Cimon

and asked the man whether he preferred to have Cimon as his hireling or his friend, and on his replying, As my friend, Well then, said Cimon, Take this money with thee and go thy way, for I shall have the use of it when I want it if I am thy friend.

The allies continued to pay their assessments, but did not furnish men and ships according to allotment, since they were soon weary of military service, and had no need of war, but a great desire to till their land and live at their ease. The Barbarians were gone and did not harass them, so they neither manned their ships nor sent out soldiers. The rest of the Athenian generals tried to force them to do this, and by prosecuting the delinquents and punishing them, rendered their empire burdensome and vexatious.

But Cimon took just the opposite course when he was general, and brought no compulsion to bear on a single Hellene, but accepted money from those who did not wish to go out on service, and ships without crews, and so suffered the allies, caught with the bait of their own ease, to stay at home and become tillers of the soil an unwarlike merchants instead of warriors, and all through their foolish love of comfort. On the other hand, he made great numbers of the Athenians man their ships, one crew relieving another, and imposed on them the toil of his expeditions, and so in a little while, by means of the very wages which they got from the allies, made them lords of their own paymasters.

For those who did no military service became used to fearing and flattering those who were continually voyaging, and for ever under arms and training, and practising, and so, before they knew it, they were tributary subjects instead of allies.

And surely there was no one who humbled the Great King himself, and reduced his haughty spirit, more than Cimon. For he did not let him go quietly away from Hellas, but followed right at his heels, as it were, and before the Barbarians had come to a halt and taken breath, he sacked and overthrew here, or subverted and annexed to the Hellenes there, until Asia from Ionia to Pamphylia was entirely cleared of Persian arms.