Cimon

Well then, Cimon was acquitted at this trial. And during the remainder of his political career, when he was at home, he mastered and constrained the people in its onsets upon the nobles, and in its efforts to wrest all office and power to itself; but when he sailed away again on military service,[*]( 462 B.C. See Plut. Cim. 17.) the populace got completely beyond control. They confounded the established political order of things and the ancestral practices which they had formerly observed,

and under the lead of Ephialtes they robbed the Council of the Areiopagus of all but a few of the cases in its jurisdiction. They made themselves masters of the courts of justice, and plunged the city into unmitigated democracy, Pericles being now a man of power and espousing the cause of the populace. And so when Cimon came back home, and in his indignation at the insults heaped upon the reverend council, tried to recall again its jurisdiction and to revive the aristocracy of the times of Cleisthenes, they banded together to denounce him, and tried to inflame the people against him,

renewing the old slanders about his sister and accusing him of being a Spartan sympathizer. It was to these calumnies that the famous and popular verses of Eupolis about Cimon had reference:—

1. He was not base, but fond of wine and full of sloth,
2. and oft he’ld sleep in Lacedaemon, far from home,
3. And leave his Elpinicé sleeping all alone.

It is true indeed that he was from the first a philo-Laconian. He actually named one of his twin sons Lacedaemonius, and the other Eleius,— the sons whom a woman of Cleitor bare him, as Stesimbrotus relates, wherefore Pericles often reproached them with their maternal lineage. But Diodorus the Topographer says that these, as well as the third of Cimon’s sons, Thessalus, were born of Isodice, the daughter of Euryptolemus, the son of Megacles.

And he was looked upon with favour by the Lacedaemonians, who soon were at enmity with Themistocles, and therefore preferred that Cimon, young as he was, should have the more weight and power in Athens. The Athenians were glad to see this at first, since they reaped no slight advantage from the good will which the Spartans showed him. While their empire was first growing, and they were busy making alliances, they were not displeased that honor and favour should be shown to Cimon.

He was the foremost Hellenic statesman, dealing gently with the allies and acceptably with the Lacedaemonians. But afterwards, when they became more powerful, and saw that Cimon was strongly attached to the Spartans, they were displeased thereat. For on every occasion he was prone to exalt Lacedaemon to the Athenians, especially when he had occasion to chide or incite them. Then, as Stesimbrotus tells us, he would say, But the Lacedaemonians are not of such a sort.