and since we believe that a portrait, which reveals character and disposition is far more beautiful than one which merely copies form and feature, we shall incorporate this man’s deeds into our parallel lives, and we shall rehearse them truly. The mere mention of them is sufficient favour to show him; and as a return for his truthful testimony he himself surely would not deign to accept a false and garbled narrative of his career. We demand of those who would paint fair and graceful features that, in case of any slight imperfection therein, they shall neither wholly omit it nor yet emphasize it, because the one course makes the portrait ugly and the other unlike its original. In like manner, since it is difficult, nay rather perhaps impossible, to represent a man’s life as stainless and pure, in its fair chapters we must round out the truth into fullest semblance; but those transgressions and follies by which, owing to passion, perhaps, or political compulsion, a man’s career is sullied, we must regard rather as shortcomings in some particular excellence than as the vile products of positive baseness, and we must not all too zealously delineate them in our history, and superfluously too, but treat them as though we were tenderly defending human nature for producing no character which is absolutely good and indisputably set towards virtue. On looking about for some one to compare with Lucullus, we decided that it must be Cimon. Both were men of war, and of brilliant exploits against the Barbarians, and yet they were mild and beneficent statesmen, in that they gave their countries unusual respite from civil strifes, though each one of them set up martial trophies and won victories that were famous. No Hellene before Cimon and no Roman before Lucullus carried his wars into such remote lands, if we leave out of our account the exploits of Heracles and Dionysus, and whatever credible deeds of Perseus against the Aethiopians or Medes and Armenians, or of Jason, have been brought down in the memory of man from those early times to our own. Common also in a way to both their careers was the incompleteness of their campaigns. Each crushed, but neither gave the death blow to his antagonist. But more than all else, the lavish ease which marked their entertainments and hospitalities, as well as the ardour and laxity of their way of living, was conspicuous alike in both. Possibly we may omit still other resemblances, but it will not be hard to gather them directly from our story. Cimon was the son of Miltiades by Hegesipyle, a woman of Thracian stock, daughter of King Olorus, as it is stated in the poems of Archelaus and Melanthius addressed to Cimon himself. That explains how it was that the father of Thucydides the historian—and Thucydides was connected with the family of Cimon—was also an Olorus, who referred his name back to that of the common ancestor, and also how it was that Thucydides had gold mines in Thrace. And it is said that Thucydides died in Skapte Hyle, a place in Thrace, having been murdered there; but his remains were brought to Attica, and his monument is shown among those of Cimon’s family, hard by the tomb of Elpinice, Cimon’s sister. However, Thucydides belonged to the deme of Halimus, the family of Miltiades to that of Laciadae. Now Miltiades, who had been condemned to pay a fine of fifty talents and confined till payment should be made, died in prison, and Cimon, thus left a mere stripling with his sister who was a young girl and unmarried, was of no account in the city at first. He had the bad name of being dissolute and bibulous, and of taking after his grandfather Cimon, who, they say, because of his simplicity, was dubbed Coalemus, or Booby. And Stesimbrotus the Thasian, who was of about Cimon’s time, says that he acquired no literary education, nor any other liberal and distinctively Hellenic accomplishment; that he lacked entirely the Attic cleverness and fluency of speech; that in his outward bearing there was much nobility and truthfulness; that the fashion of the man’s spirit was rather Peloponnesian,