Cimon

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. II. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1914.

And again, Georgias the Leontine says that Cimon made money that he might spend it, and spent it that he might he honored for it. And Critias, one of the thirty tyrants, prays in his elegies that he may have

  1. the wealth of the Scopadae, the great-mindedness of Cimon,
  2. and the victories of Arcesilaus of Lacedaemon.
And yet we know that Lichas the Spartan became famous among the Hellenes for no other reason than that he entertained the strangers at the boys’ gymnastic festival; but the generosity of Cimon surpassed even the hospitality and philanthropy of the Athenians of olden time.

For they—and their city is justly very proud of it—spread abroad among the Hellenes the sowing of grain and the lustral uses of spring waters, and taught mankind who knew it not the art of kindling fire. But he made his home in the city a general public residence for his fellow citizens, and on his estates in the country allowed even the stranger to take and use the choicest of the ripened fruits, with all the fair things which the seasons bring. Thus, in a certain fashion, he restored to human life the fabled communism of the age of Cronus,—the golden age.

Those who slanderously said that this was flattery of the rabble and demagogic art in him, were refuted by the man’s political policy, which was aristocratic and Laconian. He actually opposed Themistocles when he exalted the democracy unduly, as Aristides also did. Later on he took hostile issue with Ephialtes, who, to please the people, tried to dethrone the Council of the Areiopagus;

and though he saw all the rest except Aristides and Ephialtes filling their purses with the gains from their public services, he remained unbought and unapproached by bribes, devoting all his powers to the state, without recompense and in all purity, through to the end. It is told, indeed, that one Rhoesaces, a Barbarian who had deserted from the King, came to Athens with large moneys, and being set upon fiercely by the public informers, fled for refuge to Cimon, and deposited at his door two platters, one filled with silver, the other with golden Darics. Cimon, when he saw them, smiled,